Covid Watch

The number of school aged kids being home-educated has increased since the Covid-19 pandemic, with an 80 per cent increase overall. 

Figures from Stuff indicate that there are at least 11000 children currently being homeschooled.

President of NZ Principals' Federation, Cherie Taylor-Patel, is here now to put these numbers in context and explain why more parents have made this choice. 

"There's always been a group of students that have had high health needs, or have been neurodiverse, or have needed the curriculum adapted. And one of the ways you can do that well is to go the homeschooling route."

LISTEN ABOVE

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Now that the borders are open again, the option to travel is back after a two year hiatus.

But BloggerAtLarge's Megan Singleton has recently observed that plenty of people still aren't ready to get back out there yet.

There's fear around travel that has built up over the last couple of years, not helped by earlier stories surrounding lost luggage.

Tours offer an easy alternative, as they come with less worry, and they're back after a Covid-induced hiatus.

LISTEN ABOVE

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hutt Valley Chamber of Commerce CEO Patrick McKibbin and Tommy's Real Estate sales director Nicki Cruickshank join Nick Mills on the Business Panel.

Together they discuss gender pay gaps, Ed Sheeran's cancelled concert, local body elections, Let's Get Wellington Moving, ram-raids, home loan interest rates tipped to push higher and the Covid-19 Protection Framework being scrapped.

LISTEN ABOVE 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The good news for me this week around the relinquishing of the Covid rules, was not so much the masks, lights, or mandates, but the case numbers.

We will no longer publish the case numbers daily. Like all the other changes we have been ruinously slow to move on with life.

But the numbers were possibly the most insidious of the factors at play without us perhaps even realising.

The Prime Minister's line by the way, that we are "taking back control” must never be seen as anything other than more of her polytech marketing puffery.

We didn’t take anything back because we never gave anything away.

We had our lives and freedoms forcibly removed from us by a government driven by a mix of fear, panic, lack of experience, and to be fair a little bit of genuine leadership.

They had to do something. But in totality what they did proved to be over the top, with a slew of damage that resulted and results in what we are still living through and paying for to this day and many, many days to come.

But think back on those numbers, the obsession around them, the one o'clock announcements, and the invention of the pulpit of truth. Remember those bizarre sessions with a media that got so hopelessly exposed for their lack of rigour, knowledge, and ability to follow a non-answer with a proper question that might lead to any sort of accountability.

Psychologists and psychiatrists must still be having a field day looking and studying the way we behaved. The guessing of the case numbers, the trends, what they meant, the absurd placement of importance on every utterance that came from a Jackson, Baker, or Wiles.

Did the number mean freedom? A light change? A rule dropped?

Media would build up to the release of the numbers . Every day, day in and day out, week in and week out, month in and month out we saw "today's numbers about to be released," "Ministry about to announce new update", "what are today's numbers?"

The psychological damage that must have done to us. The stress, the time wasted, and the energy burned. We detailed a virus like no other virus has been detailed.

Even now, that weekly update going forward is tragic. We are not listing cold or flu numbers, we aren't counting delayed operations, surgical waiting lists, access to doctors, or mental health help.

It is a fantastically interesting study into the power of fear and control. It was an experiment and we were all part of it whether we know it or not.

We cannot get it behind us fast enough, and move on.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It is moderately encouraging we have two mutterings from the Government this week so far on the potential for a Covid inquiry.

Grant Robertson told us Monday on this show it was closer, and the Prime Minister is taking advice on what it should look like.

The reluctance to this point is fairly obvious. It's going to be ugly, and they know it.

Government's call inquiries for a couple of reasons. One, to get the subject off the front page. Two, to get a result they need or want. They do that by appointing the right people, so they can fairly confidently tell what's going to happen.

When you get the report, if you don’t like it, you review it, and release recommendations on a Friday after everyone is at the pub. If it tells you what you want, you stand at the pulpit of truth with a trumpet and enact everything.

The irony here is no one has called more inquiries and launched more working groups than this lot. Given that, just what advice is it they are seeking? Is there anyone left that isn't already involved in one?

I note also the Australians are well underway with their review into the Reserve Bank.

That's another little look this Government isn't really interested in. Once again because they know full well it's going to be ugly. But, as the Australians well understand and clearly, we don’t want to, these are large and live issues that continue to affect each and every one of us each and every day, and they will do for years.

There are gargantuan questions around the performance of both the Reserve Bank and the Government in Covid.

Lives have been up ended, learning has been interrupted, the surgery back log is a mile long, and economies have been dented severely. If that isn't worth looking into, what is?

The Australian Reserve Bank Governor, Phillip Lowe, has already said he won't quit, and indeed offered a level of defence for his actions, or lack of them.

That’s his right. The same way I assume Adrian Orr, and indeed our government, surely have an argument for doing things the way they did.

But these past couple of years, these 900 plus days are something most of us have never seen before and we pray never will again.

Was there a better and different way? You will never know until you dig and put a blowtorch on those who took our lives in their hands and asked us to trust them.

If that isn't worth a Royal Commission, nothing is.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

So the Government’s looking at potential scope for a Covid review, and “taking advice”.

That in and of itself should ring alarm bells given no government has ordered more reviews than this lot. They ordered reviews like a teenager ordering Uber Eats with their parents credit card. Reviews all round, bugger the expense. So now to pause, reflect, and take advice, seems out of character. It seems a stalling technique. 

That aside, the taking advice bit is the other thing this Government’s record has been questionable on. They talked a big game – and often – about all the ‘advice’ they were taking – but then more times than not, didn’t take any of it.

Case and point being anything Treasury ever said to them.

It included advice from the business sector, real people, organisations, even their own review committees.

But one sector they did seem to take a lot of advice from during Covid was the domain of the scientist and the epidemiologist.

And fair enough, in the early days of confusion and uncertainty around a virus and a global pandemic, they were the experts they should hear from. But where and when to draw the line?

At what point did the ‘experts’ go beyond their remit? At what point do the scientists sit down and the epidemiologists accept there’s more to life than looking at everything from the lens of a lab.

Things like the fact there’s an economy to think about, a tourism industry, people’s mental health, livelihoods, businesses and so on. 

Yes the science and the warnings about hygiene, masks, surfaces, germs and closed spaces were all vital at the time.. but two years on, with fewer than a thousand cases in the community. With even our ‘abundance of caution’ Government saying it‘s time to retire the restrictions, why are the epidemiologists still front page screaming that the sky will fall in?

The fear and the panic is over. Read the room. Yet still they have a platform to preach fear. 

It’s not helpful to have the likes of Michael Baker and Rod Jackson saying we need to keep some masks, some controls, some restrictions.

Baker claims we should look at “whether we should have a vaccination requirement for travellers, whether we should use testing technology as part of the arrival process into New Zealand.”

He reckons we “shouldn't just abandon all controls at the borders." I tell you what we should abandon, the epidemiologists. Thank you for your service, thank you for your insight, thanks for the memories. Time to exit stage left. 

We do not need this kind of advice running or trying to run our country. It’s beyond their remit, it’s beyond their scope, it only views things myopically from the comfort and luxury of a privileged position with no real connection to the real world. They’re not running a business, they’re not running a ski field or a bungy jump or a hotel or a café or a retail shop. 

What we need now is normality, tourists, punters, and some basic freedoms back. We can’t live in fear of future pandemics forever. We can’t keep pinging guests to this country in a paranoid fervour of fear.

We’ve waved goodbye to the traffic lights, now let’s please wave goodbye to the epidemiologists.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today marks the first day of the Covid-19 Protection Framework being over, and Parliament had their first mask-free session in recent memory.

Political editor Barry Soper was in attendance and observed that people were still cautious and feeling the need to enforce distancing rules. 

It was also observed that Jacinda Ardern was pleased that our nation's hard work had paid off, and that we could ease up on protection, for the moment.

LISTEN ABOVE 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The traffic light system is gone, most of the mask requirements are gone and the vaccine mandates will be gone by September 26 - although employers will still be able to decide whether or not they want to stick with the mandates.

The only place the Government will require us to keep wearing masks is in places where health services are provided - so hospitals, GP practices etc.

I’m not going to lie - it doesn’t necessarily feel like a new day has dawned.

These changes have been about two-and-a-half years in the making - ever since the pandemic started, pretty much.

And you may have heard the bloke from the Nurses’ Society on Newstalk ZB today saying that we probably won’t see much change on the healthcare front because employers - health boards etc - were requiring staff to be vaccinated before the Government stepped in and mandated it.

He was saying employers have to provide safe working conditions so that makes sense from an HR perspective. But I don’t know whether this is just because I’ve had Covid recently, but I’ve certainly reached a point where I wouldn’t give two hoots whether a doctor or a nurse was vaccinated or not.

But as the Nurses’ Society is saying, it’s not just about me, or you, and vaccine mandates are probably going to continue in the health sector because it’s about protecting health staff from bugs carried by patients and hospital visitors and the like.

The Government has said there is no requirement for employers to take people back, nor is there any requirement for someone who lost their job because of the vaccination mandates to go back to their old job.

That second bit is irrelevant because do you really think the Government is going to start forcing people to go back to their old jobs? Of course not.

But what about the fact there is no obligation to take back people who were forced out of their jobs by the mandates, even though the rules have changed?

Aside from the practicalities and the likelihood that some of these people will have been replaced by other people happy to have the jab, don’t you think it is unfair that people are still on the outer if they used to work somewhere where there was a vaccine mandate, but there isn’t anymore?

Shouldn’t they automatically be offered their old job back?

I was thinking about all the other reasons people get sacked from their jobs.

And, generally, it’s to do with a loss of trust isn’t it?

Someone steals from their employer. A loss of trust. They’re out the door. Someone uses the company car when they shouldn’t. A loss of trust. Out the door. Break the law, out the door. Break company policy, out the door.

But if someone doesn’t agree that they should be vaccinated to keep their job, just because the Government says so, does that mean they can’t be trusted? Of course not. There’s no loss of trust there at all.

And so if the rules change - and the job they used to do is no longer Covid jab-dependent - such as teaching, for example - then why shouldn’t they automatically be given the opportunity to go back?

Chances are, some people who were forced out of their jobs because of the mandates will have such a bad taste in their mouths that they wouldn’t want to go back. But there is a principle here, isn’t there?

And the principle, in my mind, is one of fairness. Sure, people who got the jab and kept their jobs could understandably think that it’s unfair for the unvaccinated to be offered their jobs back.

Because there are many people who got vaccinated just to keep their job. And I can understand that they might be a bit peeved seeing someone who didn’t take one for the team, like they did, being welcomed back into the fold.

But we can’t look at it that way. I certainly thought that the no jab, no job approach was well and truly required at a certain point - back in the day when we didn’t have the vaccination rates we have today.

But that time has passed. And, come September 26, the mandates will generally be a thing of the past too. And I think anyone who lost their job because of the mandates, shouldn’t be punished any longer.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Well, it was as expected.

Yesterday we heard that 927 days since the Covid pandemic triggered extraordinary defensive measures here and around the world, the Government has decided, as the Prime Minister put it, to turn the page.

No more mandates, no more requirements for masks, except in health care facilities and aged care environments, no more traffic light settings. I think I'm happiest about the traffic light settings. They just seemed absurd.  

No more household contacts, having to isolate if a family member contracts Covid, although anyone who does test positive with Covid, will still have to isolate for seven days.

It makes sense for the majority of restrictions to be lifted. And it makes sense for those few that remain to stay.

I think what we've seen is a restoration of common sense and long may it prevail.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Nurses' Society Director David Willis joined Mike Hosking to discuss the dropping of vaccine mandates for health workers and how it will affect the industry.

LISTEN ABOVE

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.