We talk a lot about Australia, but New Zealand is just as bad.
The difference is that in Australia, people actually stand up and fight, so you have all of these videos of people getting ridden down by horses and beaten up and choked.
Kiwis on the other hand love “Mummy Horsey,” and will always do as she says, because they know she loves them too.
More than 18 months into the pandemic, New Zealand has announced its roadmap for a post-lockdown future – and says dropping restrictions hinges on the country hitting some of the world’s most ambitious vaccination rates.
Prime minister Jacinda Ardern on Friday announced that 90% of eligible New Zealanders needed to be fully vaccinated across each District Health Board (DHB) region before the whole country moves to a new “traffic light” system of much looser public health restrictions. The country has a growing outbreak of the Delta variant, and on Friday announced 129 new cases – a record high since the pandemic began.
“We cannot ask vaccinated people to stay home for ever. So now we need a new playbook to reflect a population protected from Covid,” Ardern said. She said the new system would provide “a future where we want to continue to protect people’s lives, but also to live our lives”.
When the 90% targets are reached, the country will switch to a traffic light system. Even at a “red” setting – the highest levels of restriction, designed to protect the health system from high transmission – businesses will be able to remain open and vaccinated people will be able to use services relatively freely. Those without vaccination certificates, however, will face serious limitations: they will be limited to takeaway food, smaller gatherings of up to 10 people, distance learning at universities, and not able to use “close contact” businesses like gyms, hairdressers or bars.
“Fully vaccinated people will be able to reconnect with family and friends, go to bars and restaurants and do the things they love with greater certainty and confidence. The framework also provides businesses greater certainty to plan and grow,” Ardern said.
“If you are still unvaccinated, not only will you be more at risk of catching Covid-19, but many of the freedoms others enjoy will be out of reach. No one wants that to happen but we need to minimise the threat of the virus, which is now mainly spreading amongst unvaccinated people.”
New Zealand has been constantly celebrated by the media as the ideal of coronavirus restrictions. They can talk about New Zealand and make clear that they want this really brutal and never before seen type of tyranny because, again, no one is fighting back against it, so it doesn’t look as brutal as it actually is.
It’s clear to me that the UK and US both want to implement this system.
In both countries, it would make sense why the governments don’t seem to care that popular support is collapsing. If you have a system of total authoritarian control, popular support is unnecessary.