Media Proclaiming 'Elimination Of Elimination' Are Attempting To Ignore / Rewrite Reality

 Mid-way through the week, Chris Hipkins [i.e. the Covid-19 Response Minister] said this:

"We are still doing this ... we are still pursuing elimination, it is still the right thing for New Zealand.

We are of course looking forward to the future - it won't always be this way. So, my request of people is just hold your nerve, hold on."

Hold your nerve. Still pursuing Elimination. Still the right thing for New Zealand.

All pretty straight-forward stuff. And stated quite directly, some days aforehand. So why do I find this comment-worthy?

Because even after Hipkins had directly said we were still engaged in Elimination - we had voices in the media proclaiming the exact opposite. In the case of Mike Hosking, actively attempting to celebrate an alleged 'end' to Elimination and seemingly suggesting that there'd been some manner of official Government 'admittance' of 'defeat'.

So what's happening here? Evidently, the same thing that has repeatedly manifested in certain other democracies over the past few years - a moment wherein the media (or at least, certain portions of same) are in their own little 'bubble' and have effectively wound up talking right past both the facts and much of their own actual audience.

Some of these guys out there in the commentariat have decided that Elimination's got to go - and that, in fact, Elimination has somehow already gone. Even despite vocal and repeated statements to the contrary from the Government, and widespread (indeed, I'd suggest actively overwhelming) support for Elimination in the vast majority of the New Zealand public.

So instead of reporting on reality, they've chosen to endeavour to quite literally 'rewrite' it - proclaiming an Elimination of Elimination as an effort at brow-beating all the rest of us into seeing the premature end to the policy as something of an already-decided-upon fait accompli.

Now I mentioned occurrences in other democracies earlier, because that's somewhat what this reminds me of. Snooty journalists or self-anointed 'opinion-shapers' declaring that there was no way Brexit could win or Hillary Clinton lose - because it didn't fit into their own personal preferences and as it turned out (mis)perceptions as to reality. They were so used to their incipient words being reality that it came as quite a shock to find out that neither the facts nor the people they proclaimed they spoke for actually shared their view.

To be fair and sure, I have little doubt that it's not simply a matter of journalists or 'commentators' interviewing their own keyboards. There's a definite enthusiasm out there in certain portions of the business community in particular for Elimination to be itself Suppressed - and a general weakening of our Covid-19 response overall.

There's also a small but shouty sector of political and talkback opinion (and looking at the current leadership of the National Party, it's increasingly difficult to meaningfully distinguish the two in practice) which seemingly demands likewise. And never mind what the science (or, for that matter - indeed, especially for that matter - what the Government) says.

Yet I am struggling to think, offhand, of a previous occurrence in our politics and media wherein there's so much abject and outright 'denialism' of clearly visible and easily checkable reality - namely, the insistence that, against all appearances and substances to the contrary, the Government is to have 'abandoned' Elimination.

Then again, and with perhaps deference to a compulsion associated with a seeming personality trait of a few of these voices ... even a mirror shall not show you your own face if you are determined not to see it.

A Point On Public Health Measures In A Crisis - Whether Meth Addiction Or Covid Response

At present, it seems that the virus has moved into the Underworld - with several gangs reporting cases in the past week or so.

This is a different kind of challenge from a public health point of view - because it's a different kind of environment, with people who are more effectively reached with different approaches than the conventional.

Hence why as soon as that Mongrel Mob gang pad out South turned out to be a Covid-19 hot-spot, the Ministry of Health didn't just go "oh, well we'll pick them up with the testing facility elsewhere in the community and regular contact tracing".

Rather, as I recall, a pop-up testing facility was deployed near their front gate, and specialist liaison-work was undertaken with the gang to actually do contact-tracing for the movements of the Mobsters concerned.

I'm given to understand that some elements of this approach are also being employed with the more recent Black Power and Hells Angels situations.

Now why is this rather useful to note? Because it demonstrates that when you're in an epidemic - a public health emergency - you can get hung up about who the Government "shouldn't" be working with ... or you can observe that working with some groups and individuals, whatever their reputation, may actually be rather important for the public health outcome's success.

The Government wound up with a lot of malaise a few months ago when it turned out that it had approved Proceeds of Crime money to fund a certain meth-rehab programme. The purported degree of connection to the Mongrel Mob was, of course, breathlessly shouted by voices keen to pre-emptively declare the whole thing a fiasco - because, even leaving aside how limited it actually was, the core message from the opposition appeared to be "you can't involve gangs in public health provision - even where the people who actually need to be reached for the public health provision are gang-members".

Would those who decried thus apply similar logic to the Ministry of Health taking a purpose-based and bespoke approach to Covid-19 control measures outside that gang-pad eight days ago?

Or do we recognize that rolling out intervention-strategies designed to protect all of us can occasionally mean working with some of us in particular ways as best befits their circumstances and all of our collective needs.

Why I'm OK With NZ Not Being In New Anglo Alliance

Look, I'm no fan of the PRC - but I can't help but recall how NZ's previous entanglement in ANZUS worked out.

That is to say - we got pressured into fighting in Vietnam, and then left high and dry over the Rainbow Warrior attack because "France is more important than you".

I'm not necessarily opposed to a good working relationship with the Americans (or the UK, or the Australians) - in fact, quite the contrary, I'm very much in favour of diversifying both our trade and diplomatic links precisely to avoid the consequences of National's over-egging of the Chinese-held basket.

It's also definitely the case that we have good history together with all three powers in both multilateral and bilateral terms.

But at the same time, we've seen some pretty unimpressive behavior from all three over the past few decades - and I remain to be convinced that being part of a military alliance with them would avoid being tangled up with more of the same.

I'm not even talking about Australia's attitude toward sending us 501 and/or ISIS-linked Australians unannounced. I was more thinking about things like the Americans, circa 2003, attempting to put the economic screws on us in order to compel us to join the so-called 'Coalition of the Willing' that was to undertake their illegal invasion of Iraq.

We've also seen, just this past year, how even through the relatively loose intelligence sharing network that is the Five Eyes, considerable pressure can seemingly be put upon New Zealand to march in absolute lock-step with these other countries .. even where our policy, preferences, and principles don't exactly agree.

It wasn't enough for New Zealand to issue separate declamations of purported PRC conduct - we had to sign up to the 'collective' statement or risk the wroth of foreigners up in arms about us being "New Xi-land". And who knows what was waved about behind the scenes.

New Zealand's foreign policy independence has been a hard-won thing. Both in terms of external factors - yet also, importantly, in terms of convincing our own population that it's actually a worthwhile thing to have. Once upon a time, after all, "Where She Goes, We Go" was the watchword. And even after we were betrayed by Britain some two decades later, people here still didn't quite get the message that really ... we're on our own.

It took, as I say, the tangible and irrefutable demonstration of these things over several decades to really get most New Zealanders on board with the notion that NZ foreign policy being run in New Zealand's interests rather than Washington's or London's or even Canberra's ... was the ideal way for us to go.

It's great that we've got improving relations with the US and UK - and I'm vaguely hopeful that maybe, just maybe, those long-dangled trade-deals with each of those spheres might finally start to eventuate ... eventually ...

But I do resolutely believe that it's possible for us to continue to strengthen our friendships with them without tying ourselves to their ankles as the proverbial third (or in this case, fourth) wheel in a three-legged race which occasionally seems to lurch cliffward with reckless aplomb.

As for the Australians, as we so often like to say on both sides of the Tasman - "we're family". Even if it occasionally feels like they reckon us to be rather more distant cousins than close-relations. 

Having a positive and co-operative regard for each others' interests does not mean we have to be bound into approving of every single thing they might so happen to do.

In terms of our foreign policy - I genuinely believe that we're far better served by pursuing just exactly that: our foreign policy, not someone else's.

We recognize that some certain states are both something to be wary of - and an opportunity for useful engagement. As, funnily enough, do the Australians when they are being honest (seriously - check out the sheer size of their trade with China if you don't believe me).

And we also recognize that merely because one is powerful does not necessarily make one right or wise - as proven, again, via the Americans' (and UK's and Australians') previous enthusiasm for the invasion of Iraq.

By remaining outside the formal 'tent' of AUKUS (a name which, I noted earlier, is apparently phonetically equivalent to 'Orcus' - perhaps ominously for a figure of Oaths, Pacts, and the Nether Regions) we do not lose the ability to co-operate and engage productively with those who are inside said tent where it would clearly be both principled and of use to do so.

We don't stop being friends (and/or family) with various of these polities simply because we've not chosen to join the group-marriage.

It simply means - we don't give up our freedom to do the right thing as we perceive it, when we perceive it to be so.

A situation and scenario wherein, both in our own terms and in broader terms than ours, I do suspect that New Zealand's critical judgement has proven rather more reliable than certain other powers of far greater heft from time to time.

The Re-Start Of History: 9/11 20 Years On

Something that comes up on the anniversary of 9/11 is that question: "where were you when...".

I find that slightly remarkable because the previous "Where were you when..." question for a previous generation - that of our parents - was "Where were you when the Moon Landing ..."

Now, think about that for a minute. Each of these were, in essence, epochal-transition points. Critical, symbolic junctures wherein something which had been bubbling beneath the surface of the preceding few years, burst with irrepressible force into the mainstream and left our realities forever fundamentally changed as a result.

Except wherein one ushered in the 'Space Age' in full force - a seeming surmounting of mankind's potential to really 'rise above and beyond' in the most literal possible sense through the transformative energies of human scientific aspiration and human indomitable will ...

Well, 9/11 was, of course, a far darker mirror image. There, as somebody put it, it was willpower married with low-tech and on the part of - ostensibly - a small-ish group of non-state actors against a superpower.

Quite the opposite to the Moon Landing - which was, after all, a superpower acting somewhere between 'against another superpower' in the context of the space-race .. but also, in its better moments and in its better rhetoric, acting not 'against' anybody. "We came in peace for all mankind", indeed.

9/11 meanwhile - it was a "low-budget, high-concept attack."

It precipitated a "high-budget, low-concept response."

(and that duality observation is also not mine but rather lifted from somebody's friend via twitter)

If the Moon Landing precipitated a resurrection of that feeling of surety in the West ... 9/11 precipitated a serious helter-skelter away from anything like the same in the West in fairly direct reflection.

I recall where I was that Wednesday morning. Mum was driving me to school (I was 11), we had the radio on in the car as we usually would, and there was a New Zealander at the UN being interviewed just ... describing events as he saw them and as they were happening. We pulled up at my intermediate, and whereas usually I'd have gotten out with my violin to head across for orchestra practice at the neighbouring Auckland College of Education, as it was then, and Mum would have driven off to continue on her way to work ... that morning, we just sat there, listening. It was all you could do.

The picture which emerged was unclear. Hardly even really a picture. Just some clearly worried guy on the other side of the globe talking about what little he knew through his own eyes to his countrymen down here on the bottom of the world. Some shapes emerged through this mist, sure - but it was clear far bigger forces were at play than could be congealed through a single interview, a single sitting, especially as they were still then 'in motion'.

In the hours and days to come, some harder perceptions - I hesitate to state 'facts' at that early juncture - began to emerge. I recall discussion in class about some guy named Osama bin Laden. I recall pretty immediate - like, same day - realization that War Was Coming.

I also recall, somewhat to my amusement now, a student teacher then working  with our class printing out some prophecy purportedly by Nostradamus talking about ... well, the events of 9/11 and spooking us a bit about that. I say "spooking", but when you're 11 it's not quite the right emotion - it's a sparking of curiosity in different direction. I managed to track down a book of Nostradamus' prophecies in our home library after school and was rather ... disappointed at the dysjunction.

The Ending of Eras rarely coincides precisely with some human-imposed calendrical dating system. And those who live through them are rarely possessed of the clarity that that is what is occurring - at least, not until the rear-view mirror is far enough away from the events in question to invoke some measure of clarity through retrospectives en-aided and availed through temporal distance.

I don't know that Hunter S. Thompson actually said that the Sixties came to an end with the riots in 1968 at that year's Democratic National Convention in Chicago (certainly, he explicitly posited the Ali vs Frazier fight in 1971 in such terms), but between that and how he described the Rolling Stones concert at Altamont in December of 1969 - "where the sharks finally came home to roost" - we have just such an epochal-transiting event.

A place where, to quote Thompson again, we can perceive a "high-water mark - that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.”

Such it was, I suspect, for The Nineties - and the vibe of penchant promise for what the New Millennium and Y2K excitement-as-an-ethos was meant to mean.

Francis Fukuyama's "End of History" concept is often mis-invoked by those looking for an easy point-score. He didn't mean that 'history' in the sense of noteworthy events was at a permanent ending following the cessation of overt hostilities in the Cold War and the seeming triumph of the West over its major 'competitor.

However, his central thesis that the Hegelian procession of history was at an end, and Liberal Democracy had 'won' ... well, those planes going into those towers most certainly marked the 'Wave of History' breaking most messily upon New York, upon America and in a way the Liberal West itself.

And what rolled out with the tide was a faux-'Innocence' (much talked about, very rarely actually demonstrated prior to this point), various commitments to Liberty in any but the rhetorical sense, as well as the comfortable satiation of having been "the only game in town" and untouchable as the summation of a Whiggian conception of history.

In its place?

Not just the specter of Terrorism (which was, after all, not at all a new phenomenon) - but of Terror Laws. Not just armed Interventions - humanitarian or otherwise in other countries (again, not at all a new phenomenon ... the USSR had been intervened in Afghanistan only twelve years before) - but a seeming restoration of the kinds of ...  blatantly self-interested neo-colonial conquests as applies the War in Iraq which seemed more a relic of the 1800s than the 1980s.

Speaking of the 1980s - if that was 'Morning In America' (and, via extension, for the West overarching), per Ronald Reagan's campaign rhetoric upon the subject as of 1979 ... then the 1990s were its noon-day Zenith and the early 00s , the so-called "Noughties" (an interesting pun in light of the flagrant disregard for international law which eventuated at this point - the flagrancy rather than the disregard being the truly novel feature) a sort of premature Twilight.

Yet what blotted things out was not, I do not think, clouds of ash and debris from a financial center burning one mid-week morning in New York. But rather, the human actions, the state-level actions, undertaken in - not always unnecessary - trenchant response.

Just prior to the outbreak of the First World War, then-British Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, uttered the immortal words in succinct summation of the situation:

"The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our life-time."

That chilly morning in mid-September, 2001, which everybody seemingly recalls where they were upon ... we witnessed something similar, I think.

And as the ensuing events over the next twenty years have demonstrated - in that dark, it's back to Business as Usual and History 'Pon The March.

Messy, Bloody, Confused, Telos-Less History.

Which had never truly gone away. Even despite our comforting pretentious delusions to the contrary.  

Why Israel Demonstrates That Fortress New Zealand Must Stand Strong

 

[image/information source: Reuters Covid-19 tracker]

Over the past few months, I've heard multiple people pushing Israel as a model for where they want New Zealand to go - big vaccination campaign, followed by prominent rollback for lockdown and other restrictions, getting back toward Old Normal relatively swiftly.

There's no denying that Israel was pretty impressive in its efforts to get vaccines, and get vaccines into its citizenry - that's partially how it secured the access it did, by agreeing to be a 'human trial' of sorts.

However, with nearly 70% of their population vaccinated ... this is what their situation looks like at present. Daily new infections are significantly *up*. Now, you'll be told "oh yeah, that's now what we expect .. so stop focusing on the daily new infections - hospitalizations and deaths will tell a different story!"

So handily ... daily deaths are on the right. They're down, sure. But still *well* into the double-digits (55 yesterday, for instance). And both infections and deaths have taken a slight dip in response to Israel *rolling back out* various restrictions.

Personally, I'm looking forward to the end of Lockdown here - however, that's something made possible by an Elimination strategy which has proven its effectiveness time and time again.

It isn't something guaranteed by vaccination - although vaccination is still very useful and to be encouraged as an additional firebreak for if and when something goes awry at the border.

If we HAD adopted "the Israeli model", and were as well vaccinated as they are - we'd not be living as freely as we have been for most of the past year, nor as freely as we're going to be in a few weeks' time.

And the same columnists currently demanding that we imitate New South Wales or wherever, would be baying for the blood of our Government, claiming that they'd personally been responsible for the deaths of several dozen people plus yesterday alone.

Permanent sealing off of New Zealand from the rest of the world isn't what I'm advocating for here - although honestly, the more one sees of how dire things are out there, the less unappealing an option it would appear to be, relatively speaking.

But while we wait for science to come up with better and more enduring solutions than those presently available to us ... I think that Fortress New Zealand must continue to stand.

It is, seemingly, an approach which continues to be vindicated on a day-in day-out basis.

Regardless of what certain talking-heads overseas desperate for us to descend down to their level of failure may so happen to shriek in our general direction. 

NZ Herald Poll On Pursuing 'Elimination Til Vaccination' Is Thin End Of 'Learn To Live With It' Wedge

 

Yesterday's Herald included the above polling figures, pertaining to what proportion of Kiwis want to do what about the virus from here on out. Forty six percent in favour of ongoing Elimination, 39% in favour of Elimination, until such time as we hit a seventy percent of the population vaccination rate, and thirteen percent wanting to 'learn to live' with Covid-19. Presumably not personally.

Now, this is interesting, because it suggests that the "learn to live with it" vote is a lot smaller than you'd be forgiven for thinking. But also that a huge quotient of effort which had formerly been going into trying to push that benighted position, will now go into attempting to sway as many people as possible from Elimination through to Elimination Til 70%.

Except here's the thing. 70% is a completely arbitrary number. The only relevancy it has to New Zealand is that it's come off Scott Morrison's teleprompter ... and from there somehow downloaded itself into certain right-wing brains as a talking point. I don't even think it's really supported by Australia's modelling - much less our own domestically generated modelling for where Herd Immunity thresholds (or nearabouts, in a Delta environment especially) actually lie (a figure in the high 90% range).

The Australian model being embraced at the Federal level is also often misunderstood. It's not built on 'live with the virus' in a lasseiz-faire sense once the population is 70% or even 80% vaccinated - instead, it's built on using contact tracing and ring-fencing of outbreaks so they can't grow to overwhelming size and break-through infect significant numbers of vaccinated people.

Therefore, as I understand it, the Doherty Institute's model is effectively built around having virus presence in the community already at a functionally near-eliminated level to begin with - so that contact tracing and containment can actually be done within the 'breathing space' thusly provided.

The trouble with this is obvious, and doesn't even require looking at NSW to see. We had one case of Delta ... which then became very swiftly, half way to a thousand cases of Delta. Including via 'breakthrough infections'. All within a matter of days.

It's just simply not viable to contact-trace that scale of spread even with most of the population vaccinated; so effectively you're left hoping that any and all outbreaks become very small ones by the time they're detected and can be fully ringfenced .. without "elimination".

So what are we seeing here instead?

Simple. The beginning maneuvers of an effort to affix an end to Elimination to a pretty swiftly attained goal - 70% vaccination; no doubt to be followed-up with a repeated bombardment of claims that this was 'always' what the plan was 'supposed to be'.

The same interests which were pushing for "learn to live with the virus" and "COME ON, OPEN UP THE TRAVEL BUBBLE! YESTERDAY!" are very concerned about how popular Elimination has proven, and shall continue to prove on into the future.

So they are going to do exactly what they did with both of those (especially the Travel Bubble incessant whining demands) - try and manufacture an entirely artificial groundswell of support for changing course from something which actually works and has a broad consensus of Kiwis behind it ... to something that'll prove a near stick of ACME Dynamite held fizzing in all of our collective hand. 

A hand which, of course, shall be found to be the Government of the day's, rather than the greasy palm of whichever shrill voices attempted to cajole them into it. Because that's how these sorts of things work, apparently. 

Now, as it happens, we've been both down this road and around this block, before. 

To utilize a case-study in miniature, the Herald about a year ago this week ran a piece declaring that Auckland was "divided" over our then (second) Lockdown to deal with the August cluster. 

It was a curious choice of phrasing and of framing. Why? 

Well, here's what I wrote at the time - 

"So here's something strange.

The Herald reports that Auckland is seriously "divided" over the extension of Level 3 lockdown last week. You might be forgiven for thinking that this meant somewhere around a fifty fifty split of opinion on the matter.

Here's the actual split:

75% of Aucklanders thought that the extension of lockdown was "appropriate". This was made up of 56% who were simply fine with the extension - and a further 19% who wanted the lockdown to go longer.

Meanwhile, that 25% of opponents was made up of 14% for a shorter lockdown, and 9% for the lockdown shouldn't have been initiated at all.

That's three-to-one support for the lockdown. And yet somehow this is a serious degree of "division".

Meanwhile, New Zealanders overall supported the most recent Lockdown by a ratio of more than four to one - 62% in favour of the lockdown we had, 19% in favour of an even further extended lockdown, 10% for a shorter lockdown, and only 6% for no lockdown at all.

Technically a 3-1 majority for Lockdown means "divided" , sure - as does a 4-1 majority.

But it sure does sound rather different when you phrase it like that, frame it like that, rather than OVERWHELMING MAJORITY SUPPORTS THE GOVERNMENT'S COVID-19 MANAGEMENT"

I'm frankly almost surprised, in this light, that they didn't try and present yesterday's polling as showing New Zealand was "divided" over whether to persist with the Elimination strategy. They probably - prudently - sensed that they'd be playing to the 13% with that one if they had. 

However, I suspect that with time - there'll be a steady shifting of emphases. Things shall go from talking about x percentage of New Zealanders supporting Elimination until y percentage of vaccination (or other arbitrary measure - including a date, perhaps), through to simply speaking of x percentage of New Zealanders wanting to 'open up' and abandon Elimination once y percentage of vaccinations is hit. And never mind whether it's an epidemiologically sound number or other such considerations.

A shrill, staccato drum-beat shall crescendo out across the airwaves, the newspaper column-inches, etc. etc. demanding not a debate, but a defeat - and an entirely unnecessary one - for our successful (thus far, and subject to current exigencies) Elimination Strategy.

No doubt considerably emboldened by Victoria seemingly joining New South Wales in edging toward throwing up hands in semi-surrender on that front (and never mind those other Australian states that have declared their resolute intent to do the opposite, having successfully eliminated Delta themselves already - to the point the Australian Federal Government is now threatening to withhold funding from them if they don't get with Morrison's programme of enforced reopening). 

We are going to be escalatingly bombarded with mask-wearing hot-air from self-appointed experts expressing their boredness at having to stay at home vacuuming their Ferrari when they could be sunning it up in the tropics somewhere. 

Will it make any difference? Maybe. After all, 'manufactured consent' is something our media has become quite adroit at over the years - albeit often through simply applying direct pressure on the Government rather than, as has more traditionally been the case, influencing the people at large out there in the polis to do so. 

But I think that it may play out more like the situation perhaps around a year and a half ago - wherein the voices that were so eager to sneer at taking something allegedly no more serious than the flu, quietly shut up as time passed on and more and more reports came in from friends and whanau overseas as to what conditions over there really were like in reality.

If you've noticed, we're also being buttered with a steady diet of material pertaining to "Life Normal Returns" stories from elsewhere in the world - occasionally, to be fair and sure, with small-print rejoinders about how yes, there is a rather notable death-rate 'tax' attached to this eminently faux 'normalcy'. 

We are eminently lucky here in New Zealand - and by 'lucky', I also mean we chose well (broadly speaking). 

Even though we are currently in Lockdown, we have been remarkably successful with our ongoing Covid-19 control measures precisely because we have resolutely committed to Elimination in the past.

This has afforded us something which other countries most dearly lack - i) perspective, and ii) the ability to choose. 

We've been able to take a more measured approach, seeing what other countries are doing and how things are going for them - the perspective; something which requires time in order to be useful, to see how things properly play out. And then choose what we are going to do, coloured by those experiments undertaken at the cost of other countries and contexts elsewhere on the globe. 

Attempting to mad-dash toward the elimination of Elimination simply because Australia's doing it, or because Boris Johnson's declared his umpteenth "Freedom Day" amidst "bodies pile[d] high" - that is not taking advantage of our prospective situation. And given that various countries like Israel and Iceland with relatively high vaccination rates have then had to move back toward more intrusive and restrictive measures due to unforeseen developments with the virus ... I again state it plainly that there is little to be gained and much to be placed at risk by 'go hard go early' as applies rolling back (rather than rolling out) our protections. 

Going off the past year and a half's dominant experience - we can easily afford to take more time, ensure that what we're doing really is the right course of action ... and right for US rather than certain members of the commentariat or overseas climes that long to see us fail precisely because it'll make them feel more vindicated in never having really tried at all to begin with.

We can't easily afford to do anything else. 

Keep that in mind the next time you see a columnist filling up their inches with shoveyness about how we ought be more like New South Wales or wherever. 

You might live longer.