When a single positive Covid test result was reported in Canberra, Australia, earlier this month, the city locked down for a week. New Zealand has gone one step further, with the reporting of one positive test resulting in the whole country being plunged into lockdown. BBC News has the story.
The case was detected in Auckland, which will be in lockdown for a week, while the rest of the country will be in lockdown for three days.
Authorities say they are working on the assumption that the new case was the Delta variant.
Just around 20% of its population has been fully vaccinated.
Coromandel, a coastal town where the infected person had visited, will be in lockdown for seven days too.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said the toughest “Level Four” rules were required – closing schools, offices and all businesses with only essential services remaining operational.
“I want to assure New Zealand that we have planned for this eventuality. Going hard and early has worked for us before,” she said.
The patient is a 58 year-old man, who is believed to have been infectious since last Thursday.
There are at least 23 potential sites of transmission.
There was reportedly a rush at supermarkets in Auckland, as locals anticipated a snap lockdown.
Officials said there was a need for strong response because of the fear of the Delta variant, and because there was no clear link between the new case and the border or quarantine facilities.
Worth reading in full.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
The article shows the futility of interventions in the spread of flu-like illness. A far bigger worry for transplant/immune-compromised patients is the resistant bacteria being created through chronic use of unregulated hand sanitizers.
my medic researcher wife is very worried about this. wont use the hand sanitisers or let the kids. says handwashing alone is good enough
Good old soap! (Who’d ‘ve thunk it?)
Agree, I haven’t use the rubbish for months
Hand sanitizer, that is.
Indeed, its not exactly new or novel is it?
They knew full well before they started fire hosing sanitiser about what would happen, this article is from 2018:
“In the early 2000s, hospitals across Australia began installing more hand-sanitizer dispensers in their rooms and hallways for staff, visitors and patients to use. Research showed these alcohol-based disinfectants helped battle staph infections in patients and certain kinds of drug-resistant bacteria. And rates of these infections went down.
But other infections didn’t drop when people started using the sanitizer stations. In fact, certain infections went up.
In particular, enterococcal infections — caused by bacteria that affect the digestive tract, bladder, heart and other parts of the body — started increasing.”
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/08/02/635017716/some-bacteria-are-becoming-more-tolerant-of-hand-sanitizers-study-finds?t=1611846494692&t=1612447906319
The link “fro elsewhere” to the ons site is giving a 404 error.
Looks like the URL was incomplete.
And excellent piece. Links a lot of threads of information on lockdowns and their effects together.
It makes a very strong case for no more lockdowns and why on earth vaccine passports have anything to do with solving the issues outlined here I have no idea. Unless it was never about a virus
“infections acquired in hospitals and care homes, when added together, account for a substantial majority of COVID-19 deaths”
NHS and PHE are really not fit for purpose
Lockdown just slows the gaining of immunity by the wider community that would then shield the more vulnerable. Imperial modelling suggests that lockdown causes more deaths than non-lockdown from covid – let alone the lockdown deaths
Add in schools and universities and you have about 100%. Hospitality has been hung out to dry.
Its been the case over recent years that unless their is a dire need, the last place to go if you want to stay healthy is a hospital. The covid numbers just show how this is even more true for respiratory illnesses.
This is not about a virus, never has been. Its about changing society to allow the resource constrained capitalism to take place under a biosecure fascist totalitarian regime. Many anglosphere countries are well on their way, but there are issues about splits in the US and Europe.
Re. Your second paragraph and the NWO. There’s a good piece on this in yesterdays Off-Guardian:
The New Normal (Phase 2)
https://off-guardian.org/2021/03/09/73943/
Underlying the fact that Covid is a nosocomial infection.
As highlighted on here and by Yeadon et al months ago.
The longer this farce progresses, the more right the Great Barrington Declaration’s proposals appear.
Worth noting that the only hospitals to get their Nosocomial infection rate down to statistical zero were those in Singapore last year, which proceeded on the assumption that Covid is primarily contact transferred through oro-foecal contamination, same as polio or Norovirus.
They went absolutely rabid on proper soap n water handwashing.
It worked – go figure as the USians say.
https://market-ticker.org/cgi-ticker/akcs-www?post=239747
The lesson one can draw is that neither GBD nor the official policy-which, after all, includes shielding, can work well. Shielding properly would need identification, effort and resources, all of which are being misdirected or squandered in a generalist approach. The age structure and vulnerability (ie co-morbities, obesity & diabetes) were known from Italy a year ago. The tragedy is that no lessons were learned then and few now.
Given the well-know BME propensity for diabetes and the significantly worse health of Asian elders, shielding here would mean deliberately breaking up the extended family. This would have to be done by compulsion-and good luck with that.
Although Prof. Whitty acknowledged that infections were slowing before lockdown he insists that opening up after May 17th (my birthday!) is a grave risk. He cannot have been looking at the US states which have reopened and can be compared to (often neighbouring) ones with stringent measures. Doubling down on an error is a very human mistake and it will cost us dear unless we end the obsession with lockdown. As the 2011/14 Influenza Prep. Plan outlined, a generalist approach cannot work. That we knew this is another tragedy and why however disheartening it can be ‘la lutta continua.’.
Does anyone know how I can locate the round up from previous days? It no longer seems to appear on the relevant days update?
Having A Laugh