Nikki Kaye has announced she is retiring from politics. I’m very happy for Nikki, but equally sad for National.

Nikki is one of my closest friends. We’ve been friends for around 20 years and often holidayed together. As a 28 year old she won Auckland Central off Labour – the only time in 90 years National has held the seat. She is one of the hardest working MPs and candidates I have known – her door knocking is legendary.

She went on to win Auckland Central four times, including beating Jacinda Ardern twice. She became National’s youngest ever female Minister and one of the youngest Ministers of Education.

Auckland Central will miss having her as their MP. She got involved in scores and scores of projects and delivered real results for an electorate that had been taken for granted.

Her cancer diagnosis in 2016 was a huge shock as she was so young and so fit and healthy. It was a stark reminder how cancer can strike anyone, and Nikki showed huge tenacity in fighting it.

She has spent more of her adult life inside Parliament than outside it, and so there is a lot to do outside politics. She’s already done the Coast to Coast three times, so I don’t know what her next big challenge is, but I’m sure she’ll succeed at it.

Stuff reports:

New National leader Judith Collins has stripped Michael Woodhouse of the health portfolio over his involvement in the COVID-19 leak.

On her first full day as leader Collins replaced Woodhouse with Shane Reti, and promoted Reti to the front bench. …

Speaking to reporters at 3pm, Collins said that Woodhouse had been given the portfolio of Pike River Recovery, and the economic portfolio of regional development, in addition to his associate finance role.

She said that she had spoken with Woodhouse about the leak, and that he had made a mistake, but she still had confidence in him. “He’s a top performer,” she said.

She had advised him that the right thing to do when he received the email from Boag was to not reply, and to tell the Health Minister immediately.

She said Reti was “delighted” to be moved to the front bench.

A well deserved promotion for Shane Reti, and politically also very useful as it allows National to move on the from fiasco over the health leaks.

The 2020 Jonesie Awards were held this morning at Parliament by the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union. The awards celebrate the best of the worst of government waste at the central and local level with a glitzy Oscars-style ceremony.

You can read the full nomination and winners list here.

Congratulations to all the winners – in particular Phil Stoner Twyford (yes that’s really his middle name) for taking home this year’s lifetime achievement Jonesie. Good on him for fronting up to accept it.

The Taxpayers’ Union’s work is made possible by its 57,000 subscribed members and supporters. To add your name, click here.

Bari Weiss writes:

But the lessons that ought to have followed the election—lessons about the importance of understanding other Americans, the necessity of resisting tribalism, and the centrality of the free exchange of ideas to a democratic society—have not been learned. Instead, a new consensus has emerged in the press, but perhaps especially at this paper: that truth isn’t a process of collective discovery, but an orthodoxy already known to an enlightened few whose job is to inform everyone else.

Twitter is not on the masthead of The New York Times. But Twitter has become its ultimate editor. As the ethics and mores of that platform have become those of the paper, the paper itself has increasingly become a kind of performance space. Stories are chosen and told in a way to satisfy the narrowest of audiences, rather than to allow a curious public to read about the world and then draw their own conclusions.I was always taught that journalists were charged with writing the first rough draft of history. Now, history itself is one more ephemeral thing molded to fit the needs of a predetermined narrative.

My own forays into Wrongthink have made me the subject of constant bullying by colleagues who disagree with my views. They have called me a Nazi and a racist; I have learned to brush off comments about how I’m “writing about the Jews again.” Several colleagues perceived to be friendly with me were badgered by coworkers. My work and my character are openly demeaned on company-wide Slack channels where masthead editors regularly weigh in. There, some coworkers insist I need to be rooted out if this company is to be a truly “inclusive” one, while others post ax emojis next to my name. Still other New York Times employees publicly smear me as a liar and a bigot on Twitter with no fear that harassing me will be met with appropriate action. They never are.

There are terms for all of this: unlawful discrimination, hostile work environment, and constructive discharge. I’m no legal expert. But I know that this is wrong. 

I do not understand how you have allowed this kind of behavior to go on inside your company in full view of the paper’s entire staff and the public. And I certainly can’t square how you and other Times leaders have stood by while simultaneously praising me in private for my courage. Showing up for work as a centrist at an American newspaper should not require bravery.

But it does.

A fascinating poll in Texas by the University of Texas at Tyler for the Dallas Morning News. The UTT poll normally has a small bias of 0.3% to Republicans.

Trump won Texas by 9% in 2016 but in this poll is trailing by 5%. They found:

• Biden 46%, Trump 41%
• 9% of Republicans in Texas will vote Biden
• Covid-19 approval ratings:
  • Local leaders: +39% net approval
  • Governor Abbott: +8% net approval
  • President Trump: -14% net approval

Texas has 38 electoral college votes, second only to California. On current polling Trump is behind in the 13 largest states.

112 days until the US election. Can Trump turn it around?

Newshub is reporting Judith Collins has been elected Leader of the National Party.

Game On!

UPDATE1: National has confirmed Judith has been elected.

UPDATE2: Gerry Brownlee has been elected Deputy

Two very experienced and effective MPs. This will excite a lot of National supporters and activists.

UPDATE3:

As a huge Lord of the Rings fan, I love this take:

The Taxpayers’ Union’s Jordan Williams and Neil Miller, sit down with political commentator and Stuff columnist Damian Grant discuss the runners and riders of the sudden National Party leadership race.

You can subscribe to Taxpayer Talk via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, iHeartRadio and all good podcast apps.

The tenures of 14 leaders of the National Party, in order:

1. Sidney Holland, 16 years, 298 days
2. Keith Holyoake 14 years, 140 days
3. Jim Bolger 11 years, 257 days
4. Robert Muldoon 10 years, 148 days
5. John Key 10 years, 15 days
6. Adam Hamilton 4 years, 24 days
7. Jenny Shipley 3 years, 304 days
8. Bill English 3 years, 97 days
9. Don Brash 3 years, 30 days
10. Jack Marshall 2 years, 147 days
11. Simon Bridges 2 years, 85 days
12. Jim McLay 1 year, 117 days
13. George Forbes 172 days
14. Todd Muller 53 days

I’m hoping the next leader has a tenure somewhere in the range of the top five!

You can vote below for who your preferred National Party leader is. The candidates listed are not necessarily candidates. This is just a fun poll to see where Kiwiblog readers lie.

The results will be posted tonight after the caucus meeting starts, so there can be no question of it influencing the results (not that it would anyway).

UPDATE: Over 4,000 votes cast and the results are:

1. Judith Collins 67%
2. Simon Bridges 12%
3. Nikki Kaye 6%
4. Mark Mitchell 6%
5. Gerry Brownlee 4%
6. Amy Adams 4%

No recount needed for this one!

The National caucus meets tonight to elect a new leader. I don’t know who is standing, but I will blog on candidates as they declare.

For each candidate I will do a blog post on the case for them, as I see it.

I assume Judith Collins will be a candidate. What is the case for Judith:

• Experienced. Has been an MP for 18 years, and a Minister for nine years
• Well-known: Doesn’t need to be introduced to the public
• Assured: Judith would be confident in taking on Ardern and Labour
• Economic credibility: former Minister of Revenue and Energy & Resources
• Strong media presence: Does weekly spots on the AM Show
• Strong brand: Labour are trying to say no one knows what National stands for now. People know what Judith stands for

As I said, I’ll do a case for any other candidates as they declare.

Todd Muller announced at 7.33 am:

I have taken time over the weekend to reflect on my experience over the last several weeks as Leader of the Opposition.

It has become clear to me that I am not the best person to be Leader of the Opposition and Leader of the New Zealand National Party at this critical time for New Zealand.

It is more important than ever that the New Zealand National Party has a leader who is comfortable in the role.

The role has taken a heavy toll on me personally, and on my family, and this has become untenable from a health perspective.

For that reason I will be stepping down as Leader effective immediately.

I intend to take some time out of the spotlight to spend with family and restore my energy before reconnecting with my community.

I look forward to continuing to serve as a loyal member of the National Party team and Member of Parliament for Bay of Plenty.

I will not be making any further comment.

Please respect the privacy of my family and me.

Poor bastard. It is such a tough and often unpleasant job. I wish Todd well. He is a great guy.

The Herald reports:

The family of a man shot dead two decades ago is taking a civil case against the police in the High Court at Wellington.

In 2000, Steven Wallace walked down Waitara’s main street using a golf club to smash shop windows, a taxi and then a patrol car with officers in it.

Wallace was shot dead by senior constable Keith Abbott, who in 2002 was acquitted of murder when the Wallace family took a private prosecution against him.

The 23-year-old’s cause of death, according to the Independent Police Conduct Authority’s subsequent report, was a fatal wound to his liver.

“[Doctors] confirmed that even if first aid had been rendered immediately after Steven was shot, he would not have survived.”

The family believes there were other tactical options available to the police, and has argued Wallace was deprived of the right to life.

The shooting of Wallace has been found to be justified by an internal Police review, by the IPCA and by the High Court.

The internal Police review is worth a read. Wallace:

• smashed 100 window panes with a golf club
• attacked an occupied taxi with a baseball bat
• Tried to run over a cyclist in his car
• attacked an occupied police car with a golf club
• was told to drop his weapons by the Police and specifically told they were armed
• advanced on a retreating police officer
• warned Wallace again they were armed
• ignored calls to talk
• ignored a warning shot in the air from the Police
• kept advancing on the officer who warned he would shoot him if he came any closer
• held the baseball bat above his head and told the officer he was going to harm him with it
• said “You fucking arsehole “I’m going to kill you”

And then the officer shot Wallace dead.

The family of Wallace of course mourn his loss. But they also harassed the family of the constable who shot him, until a court instructed them to stop harassing her.

It is very sad that Wallace died, but he is to blame, not the Police.

The Serious Fraud Office has announced:

The Serious Fraud Office has commenced an investigation in relation to donations made to the Labour Party in 2017.

This is very interesting. If I had to guess, I’d say the investigation was into Labour not naming people who paid tens of thousands of dollars for artworks as a donation to Labour.

And who ran these art auctions:

Wellington artist Karl Maughan provided Labour with two paintings for auction in the last year. He said he gave them to campaign staffer Barbara Ward, who works for Labour leader Jacinda Ardern.

If I am correct that this is what the SFO is investigating, then it will come down to whether Labour valued the artworks fairly. That determines who get listed as the donor.

Let’s say a painting went for $25,000. Now if the painting is worth $20,000 normally then the artist is deemed to have made a $20,000 donation and the bidder a $5,000 donation as they paid $25,000 for something worth $20,000.

And only donations over $15,000 get the identity published, so the person who paid $25,000 for it, has their identity hidden.

But what if the painting wasn’t really worth $20,000. Let’s say that is a nominal value but in reality it is only worth $7,000. Then the donor has made an effective donation of $18,000 and should have been disclosed.

And the story quoted gives us a clue that may be the case:

At the last Labour art auction, they sold three works by Mt Eden artist Stanley Palmer, from a numbered series of 20 prints of the end of the road at Karamea, on the west coast of the South Island.

Palmer believed the $20,000 paid for the three was what they were worth – but admitted they would usually have sold for around $2400.”They went for a lot more than I expected.” 

If they would normally only go for $2,400 then the donation value is $17,600.

So it will be a very interesting investigation, if I am correct in guessing this is the focus of it.

Dan Hannon writes:

Britain’s offer of residence rights to three million Hong Kong citizens has prompted Chinese threats of retaliation. What kind of retaliation, though, would be proportionate? Might China offer spaces to three million British citizens? I can think of one or two Maoist statue-smashers here who might want to take them up.

How odd that Beijing should see Britain’s visa policy as any of its business. The United Kingdom has always recognised that it has obligations to the people of Hong Kong. The basis of the 1984 accord was, essentially, that China could get the land as long as the people living on it kept, at least until 2047, the rights they enjoyed as British subjects. China has now flagrantly violated that deal, snuffing out political freedoms in Hong Kong and making it clear that the inhabitants of that territory will be treated like Uighurs or Tibetans – that is, as renegades to be brought to heel.

Britain’s response, in the circumstances, is remarkably modest. We have not aimed diplomatic or commercial sanctions at the Chinese. We have not taken any action against them at all. All we have done is to honour our promise to Hongkongers. If they cannot enjoy freedom under Chinese sovereignty, let them come and enjoy it under British sovereignty.

A great summing up. The best way the world can stand up this repressive move by China is to allow the people of Hong Kong to leave. To make China realise the economic successes of Hong Kong only work if there is political freedom to match the economic freedom.

The arrival of several hundred thousand enterprising and industrious Hongkongers (it is vanishingly unlikely that all three million will take up the offer) will enormously boost our economy. Conversely, their departure will impoverish China, which has done very well out of having a low-tax, low-regulation, high-wage entrepôt on its doorstep, blessed with secure property rights, global trading links, common law norms and judges who don’t take bribes.

I’d love to see New Zealand offer say 5,000 places to Hong Kong citizens, once Covid-19 is over.

Stuff reports:

The man convicted of the Christchurch mosque attacks will represent himself when he is sentenced next month. …

Justice Mander said the shooter’s choice to represent himself will not affect the sentencing, which would proceed on August 24 as planned.

The court would appoint standby counsel for the sentencing hearing, whose role is to represent the accused should he later choose to be legally represented.

The accused will be sentenced on 51 charges of murder, 40 charges of attempted murder and a charge of committing a terrorist act after he entered shock guilty pleas to all charges in March.

The sentencing is scheduled to start on August 24 and is expected to take three days.

I’m puzzled by how the debate over sentencing will take three days.

The sentence for murder is an automatic life sentence under s172(1) of the Crimes Act, unless it is manifestly unjust. There can be no debate a life sentence would be manifestly unjust.

So the only thing to decide is what the minimum period of imprisonment without parole is. The normal minimum is 10 years, but s104(1) of the Sentencing Act says it must be at least 17 years if the murder was committed as part of a terrorist act or the offender has been convicted of 2 or more counts or murder.

So the real issue before the court is a choice of:

• A life sentence with a minimum period of imprisonment between 17 and x years
• A life sentence without parole

The longest minimum period of imprisonment was for William Bell for murdering three people and attempting to murder a fourth. He got 30 years. So there can be no debate really that x must be at least 30 years as 51 murders is far more than three murders.

But really, I think the only feasible sentence is life without parole. S103(2A) states that “If the court that sentences an offender convicted of murder to imprisonment for life is satisfied that no minimum term of imprisonment would be sufficient to satisfy 1 or more of the purposes stated in subsection (2), the court may order that the offender serve the sentence without parole.”

The purposes above are accountability, denunciation, deterrence and protection.

If gunning down 51 people in an act of terrorism and wounding 40 others doesn’t qualify for the maximum available sentence, then what act possibly could? Would you have to nuke an entire city to get life without parole?

Parliament in 2010 legislated for life without parole to be available for the worst murders. A court that failed to impose it for these 51 murders would be flagrantly ignoring Parliament’s will in making this sentence available.

I don’t want his victims to have to worry that in 30+ years time they will have to track his parole status and make representations to the Parole Board about whether he should be let out. If he gets life without parole, then they can at least not have to think about him again, knowing he will never be released.

UPDATE: The three days for the hearing will not be primarily for arguments over the non parole period. There will be potentially 90+ victim statements to be heard from families members and those wounded.

Stuff reports:

Hundreds upon hundreds of babies are born each year in New Zealand with foetal alcohol syndrome, a devastating and incurable condition that can cause life-long problems.

It is transmitted during pregnancy when alcohol from the mother’s bloodstream reaches the developing foetus, and can cause heart defects, behavioural problems and intellectual disability.

The Ministry of Health says about 45,000 New Zealanders, from babies to adults may live with foetal alcohol spectrum disorder. The ministry’s estimate is 1800 affected births each year, while some researchers using overseas data, estimate that figure to be closer to 3000.

With increasing awareness around the effects of alcohol on unborn children, a push for mandatory labelling on alcohol warning about those dangers has been in play since the 1990s.

The notion that warning labels on alcohol will lead to fewer cases of foetal alcohol spectrum disorder is fanciful.

It relies on the following:

• The mother being genuinely unaware of the dangers of drinking when pregnant despite being told at every appointment with their lead maternity carer, and it being on brochures they will have received
• The mother purchases a bottle of booze, and as she raises it up to have a drink she sees the warning label and suddenly realises it is harmful, and decides not to drink the bottle she has just purchased

The sad reality is that most of the very small minority of mothers who drink significantly while pregnant just don’t care. It is not a matter of ignorance.

I don’t mean the mother who has a small glass of wine once or twice during pregnancy. I mean the mothers who drink to excess and their kids get FASD.

I’ve got no problems with pregnancy warning labels on alcohol. They are already quite common. I just think a belief they will change anything is fanciful.

Stuff reports:

“Covid-19 has revealed a serious and growing issue. New Zealanders who have paid high taxes for years are being laid-off and made redundant but finding they get little back in benefits. New Zealanders in genuine, short-term need also face the stigma associated with welfare created by long-term beneficiaries who have made it a lifestyle choice.”

ACT proposed income tax rates should remain unchanged but 0.55 per cent of the tax paid would be allocated to a ring-fenced employment insurance fund.

On the loss of employment, a taxpayer could claim 55 per cent of their average weekly earnings over the previous 52 (or fewer) weeks. The maximum yearly payable amount would be $60,000.

Insurance could only be claimed for one week for each five weeks the person has worked, up to a maximum of 26 weeks per claim. Someone who has worked continuously for only one year could claim up to 10 weeks’ employment insurance.

Once a recipient has used up their employment insurance entitlement, they can move to Jobseeker Support and Electronic Income Management would apply.

I like this. It doesn’t give more money to people who spend most of their life on the dole, but is generous to those who have been in gainful employment and through no fault of their own, lose their job.

Very powerful and effective new ad. 100 seconds of one of Reagan’s best speeches against visual images of America today and Trump.

Democrats could never run such an ad against Trump, but Republicans can.

Most New Zealanders look across the Pacific from a currently Covid free country to the US (and many other countries) where the virus seems to continue to grow and spread with horror but gratitude that you are spared many of the issues that come with trying to managing an ongoing pandemic.

It will not come as a shock to many regular readers of this blog to know that the media are misreporting the current COVID-19 spikes in a veritable orgy (pun intended) of what I sometimes refer to as pandemic porn. The states singled out for the most attention and MSM scorn are Republican run states like Florida, Texas, Tennessee and Arizona. Cases have been climbing just as dramatically in California but because Governor Gavin Newsome is a liberal media darling, he cops less criticism than Florida’s Ron de Santis, Texas’ Greg Abbott and Arizona’s Doug Ducey. That is but the first aspect of media misreporting of the virus as it stands right now in the US, the way GOP run states are covered versus Democrat run states. When New York was the world’s hot spot and when it was clear Gov. Mario Cuomo had deliberately sent elderly Covid positive patients from hospitals back to their regular nursing home beds only to infect 10,000’s and eventually to kill over 5,000, Cuomo was still the recipient of glowing media coverage for his informative press conferences simultaneously attempting to blame President Trump for New York’s woes.

To look at the other problems with reporting, we will need to dive deep into the statistics because it is how the media covers what is happening is where the major problems lie. What I am about to report on applies to all the major Republican states that are in the media firing line but I am going to focus on Arizona because Arizona’s Department of Health Services Covid-19 Dashboard has the most comprehensive publicly viewable data in an easy to digest format. I will end this essay with three general virus counting issues that are affecting all states but especially southern states.

The AZDHS Dashboard has 12 buttons of data to view. The media focus on 2 metrics: daily positive tests and ICU Beds with Covid to paint the picture of a runaway virus and are uninterested in diving deeper and understanding the publicly reported statistics. In their reporting they make 4 crucial errors:

A – The reasons for the numbers of positive cases exploding

There are 4 main reasons, but the media are only interested in one of these reasons. I list them in order of their contribution to the number of new positive tests with some backup to these assumptions:

1. ALL patients who are admitted to hospital are now tested for Covid REGARDLESS OF WHY THEY WERE ADMITTED. This is massively important because, during the Shelter-in-Place orders, all elective surgery was cancelled, and no one could visit hospitals for anything barring life or death emergencies so as to keep beds clear for a level of hospitalisations that never eventuated except for a few days in New York City. Once the lockdowns were lifted, hospitals scrambled to reschedule all the deferred elective procedures AND were hit with all kinds of admissions of patients with illnesses unrelated to Covid that people put off attending to due to the previous restrictions on admissions. Because the virus is far more prevalent in the community than the official positive test results show because so many people have the virus but have no symptoms, it is no surprise that a good number of these patients in hospital for something other than Covid are testing positive. A kiwi nurse friend told me that at her large hospital, the rate of asymptomatic infection of the non Covid patients testing positive in hospital is 80%! Look at the button that tracks Confirmed Covid-19 Cases Day by Day and compare it to the data under the button Hospital Covid-19 Specific Metrics and you will find that on average, 2/3rds of the daily positive numbers come from the positive tests arising from this surge of hospital admissions for things OTHER THAN COVID. The media are uninterested in this important nuance.
2. The huge numbers of young people who took to the streets day after day to protest over the killing of George Floyd and in favour of Black Lives Matter. This is a factor in the increase in numbers of positive tests in a number of cities.
3. The huge nationwide jump in the amount of testing because of more employers testing en mass, more sites for testing being made available and the fact that free testing is available. It doesn’t take a degree in advanced biochemistry to know that the more you test for something as widespread as a flu pandemic, the more you will find positive cases because you are now capturing a higher percentage of people who are infected but are asymptomatic. Check the numbers in the Laboratory Testing button and numbers have doubled since the time of the lockdown. The tail off in lab numbers just recently is due to more in-hospital tests that are processed in the hospital. This explains the discrepancy between the large daily test figure (as at writing over 17,000 were tested today Saturday July 11 versus the graph which shows only 8,000 on 8 July). The graphs tend to lag by 3 to 4 days as they only show what has been loaded from reports and it takes time for the true daily numbers to be properly populated.
4. More human interaction due to the lifting of the lockdowns. For sure the greater level of economic activity especially in the sunbelt Republican states that opened up more and earlier has contributed to higher numbers of positive tests but according to the MSM, it is the ONLY or the MAIN reason for the spikes when really it is a more minor contributor.

B – The hospitalisations for Covid are misreported

Another statistic that the media focus on is the ICU Beds in Use under the Hospital Metrics button. But read the description of that carefully, it includes “Positive or SUSPECTED Covid cases” so it covers people who doctors are allowed to add because they SUSPECT they MIGHT have Covid but have not tested positive … yet. In order to understand who has been admitted to hospital strictly for Covid, you have to go to the Hospitalization button and that tells a whole different story: nowhere near the same numbers AND on a downward trend! The media are uninterested in that figure because it doesn’t fit the narrative of the hospital system being swamped with Covid patients because Republican governors irresponsibly lifted their lockdowns.

Another way to track the severity of the caseload right now is to look at the Ventilator Intubation rate – this is a more reliable figure than straight ventilator use as ventilators are used for a variety of respiratory issues in the hospital most notably emergency asthma admissions. Intubation is the method of ventilator use most commonly associated with severe Covid patients. When you look at those statistics, you see a flat line of usage which does NOT confirm any massive spike in dangerous cases at the same time as the numbers of positive cases has spiked – again, all you hear is the sound of crickets from the media on this statistic.

C – ICU usage is not differentiated

If you look at the graph on the page Hospital Bed Usage and Availability under the tab ICU Bed Usage and Availability, the media focus in on the fact that ICU Beds are near 90% capacity and they look at the steady rise in this percentage since the state opened up but this page does not differentiate between an ICU bed used for a Covid patient who is in ICU BECAUSE OF COVID versus a patient in ICU for some other reason but who has tested positive for Covid or patients in ICU who have tested negative for Covid. The raw rise in ICU bed usage is in effect a meaningless statistic without the context that before, only Covid patients were in ICUs and now all kinds of other patients are there as well, context the media are uninterested in providing.

D – The death rates are relatively stable despite massive explosion in positive cases

In the case of Florida, it is essentially a flat line of deaths despite the explosion in positive cases. Ditto in California. In Arizona it is a very gentle up-slope. Deaths in AZ are only sporadically reported on the weekend leading to huge reports on Mondays and Tuesdays as the DHS staff catch up which explains the volatility in the daily numbers. Texas has a slightly steeper curve up and Georgia, the state that opened first and faced the earliest hostile media scrutiny, has a sharp downward slope in its death rate. Georgia now is no longer talked about because this good news must be hidden.

There are three other ways that the nationwide coronavirus figures are inflated, again things the media rarely mention.

1 – People who die of other ailments but test positive for Covid either during their existing illness or after their death, are counted as a Covid 19 death even though they only died WITH Covid not OF Covid. Dr Deborah Birx, the Response Coordinator for the Whitehouse Coronavirus Taskforce, went on the record as stating that the CDC’s official death figures were inflated by 25%. Since she made that comment, the CDC again amended it’s guidelines to allow for clinicians to list a death as Covid even without a confirming positive test if they but SUSPECTED that Covid might be involved. If you add this expansive refining of the definition to the last one, it is not a stretch to assume that the US wide coronavirus deaths are exaggerated by a factor of fully one third which would put the national deaths at about 90,000 or slightly above a bad regular influenza season’s death rate in the US.

2 – If you analyze county positive test rates and even specific ZIP code breakdowns of recent positive cases, you will find major spikes in those areas with hospitals near the Mexican border due to increasing numbers of illegal border crossings of Covid infected Mexicans who cannot get help in Mexico’s overloaded health system. This is true for south San Diego CA, Yuma and Nogales, AZ and El Paso, Laredo and Brownsville, TX. This is not a particularly politically correct thing to report hence why little mention is made in MSM reporting.

3 – It is unknown as to how widespread this situation is but because tests are free, people are having multiple tests but results are published by raw testing numbers rather than by individuals so there is no way to determine what percentage of tests figures have some degree of inflation due to multiple testing.

The bottom line is that pandemics play out pretty much the same every time. They continue to spread until they run out of hosts that are not immune or vaccinated. The stated purpose of lockdowns in almost all countries was to flatten the curve so as to not overwhelm hospital systems. Almost all first world countries (with the exception of northern Italy, parts of Spain and for a time in NYC) achieved this goal. So, when you flatten the curve, the total number of cases remains the same, all you have done is distribute the cases over a longer period of time and that is exactly what we are seeing the US right now. Because of what we know about this virus and who is most vulnerable, the growth in positive tests no longer poses the same danger to society as it did back in March when lockdowns began. Positive cases have exploded but deaths and Covid specific ICU admissions have not because:

• The elderly and infirm are better protected
• Many jurisdictions now have far better protection protocols for residential care facilities, a source of 50% of deaths
• Treatments for the virus are more effective due to known successful early interventions leading to shorter hospital stays, fewer intubations as a percentage of cases and thus fewer fatalities
• The age profile of those now testing positive has plummeted from predominantly those over 70 to people in their 20’s and 30’s (as you’d expect with bars and restaurants opening and the widespread protests) and in these age groups, a lower percentage even have symptoms, the symptoms are less severe and fewer die or are hospitalized.

Almost all the media are uninterested in reporting those trends nor are they interested in properly analyzing the statistics focusing only on the dramatic increase in positive tests and people in hospital. This is agenda driven journalism with a deadly twist because inducing needless panic over this pandemic has serious economic, health and well-being consequences.

Finally, a word about NZ. Recent highly publicised breaches of the NZ quarantine regime and the explosion of cases in Victoria as a consequence of even more serious breaches there, highlights that the only way NZ can avoid what is happening in the US and other countries is to keep its border hermetically sealed until all the country is vaccinated. Talk of Trans-Tasman and Pacific bubbles to somewhat assist the ailing travel industry was blown out of the water by the various Health Department mismanagements of the quarantine protocols. It is easy to look at the US with a sense of comfort and unified achievement of the current situation in NZ but it has and will come at an enormous economic cost and, as the residents of Melbourne have found out, if you are wedded to an elimination rather than a containment strategy, a serious breach means another total lockdown re-devastating the economy.

Newshub reports:

A High Court judge is questioning the legality of the Government’s ban on compassionate exemptions from managed isolation – and warned them to fix it.

It follows a case of a returning Kiwi who challenged the ban, but tragically never got to say goodbye to his father, who died before he got his day in court.

Graeme Hattie returned from London and was going to sit out the 14-day quarantine to see his dying father. …

Auckland High Court was ready to host the hearing this week, but sadly Hattie’s father died overnight. Hattie therefore withdrew his court action. 

However Justice Muir has issued a warning to the Government in a note.

“The extent the Director-General purports to have currently suspended all compassionate leave from managed isolation… would appear to be inconsistent with proper exercise of discretion in [the order],” he said.

“There appears to be an urgent need for the Director-General to address the terms of the current [purported] blanket suspension.” 

Hattie’s lawyer went a step further, saying the ban on compassion exemption was “illegal”.

“They have an obligation, at law, to consider the particular circumstances of each applicant who applies for compassionate leave. They cannot refuse them all on a blanket basis. That is illegal,” Foote said.

This is a near repeat of the earlier case, which they lost. The Government doesn’t seem to realise that a press release can’t trump the law. If they really want to end compassionate and exceptional waivers, they need to change the law which allows them.