Chief Stipe

The reality is that both could have afforded to pay for themselves for a period of time. Brodie would have got someone to feed the cat. Instead we left the door open WHILE we sorted our border shyte out.

Something else I'd do after this mess is over is get rid of the Ministry of Health. There is $230m a year and a 1,000 staff that you can handover to the DHB's. Each ICU bed costs $5,500/day so there's another 114 ICU beds.

Yeah I talked to a bus driver late last week. She had just got out of quarantine in Auckland after travelling back from England. Her and her family had been put up in a hotel with lots of others. NONE of them were tested for Covid-19 because they didn't have symptoms! We knew by then that a lot of cases are very mild and/or asymptomatic. Why the hell if you have these people locked in quarantine that have come from countries with large numbers of cases wouldn't you test them at the beginning of quarantine and a couple of days before you let them out? I asked the same bus driver that since she was a public bus driver did her employer pay for a flu vaccine. The answer was Nup!

I strongly disagree. Never surrender! Don't give away the Guineas. Don't shaft small tracks because they don't have a fibre network. This march towards 2 or 3 tracks has been going on for years - 20 even. If it is the great redeemer of the industry why are things getting worse? The powers that be wearing their suits in their nice offices in Parnell and Petone will say it hasn't happened fast enough that's why. I say bollocks. It is the very act of closing small tracks and centralising racing that is killing it. If you applied a sensible logical list of criteria (strategic, tactical and operational) Ellerslie and Trentham would be the first tracks that you close.

Referring to the Levels is a bit of a nonsense given they seem to be being made up as we go along. By Level-4 I mean complete lockdown of everything except essential services. Every action I took before that would be to avoid Level-4. That is Level-4 would be when every measure/action undertaken had failed and our hospital system was showing signs of failure. Did you know that Sweden has the lowest number of hospital beds per population in Europe? They seem to have coped and there aren't bodies stacked up in the streets or in refrigerated trucks. The early border closure wouldn't have been for long. Just long enough to tighten up our border checking and quarantine systems. I would have done that way before Adern did. Being a pragmatist I would have wired money to those who were caught overseas and I would have also talked to corresponding governments in other countries saying we'll look after yours if you look after ours. I don't know if any other country utilised this approach. I don't think that is relevant. As an aside you know those cards you fill out when you come back for overseas that you hand over to customs and MPI to look at? Do you know what happens to them after you hand them over? They go into storage in big boxes. I found that out in 2005 when working for MAF. Just before the lockdown I met a recently retired Customs official and asked him had things changed and was astounded to find out that they hadn't. So the first question I would have asked was about our border tracking systems. So I'd still have a stack of money and Level-4 up my sleeve. I would have also given free flu vaccines to all. I wouldn't be surprised if that is in the budget because it looks like they are on track to waste half of the purchased vaccines again. The reason for doing that is the cost benefit is that I am doing something that lessens the load on the hospital system.

No that's not what I'm saying. I'm on record as saying I would have closed the border really early and not let anyone in until I'd sorted ourselves out. It would have been cheaper to send money to those caught overseas than close down the internal economy. So in that respect I would have gone early. I believe Brodie and I are on the same page on that one. However I wouldn't have implemented Level-4 and a complete lockdown. The data said we didn't have to. I would have got straight onto sorting out our hospitals systems bottle necks. Which still hasn't happened. Our hospital occupancy rate dropped to 50% and they considered that a success. In my opinion it is a disgrace and complete waste of resources. Adern panicked and believed the numbers that were thrown at her from dubious sources.

Adern didn't create the plan there already was one that began development in 2006 and was actually activated in 2009. There were even Code for Levels of action. https://www.parliament.nz/en/pb/research-papers/document/00PLSoc09041/human-influenza-a-h1n1-swine-flu

I believe it is inevitable. I don't view Bridges as a meathead but I also don't view him as having a great intellect. However I do believe he knows his limitations and subsequently he would utilise those around him effectively. He wouldn't do as Adern has done and sideline his Cabinet and dissolve Parliament. This crisis isn't like the UK during WW2. Churchill used every resource available to him and kept the WHOLE Parliament informed AND involved.

The other reason I think Level-4 was used too early is that our seasonal peak flu months are normally June, July and August.

Yes it is still a problem. It is a Type A Influenza virus a variant of the subtype H1N1. It is also know as Swine Flu. There have been outbreaks since 1918. There was a pandemic in 2009 - John Key activated NZ's Pandemic Management Plan. There have been outbreaks ever year since. It is only recently that H1N1 protection has been included in Flu vaccinations.

Scientific opinion is universal on this. It can't. That isn't what the scientists and epidemiologists are saying. Given the amount of time and money invested in developing flu vaccines over decades it is very unlikely. We still don't have a Universal Vaccine for influenza! No I'm very conscious of getting that criticism. I have been saying this from the beginning along with my opinion that the Government was lax in not buying time sooner by closing our borders sooner.

Mehe why do you have this obsession with Brodie? Your post is no more than a troll post - how does he stop anyone from having their say on BOAY? The only person who has the functionality to do that is the Chief Stipe.

Not at all it is based on solid research and sound reasoning. The fact is Covid-19 cannot be eliminated - no matter how Arden tries to define the meaning of elimination. I see she has dropped that term now and is back to using suppression. So if you cannot eliminate Covid-19 therefor the best you can do is manage its rate of spread and impact. A vaccine if developed will not stop it but only serve to allow us to manage it. We can't expect any vaccine to be better than the flu vaccine which has an effectiveness of between 50 and 60%. This current Government imported 1.2m flu vaccines last year. Only 600,000 were administered. 1.7m were imported this year and so far 700,000 have been vaccinated. If Adern had any clue she would have widened the eligibility for free flu vaccinations. At the very least she would have reduced wastage but more importantly she would have reduce pressure on our hospital system which she told us was one of the main reasons for Level-4 lockdown. Have they used that time to eliminate the bottle necks in our hospital system? NO by deferring surgery they have created another bottle neck which without Covid-19 will take a 18 months to get back to the same numbers in the wait list. They haven't increased the number of ICU beds which is 334 for the country. Now the implementation of Level-4 was pointless and only served to defer the inevitable. When the inevitable happens the money tree will have been stripped and the general public wont be so eager to comply with Adern's directive to go back to Level-4.

That Sweden hasn't been affected as badly as we have. Also it would appear they are taking the hit early. Ardern (note I say Ardern and not the Labour Government) has used her biggest weapon - Level-4 too early and has wasted the opportunity.

Well it appears we have to make concessions for your ability to comprehend something as simple as: WHAT POLITICAL IDEOLOGY DO YOU ESPOUSE?

So are you suggesting we cut off one of our biggest trading partners?

Well excuse me for not being able to comprehend the incomprehensible rubbish that you write. I'm asking you what political system you espouse. I have asked more than once but have still to get an answer.

Sweden as 12m people and already had a high unemployment rate. We have 4.8m people and our unemployed increased by way more than 36,000.

What's your point? Just because Bridges agreed doesn't mean I did. Unlike Labour we don't enforce collective thought.

So if no political system gives us equal luck then what's so great about the one you espouse?

None of this happens. The clubs that race at Awapuni ALL race under the umbrella of RACE Inc. As does Trentham. Effectively all Marton has is its name in lights when their race days are held at Awapuni. RACE Inc has been maintaining solvency by hocking off bits of land. They are in hock to NZRB and NZTR to the tune of $5m as of the 2018 financial report. I can't give you an update on that because the 2019 report doesn't download from their website. If you were looking for an actual example in New Zealand of how the Mesara report would work once implemented then look no further than RACE Inc. It doesn't seem to work very well when you look at their financial statements and factor in the disproportionate benefits they get from NZRB/RITA/NZTR. Note that their Executive pull close to $1m in salary a year. They claimed for 33 employees for Covid-19.

So there is no link between "luck" and "inequality"?

We are ALL financially inequal.

Why were they abandoned?

RACE Inc take everything.