Towards a police state in
Anglophone countries: the
totalitarian tiptoe
Look at this graph and contrast the Asian countries with Western nations. We don't know that Japan, Singapore, Taiwan etc didn't have a milder strain of the virus but it seems to indcate that they had something right in their response to the virus.
There are some really suspicious things going on and I have said before that the rules are being set to discriminate against small businesses (or larger ones catering to the poor) whilst giving monopoly rights to large supermarket chains that are making money hand-over-fist while other businesses go to the wall.
Of course, right now people are confined to their homes but when these restrictions are lifted (NOT in three weeks but in several months) there will be massive unemployment (they are predicting upwards of 30 % unemployment in the US when it was 25% in the Great Depression. I can't see the NZ economy, dependent in equal measure on China, the USA and Europe, being any better.
But look at this headline and try to keep anger at bay. They are looking at waiving visa rules so the supermarkets can employ immigrant labour while the bulk of the labourforce is locked away in their own homes
The government has changed immigration rules to help supermarkets cope with labour shortages.
Supermarkets will be able to change the roles and other work conditions of staff who are on work and student visas.
But uncertainty remains for immigrants in other sectors who lose their jobs.
A spokesperson for the immigration minister, Iain Lees-Galloway, said they would be able to access an emergency benefit if they lost their job.
But late today his office said only that that was "something that is being worked on and options have not been decided yet".
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/413035/immigrant-benefit-access-floated-as-government-relaxes-supermarket-visa-rulesThen there is this bullshit.
They claim that the shortage of flour experienced everywhere is due solely to increased demand. OF COURSE there has been an increase of demand with the lockdown but we all know that there was ALREADY a problem with supplies of food internationally due to extreme weather events around the globe.
You do not have to go back far to find headlines like this.
The problems have not gone away but have got worse, but they don't want you to know that.
This is a very recent headline (25 March, 2020) ...
UN warns of global food shortage caused by coronavirus measures: report
There's enough flour to go around, people are just buying it too fast, New Zealand supermarkets say.
It has forced the country's major supermarket chains to again plead with the public not to panic-buy, purchasing only what they need.
Social media like Facebook and Twitter were rife lately with Kiwis complaining about a lack of baking goods, especially flour, around the country.
"Someone quietly let me know when they see flour in the supermarket please," one person wrote to numerous Auckland community groups on Facebook yesterday.
"NZ panic buying all the flour like they're about to compete in a lockdown bake-off," a Twitter user wrote on Tuesday last week.
"Okay, we're told that there is plenty of food in NZ and the supermarkets will be restocked. But where is the goddam flour???" pleaded another Twitter user
Vegetable crops will go to waste due to grocers and restaurants closing unless alternative buyers can be found, market gardeners say.
Two Pukekohe market gardners said crops like broccoli and lettuce, which needed to be picked daily would rot in the ground.
"Lettuce is in the paddock that we don't know what to do with... There are thousand and thousands of dollars worth of produce going to waste," market gardener Harry Das said.
Das said that up until Friday he was sending two truckloads of mixed vegetables to customers but that had almost entirely dried up because grocers were closed.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/farming/120697091/vegetable-crops-rot-in-the-field-as-grocers-and-restaurants-close
I am pleased that questions are starting to be asked about this in the NZ press.
I am pleased that questions are starting to be asked about this in the NZ press.
A New Zealander who spent two months under lockdown in China says Kiwis need to abandon any "she'll be right" attitude to the level four restrictions here.
Wellington lawyer jd Dallas was completely housebound in an apartment with his wife Li Xu and her mother in Shiyan, about 400km northwest of the epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan.
People are now free to move about the city and even leave after enduring weeks of tougher restrictions than are now in place in New Zealand.
Dallas had heard about the hundreds of people who flocked to the capital's Oriental Parade on Sunday, which earned a rebuke from the Police Comissioner
In his view, an extension of the level four restrictions was inevitable unless people started taking it seriously and staying home
And this...
An expert epidemiologist is calling on the Government to quarantine all people arriving in New Zealand from overseas and for a much wider testing and contact-tracing regime to prevent needless deaths from Covid-19.
Otago University Professor Sir David Skegg told Parliament's Epidemic Response Committee this morning that it was make or break time for the Government to eliminate Covid-19.
"We've got the opportunity now. Every day counts," Skegg told the committee.
"If we don't eliminate it in the next few weeks, the shutdown will continue for many months, or we will have a series of shutdowns that will paralyse our society for a year or 18 months, and it will never be the same again.
"If we now eliminate the virus, we can return to normal within a few weeks, or certainly in a month or so."
He said if the virus wasn't stamped out, an outbreak would hit the country in a similar way to what has happened in the UK or the USA, which is considered the new epicentre of the global pandemic.
Eliminating the virus meant getting down to a defined minimum number of cases so that it can be handled at a local level.
"We can't get rid of all virus particles in New Zealand. We can effectively eliminate so there is no need for a lockdown. People could travel around New Zealand and have holidays.
"In the coming months, we could let tourists in with new antibody tests that can tell us who has had it and who is immune. We could open the country to an extent, so long as people can prove they are not carrying the disease."
THE UNITED STATES
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