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Thursday, September 17, 2020

NZ Covid strategy: elimination or virtue-signalling?

New Zealand's lust for lockdown is the latest example of vapid political virtue-signalling | The Telegraph - Madeline Grant: 

August 22, 2020 - "Progressive mythology always demands a socialist valhalla; a nation to be idealised and held as up an inspiration. For years, Scandinavia, and particularly Sweden, played this role. The stereotype was never entirely accurate; Scandinavian social democracy is a far cry from full-throated socialism, yet it remained influential. In the face of the pandemic, however, the tables have turned; now it is the libertarian Right who are lining up to applaud Swedish exceptionalism, while progressives liken their controversial strategy to a form of eugenics.... [T]he Left needs a new country to fetishise, and they have alighted on New Zealand.

"This was underway long before the virus arrived, thanks to ... a charismatic, young and importantly, female, leader: Jacinda Ardern. Her decisive leadership following the mass shooting in Christchurch propelled the New Zealand PM to global prominence, and she has since enjoyed fawning media coverage surpassing even the high water-mark of Trudeau-mania.... Their zero-tolerance approach to Covid-19 has been especially influential.....

"[In August] the whole of Auckland was sent into lockdown after the government announced a grand total of four new cases in the capital. GDP has taken its biggest slide in three decades. A total ban on foreign arrivals has endured for months, with catastrophic results for tourism, directly employing 8.4 per cent of the workforce. New Zealanders returning from abroad must pay for the privilege of isolating in military-guarded facilities, to the tune of more than £1,500 per head. One man recently received a six-week jail sentence for hugging a friend quarantining in a detention centre.... Though the country has not recorded a single covid death since May, the government decided to postpone the Autumn elections following the small-scale outbreak.... Progressives, so alert to the subversion of democracy in the USA, had little to say about this extraordinary over-reaction.

"An elimination strategy has made them hostages to fortune; with precedence established, it will be politically toxic to change course. Ardern has ridden high in the polls so far, but if such disruption continues, public appetite for keeping the country virus-free at any cost will surely wane, and the recent outbreak, despite NZ’s geographic isolation and its draconian policy response, suggests no country can postpone the inevitable.....

"Tourism accounts for a third of jobs in Fiji, Palau and Vanuatu; and two thirds of their visitors come from Australia and New Zealand. Yet amid mounting poverty and unemployment, island leaders’ pleadings for air bridges seem barely to have registered with an administration myopically focused on elimination.... 

"Enthusiasts for this model imply that elimination, like the happiness budget, and like Ardern herself, puts people above the callous vicissitudes of the balance sheet. As we are increasingly finding, the two cannot be so easily disentangled. Excessively harsh lockdowns have become a form of international virtue-signalling; something only wealthy nations can afford, but which promises catastrophe for the world’s poorest.

"Before the recent spike, commentators lauded Ardern as being 'on course to eradicate the virus completely.' The ambition was childish and hubristic in the extreme. Until the planet reaches a state of elimination, New Zealand will have to stay in indefinite isolation, with domestic lock-downs a likely fixture of life, perhaps for years to come. The economy cannot bear this for long. Nor can the people."

Read more: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/22/new-zealands-lust-lockdown-latest-example-vapid-political-virtue/


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