A Single COVID Case Puts New Zealand Into Another Nationwide Lockdown

By Arjun Walia | The Pulse

Jacinda Ardern, the Prime Minister of New Zealand, has put the country into a three-day lockdown after one person has tested positive for COVID. It’s the first case since February.

The lockdown will begin at midnight tonight, and while authorities have yet to identify the source of the infection, they do believe it to be the new delta variant that now seems to be spreading across the globe.

This is a full lockdown, only shops that provide essential services such as health products, groceries, and gasoline will remain open.

New Zealand is choosing to start high on the scale of measures, and move down if necessary as opposed to slowly increasing measures.

According to Bloomberg,

“The case is an unvaccinated man in his 50s from Auckland who is deemed to have been infectious since Aug 12, Director General of Health Ashley Bloomfield told the news conference. He and his fully vaccinated wife were in the nearby Coromandel region over the weekend, where they visited a crowded pub on Saturday night.”

There is no information around symptoms, authorities claim the person is in the early stages of infection. Most of New Zealand’s population is not vaccinated. About 22% 16 and older have had both doses.

The next question to ask is, is this warranted? We’ve seen what happened with the first wave of COVID. Lockdown measures came under intense scrutiny by a plethora of renowned scientists, doctors and infectious disease experts all of the world. Data has been presented showing that lockdowns can be extremely harmful not only to human health both mentally and physically, but also the economy.

What happens if New Zealand sees a second case in the next 3 days, will the lockdown continue? Again the question of how we choose to live life is coming up for us to explore.

Data has also been presented showing that lockdowns may kill more people than COVID, yet any of the many scientists who try to discuss the reality of these measures constantly remain unacknowledged and censored. Professor Anna-Mia Ekström and Professor Stefan Swartling Peterson went through the data from UNICEF and UNAIDS, and came to the conclusion that at least as many people have died as a result of the restrictions to fight COVID as have died of COVID during the first wave.

“Internationally, the lockdowns have placed 130 million people on the brink of starvation, 80 million children at risk for diphtheria, measles and polio, and 1.8 million patients at risk of death from tuberculosis. The lockdowns in developed countries have devastated the poor in poor countries. The World Economic Forum estimates that the lockdowns will cause an additional 150 million people to fall into extreme poverty, 125 times as many people as have died from COVID.” – Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD, Stanford University.

This is not to say lockdowns don’t work at all, it’s to say the science is not settled on this and discussion needs to be open.

Data from the 1st year of England’s pandemic reports 25 under-18s died from COVID. For comparison, estimates for Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) in the UK report show approximately 450,000 GP appointments, 29,000 hospitalisations and 83 deaths per year in children and adolescents.

In the United States, nearly all children who become infected with RSV do so by age 2, with 75,000 to 125,000 of them hospitalized each year. Globally, RSV affects an estimated 64 million people and causes 160,000 deaths worldwide each year.

It’s not just debate regarding lockdown, but also the severity of the virus, the safety of the vaccine, and much more. Instead of having appropriate discussions with experts on both sides of the coin, all we hear is “anti-vax”, “anti-mask” and “anti-lockdown” sentiments. Governments claim to be “following the science” when this doesn’t seem to be the case. Instead it seems a more accurate slogan would be “following some science” and “ignoring science that calls these measures into question.”

Important information regarding PCR testing, as well as natural immunity, seems to have been pushed under the rug as well.

At the end of the day, it’s no secret that many people disagree with the measures that have and are being taken to combat COVID. Ask yourself, what type of society allows so many voices to go unheard? Are governments really acting in humanity’s best interests? Are there serious conflicts of interests involved here?

Why is New Zealand going into lockdown over one COVID case?

This article (A Single COVID Case Puts New Zealand Into Another Nationwide Lockdown) was originally published on The Pulse and is published under a Creative Commons license.