Mike Hosking talks with Ashley Bloomfield Director-General of Health about how well we are handling this outbreak.
COMMENT:
As mad as it seems, the more we learn, the more it becomes apparent the answers are in fact clear and simple. Not unlike 'wash your hands'.
In a complex world washing your hands isn't interesting, new, or edgy - but it's as applicable as it ever was. We just don't necessarily want to know.
So simplicity in the answer is in this question: why isn't this country locked down? Now? Already?
There are lots of other equally pertinent questions as well, like why didn't we test earlier? Why didn't we know about the number of test kits we didn't have?
But for right now, why isn't this country locked down? China has given us the answer. Not necessarily in a way we find comfortable. But the numbers don't lie, they are largely out the other side by locking their country down. Europe is all the evidence you need as to what happens if you don't act.
We seem in the midst of some bizarre, slowly unfolding series of decisions released in a cumbersome, lethargic, and needlessly ineffective way.
We have messages for New Zealanders to come home, messages to self-isolate, messages to practise social distancing, messages about large gatherings, that become smaller gatherings, that will inevitably lead to no gatherings.
All of this is unfolding, it's all going in the same direction , but it's just not happening fast enough. It's all heading to an obvious end point. Locking the country down, why are we waiting for whenever? When the call is the right one now?
The trouble, in part, is the Government. They are useless at project management. The Government can't do stuff, they talk about stuff, but they don't do stuff.
We asked on Monday whether you would feel differently if someone like Sir John Key was still in charge. The question is still applicable. If decisions were in the hands of proven project leaders would you feel better? And would stuff be happening faster?
The answer, if you need one, is yes.
Is it an overreaction? What's the worst that can happen? You were wrong with an abundance of caution?
I doubt, in the fullness of time, as China and the various other success stories of this crisis show us, is you will not be thanked for procrastinating. You stand a better chance of being thanked for appearing over-eager.
The Government faces the very real issue of people taking decisions into their own hands. It runs the risk of people thinking so little of their leadership that they run their own programme.
The one thing Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has done correctly is to tell us not to panic. There is no need for panic, but there is an increasingly urgent need to act, and act decisively.
