Mike Hosking: The tide is draining on support for the lockdown approach

The government's credibility was based on elimination ... they were wrong. File photo / Alex Burton

COMMENT

So this is it? This is our future?

Given the Government are obsessed with elimination, which is a word they should stop using given it isn't - and was never - eliminated. It was suppressed, until a mistake at the border was made.

So what we know is that next time - and there will be a next time - the next time we get a leak we are in lockdown for at least two weeks.

What would have been immeasurably more positive, uplifting and realistic is to say, given it's a cluster, given our contact tracing is world-class, given we have electronic apps and contacts, we can safely move Auckland to level 2 and the rest of the country to level 1 after two and a-half days.

What that would have done is give us a read on how this country and its economy operates going forward. And even though many would think that's still too conservative and economically damaging, at least it would have been a great deal more aggressive and sensible than what we got.

They are on a hiding to nothing. Until a vaccine or a change of government, we are at the hostage of control freaks who are maintaining an approach that has failed and the world has given up on. The amount of reading to be done on the damage of an elimination strategy is growing by the day, if not the hour.

We have gone from a fear of mass death and overwhelmed ICUs to being obsessed over a comparative handful of people.

It's a cluster, it's not a mass outbreak. We have had all the time we needed to be ready. They said it would happen, they weren't ready. They've barely advanced in approach from March.

We don't have the money to keep footing the bill, we don't have the psychological wherewithal to withstand an ongoing fear that somehow, someway, this is going to be happening over, over, and over again. The Government's credibility was based on elimination, their word. They seemed to convince enough people they'd achieved it. They were wrong. They were always wrong.

And every time we now go through this, the resilience fades, the question marks increase, and the anger grows. The tide is draining on support for this approach.

And that is why we have elections.