Whanganui letters: Covid-19 deaths, the DoC incident, and recycling warnings from Porirua

Reader Graham Hawtree expects plenty of rubbish to start turning up in recycling bins once the council service begins. Photo / Bevan Conley

We keep hearing sound bites by the Opposition accusing the Government's Covid-19 response as "incompetent". However, we are in fact doing better than almost every nation in the world with most figures - from being in the top 15 nations for those fully vaccinated, to enjoying far more freedom than most developed nations over the past two years with comparatively little to minimal Covid lockdowns.

When looking at the data that matters, Covid deaths, one can see that New Zealand is now 206 out of the 208 nations* in the world per person for the lowest number of Covid deaths.

Indeed, if one looks at the total Covid-19 deaths in nations with populations similar in size to New Zealand's (www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/), we see the stark difference in public health responses:
• Slovakia 17,817
• Croatia 13,777
• Panama 7,698
• Ireland 6,136 ...
and New Zealand with 53 deaths from Covid (at the time of writing).

Certainly, Omicron could change these figures. But the Opposition was equally sceptical (and ultimately wrong) a few months ago when the figures were similar, and the far more deadly Delta virus was on the rise. Instead of focusing on the negative, I think that we need to pat ourselves on the back. Our public health officials have done an absolutely remarkable job.

*Excluding semi-autonomous regions, city-states and small island nations.

BRIT BUNKLEY
Whanganui

Glum predictions over DoC review

Your report of failings behind the scenes in DoC – failings that led to horrifying injuries being suffered by a kayaker on the Whanganui River in November 2020 - is an indictment of people many layers more senior than the staff directly involved in that incident.

But the department obviously has it under control – no question about that.

Here's how I predict it will finish up: 1. No heads will roll. 2. Staff and budget shortages will emerge as one of the contributing causes. 3. At the end of the process we will be assured that changes have been made "to ensure that nothing like this ever happens again". After all, why change a successful formula?

R. RAYNER
Springvale

So I read in the Dominion [Post] that it's costing the Porirua council $6000 to $8000 a month to remove general rubbish from the recycling bins.

Well hello, did they for one minute think that this problem was never going to happen?

Now they are going to carry out a month-long audit to see which streets are the worse offenders. At what cost for this I wonder?

We, too, can look forward to exactly the same problems occurring here in Whanganui when our recycling scheme gets under way and folk start to realise that not only are they going to be paying via their rates for the privilege of having an extra three recycling bins at the back of their homes, but they still have to pay for general rubbish collection on top of that as well.

Where do you think some folk are going to be putting their general rubbish? As I have pointed out on several occasions, if the council thought they had a problem with fly-tipping, I suspect we will see a massive increase in that because a lot of folk won't want to have to pay twice.

GRAHAM HAWTREE
Springvale