Yeah, that group of people struggles the most across a number of pacific countries and territories, that being said it doesn't seem to affect the total numbers too much. NZ obesity rate is 34%, and the white population's obesity rate is 32%, virtually the same. Their Asian population being so thin seems to offset their Maori population being so large. around 1 in 3 adults (aged 15 years and over) were classified as obese* (34.3%), up from 31.2% in 2019/20 there was a significant increase from 2019/20 to 2020/21 for women (31.9% to 35.9%), but not for men the prevalence of obesity among adults differed by ethnicity, with 71.3% of Pacific, 50.8% of Māori, 31.9% of European/Other and 18.5% of Asian adults obese https://www.health.govt.nz/nz-healt...New Zealand Health Survey,%), but not for men
The government is the arm of the people's desires (or it should be), their Gov was re-elected in the middle of the pandemic and had massive support over their handling of Covid. They as of this point prevented a heavy amount of deaths by looking at their estimated excess death data. Who's to say that the trade-off of their lockdowns for the life they preserved is inhumane or wrong? I don't think I or you have the right personally, or any individual person really. It's kind of a question for the whole of the NZ population to answer.
Anyone can have an opinion on it. And my opinion is that their policies were inhumane, misguided and wrong. As I previously mentioned on here, my sister-in-law had a heart attack when she was still breastfeeding, and while she fortunately survived, while she was in hospital, she was not allowed to see her baby or husband, because of the fanatical Covid rules. There is a lot more there. The argument "they got elected" - whatever. So did Hitler, so did Putin. Yeah, NZ could keep Covid deaths down temporarily because of their unique geographic position and totalitarian rules, but at what price? And now they have a lot less natural immunity, so whether they end up being better off in the longer term remains to be seen.
But how does one weigh that personal situation (and all others like it) with all the other personal situations (covid deaths or severe disease) that were prevented? It's a terrible situation for a society to be in, sacrifices were made in NZ but they are one of the rare countries to have results to show for it, and for who knows how many people did those results make an equally intimate life-changing benefit? That's why I think right or wrong, the humanity of it all is a question for the population as a whole, how can one person answer this? Yes, the government was elected and had massive approval for their action on Covid, they prevented a significant amount of deaths. Your disagreeing personally with their government for said benefits doesn't make it akin to a Hitler or Putin regime, I don't see how anybody could objectively or rationally make such a comparison... lives were saved they didn't gas an ethnic group or invade with a violent war?
Results to show for it - as I said, remains to be seen, and it is very much tunnel vision to only look at people who died with Covid, vs. looking at all the other harm caused in terms of old people dying alone, relatives not being allowed to be with them, children losing valuable education time, etc. etc. etc. (Temporary) prevention of death by one specific cause is not the be all end all. Human dignity, children's rights, individual freedoms, missed preventative doctor visits regarding other diseases, etc. etc. etc. need to be weighed against that. It's perfectly fine to be of the opinion that they did the right thing, I just disagree - I think Sweden and Florida were and are right. Fine to agree to disagree. Of course I am not saying they are like Hitler or Putin, just giving an admittedly extreme example of why the "well, they were elected" argument doesn't work to make them immune from criticism.
Again I personally wouldn't put an opinion on something like this I think it's a question for the country as a whole, but we've both fully fledged that argument so I'll move on from that and the question of humanity and right wrong on the gov action. But there is something I'll still respond to here regarding the data on the benefits of their lockdown (which you have to take into consideration against the harm). Do you not think omicron is far less deadly? I see you posted a snapshot of the cases but we both know that's not particularly relevant. The vast majority of deaths from covid in Sweden were from pre-omicron. https://ourworldindata.org/explorer...olor+by+test+positivity=false&country=NZL~SWE https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&pickerSort=asc&pickerMetric=location&Metric=Excess+mortality+(estimates)&Interval=Cumulative&Relative+to+Population=true&Color+by+test+positivity=false&country=NZL~SWE I don't think the benefits of the NZ gov action are as so temporary, their whole population has been exposed to covid now and the deaths (excess deaths for the population as a whole not just covid deaths) are simply incomparable to other western nations. To say otherwise is to both argue against the effectiveness of vaccines preventing death and the assumption that omicron is less deadly.
Comparison: New Zealand COVID - Coronavirus Statistics - Worldometer (worldometers.info) Total Cases: 1,760,113 Total Deaths: 2,836 Total Cases since beginning of March 2022: 1,640,072 Deaths since beginning of March 2022: 2,762 Sweden COVID - Coronavirus Statistics - Worldometer (worldometers.info) Total Cases: 2,573,548 Total Deaths: 19,974 Total Cases since beginning of March 2022: 119,753 Deaths since beginning of March 2022: 2,310 It's true that the total number of deaths for NZ is higher than Sweden in the last several months, but look at the extreme disparity in new cases during that period. New Zealand made a choice to be very strict during a period when people would be most vulnerable to the virus due to lack of vaccines and therapy. Thousands of lives were probably saved as a result. People can disagree on the tradeoffs, of course.
At what price? NZ was actually "open" and partying (while everyone else was forced to shutdown or slowdown) because they did a heck of a job containing the virus early on. Then came Omicron. Omicron changes everything. They could have done a better job with the transition to Omicron. Outside of that, they were almost perfect. I would love it if we had NZ level of success here.
So we're led to believe that the 1M+ American deaths are confined to fogies and fatties (charges reporting fraud generally dies down when tallying overall deaths), yet these are the same folks who **** bricks over Michelle Obama asking people to eat veggies and take care of their health? Some folks just want the world to burn on their weird terms while calling that "freedom". When the bill comes due for them, that'll be their Come to Jesus moment for sucking the social services they free rode and neglected during their better years. Aynn Rand dying a parasitic hag with zero morals, scruples or principles is their prophet and future.
It's utterly simplistic to frame it as "either you refrain from criticizing measures or 1M+ deaths are your fault/you don't care about them". And wtf does Michelle Obama eating veggies have to do with anything. An analysis of the data shows that most measures, especially lockdowns and school closures, had little to no net effect, but some caused a lot of harm.
A look at lockdowns, their effectiveness and the difficult tradeoffs involved: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02823-4 Worth a full read. Here’s the closing regarding lessons for the future: The next pandemic Now that COVID-19 vaccines and treatments for severe disease are widely available, most countries that have taken full advantage of them are unlikely to return to lockdowns. So what have researchers learnt that can inform decisions when another viral pandemic arrives? One lesson that Klimek takes from lockdown studies is that there was an early window of opportunity when the virus could have been eliminated — as it was, in effect, in countries such as China, Australia and New Zealand. Had harsher measures been adopted sooner, and more widely, the pandemic might have played out very differently. “I think this is the big learning that we need to take away,” he says. The paradox is that a successful early clampdown, or hard and fast action against a virus that turns out to be milder than initial indications suggest, could lead to complaints of overreaction. A future threat might, of course, also spread in a completely different way from COVID-19. Ethical choices could look very different if the next pandemic is caused by an influenza virus that predominantly affects and is spread by young children. Lockdowns hold another clear lesson: they exacerbate inequalities that already exist in society. Those already living in poverty and insecurity are hit hardest. Guarding against these unequal impacts requires improved health access and financial safeguards when times are good. And transparency is key, too: the public needs to know more about how pandemic-control policies are decided, says Tsai. “That makes public-health policymaking seem less capricious,” he says, “because it’s reactive to both the science and values.”
