Ian Miller

COVID has unfortunately created any number of repetitive stories.

Jurisdiction imposes mask mandates, population complies, masks prove ineffective, media claims masks didn’t work because of lack of compliance.

Another example would be when countries with extraordinary compliance, such as Singapore or South Korea, would see increases ignored entirely, or blamed on the population not wearing masks of a correct level of quality.

Yet as a general rule, the most consistently predictable repetitive storyline has been the media and expert community declaring that a country was a pandemic success, only for their results to dramatically change in a relatively short period of time.

This was the case with the Czech Republic, with Australia, with Taiwan and many other locations.

Even within the United States adjustments showed that states like California – heralded as pandemic winners – actually had significantly worse results than previously realized.

But few places on earth have been as heavily praised as New Zealand.

Their science-following leadership was repeatedly hailed, honored, and praised for their effective communication, endless lockdowns, tyrannical response to protests, and prolific commitment to mandates.

All of the above, combined with their strict border controls, should have meant that New Zealand would avoid the significant increase in negative outcomes seen in other parts of the world.

At least, that’s what the media and activist public health authorities claimed would happen.

The reality is far more complicated.

New Zealand’s COVID Metrics

Throughout 2020 and into 2021, New Zealand saw very little COVID transmission.

Unsurprisingly, the BBC praised the country for their efforts, explaining in detail how the country had become “COVID free.”

Jacinda Arden, now former prime minister, was once so completely committed to maintaining an illusion of infallibility that she claimed that the only source of accurate information available to the public was the government.

Of course, Arden then made the provably inaccurate claim that those who were vaccinated would net get sick and would not die.

The ridiculous over-confidence in the proclamations of public health authorities led to Arden convincing New Zealanders that strict mandates and interventions could stop the spread of the virus.

As winter and new variants arrived in 2021, Arden and local leaders predictably enforced increasingly strict measures. Mask mandates, lockdowns and “red traffic light” policies include vaccine passports.

Surprise. None of it worked.

After several months of completely unchecked spread, even the country’s cumulative metrics, once seemingly so impressive, exploded in dramatic fashion.

Consistently and exceptionally high mask wearing rates were also entirely ineffective.

And yet defenders of New Zealand’s authoritarian policies still believed that the country’s strategy was warranted, for one specific reason.

They had delayed the spread of the virus until the COVID vaccines became widely available.

In theory, that was supposed to prevent a substantial increase in deaths, especially considering their extraordinary rate of uptake.

That didn’t work either.

While these rates were generally lower after adjusting for population than many other countries, they still represented an obvious, significant surge compared to previous time periods.

But COVID related deaths only tell a part of the story, often influenced by attribution methodology and testing.

In theory, New Zealand’s exceptional vaccination rate and consistently high mask compliance should have meant that all cause mortality would also remain low.

So did it?

Fortunately, thanks to the New Zealand government’s own data, we now have an answer. And just as the country’s failure to stop omicron, it presents another contradiction to the endless media praise.

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Via https://ianmsc.substack.com/p/highly-vaccinated-covid-success-new