The other day, Stuff published an Open Letter to Jacinda from Sir Ian Taylor, relating to how he perceived her “leadership” of the country through Covid.
As it did not unquestioningly fall at her feet with glowing praise, and in fact mentioned things like “people were kept apart from their dying loved ones”, and how “when intelligent people came forward with real, workable ways to end the madness of mandates and MiQ and get on with restoring things to normal, they were rejected because they didn’t fit the narrative“, Cindy’s fans frothed at the mouth.
One FB group even claimed “the cookers are out to rig the poll!!”, so let’s check in on the poll – “Rate Jacinda Ardern’s leadership during the Covid pandemic”:
That’s not particularly glowing, either. (It’s over 111k votes, so it takes over 1,100 to shift by 1. Must be a lot of “cookers” out there.)
Stuff then invited readers to have their say. While there were a number of negative ones, there were also the expected defenders of Jacinda, most of whom still believe the narrative.
- “She didn’t make any decisions herself, she was the leader but always had expert advice!” – nope, she ignored CVTAG’s advice on locking down Auckland. Just wielded her power and made it happen.
- “She saved 20,000 lives!!” – nope. That’s based on death rates in countries that are NOT small islands surrounded by thousands of square kilometers of ocean, with density (people living packed together) significantly more than NZ. (also, we have more people dying now than ever before, considerably more than population increase would account for, and how about all those recently-dosed 80+ on dose 2 who died in late 2023?)
- “Nobody was forced to get a vaccination, and those who refused weren’t playing their part!”
- “Didn’t you see all the freezer trucks lined up overseas??”
The derangement is strong.
- MiQ kept New Zealanders from being legally able to return to the country of their birth, it separated families, kept them from being together when dying, when new babies were born, and it was all essentially illegal.
- People WERE forced to get vaccinated, or lose their job, ability to enjoy society, or other things. And for what? The nation essentially sucked up dose 1 and 2 (with more remaining on dose 0 than dose 1) and then about 60% of them got Boosted.. and then it kind of stopped, possibly because the under-65s noticed that it didn’t work.
- On the bright side, the Paediatric vaccine was not quite as popular.
- We have Excess Mortality trending UP, not down.
- More people have died “with Vaccine” than “with Covid” in New Zealand.
- The “response” to Covid-19 in NZ caused New Zealanders to go without necessary health interventions: Surgeries, Midwifery, Dentistry.. so many things were unable to be performed due to either restrictions or the health service being backed up.
Personally, I think “Awful” is not a strong enough word to describe her “leadership”.
