New Zealand's COVID hypocrisy

Oh, the Kiwis. Gotta love 'em, but those Kiwi doctors can all burn in hell.

Headline:

NZ doctors avoided Covid jabs while insisting the public had them

THE New Zealand Ministry of Health granted vaccine exemptions to hundreds among its key staff whilst hypocritically insisting that the public be vaccinated.

An Official Information Act (OIA) request to the ministry dated August 2, 2023 asked the following question:

‘According to the legislation at the time in 2021, there were operational exemptions available for those who were not getting vaccinated against Covid-19. How many requests were received? How many were approved by the ministry?’ 

Matt Hannant, Interim Director, Prevention, National Public Health Service, replied:

‘From 13 November 2021 to 26 September 2022, a total of 478 applications for Significant Service Disruption exemption (SSD) were received. 103 applications were granted, covering approximately 11,005 workers. Please note that it is not possible to provide the exact number of workers that were covered by SSDs. This is because it was possible for an organisation to submit an application to cover more than one worker.’

So exactly how many Ministry of Health staff and associated contractors benefited from the vaccine exemptions? I have made inquiries and found some staff prepared to leak information. One source has told me that 95 consultants in the Dunedin region alone benefited from vaccine exemptions. Another source has pointed to a group of doctors working in Northland who arranged among themselves to remain unvaccinated. The total appears to run to hundreds and possibly more.

It seems that those granted exemptions were restrained by gagging orders so that they could not tell anyone that they had been granted exemptions: it was a secretive process that the Ministry of Health was anxious to hide from the public. 

In any case, any doctor advising a patient that mRNA Covid vaccination might be risky faced disciplinary action, and many were suspended.

So medical staff allowed themselves to be manipulated into a position whereby, if they were unvaccinated themselves, they were still required to advise their patients to vaccinate, a recipe for widespread hypocrisy in the health service.

This process was certainly approved by Dr Ashley Bloomfield (then chief executive of the Ministry of Health) who gained considerable notoriety by refusing vaccine exemptions to those among the public severely injured by their first jab, insisting that they continue with a vaccination schedule. Given Dr Bloomfield’s close working relationship with Jacinda Ardern and Chris Hipkins (then Health Minister, now Prime Minister) it is quite likely that they approved it. The opposition leaders were also likely kept in the loop.

The criteria for granting exemptions apparently entailed an assessment concerning how vital staff were to the working of the health service. In other words, senior figures and those holding key surgical positions could insist that they remain unvaccinated and continue to be allowed to work. Meanwhile unvaccinated nurses, for example, could not gain exemptions and lost their positions.

If senior staff who wished to remain unvaccinated had spoken out publicly, the issue of Covid vaccine safety might have been given a public airing. Instead the Ministry of Health and the government kept a lid on all and any discussion. It did so through liaison with mainstream and social media outlets to censor content and through tight control of staff.

If Kiwi doctors were "arranging among themselves" to avoid getting jabbed, how does it follow that they were being "manipulated"? I certainly have no pity for the docs. They may have done the right thing by avoiding the jab for themselves (I agree with this stance), but knowingly giving that toxic nonsense to the public is unconscionable.