And so it begins. A press release from Mr Seymour on Friday indicated that change was in the air. More came on Sunday’s press release. Then came a live video chat with Seymour on Sunday evening. There are few things as amusing as a politician doing an about-turn and trying to pretend it is not an about-turn.
Seymour uses the press release to put the boot into Jacinda Ardern and Trevor Mallard, as you would expect.
Rather than ridiculing the protestors, she needs to be constantly updating the COVID response as new evidence emerges. Ideally, the Prime Minister would be focused on hope and healing, but instead, Labour is offering absence and immaturity.
So what is this new evidence that Mr Seymour has suddenly become aware of? Not the scientific evidence surely? More likely polling evidence. It is the evidence of the people committed to standing outside parliament, the people on motorway bridges, outside police stations and throughout the country expressing their outrage at being shunned, ejected from their jobs and ignored by the people supposed to represent us. Seymour realises that he has made a costly error of judgment and is now trying to beat a retreat in an attempt to save the votes that are flying out the front door. Act could have stayed true to its roots and opposed mandatory vaccination and the authoritarian Covid response but it has failed, and now it is beginning to suffer the consequences of ignoring its base.
He then tries to remind us that he’s always been on our side.
The kind of scenes we are witnessing could have been avoided if the Government had taken ACT’s advice on vaccines, mandates, and testing. Mandates may reassure people that others will not pass on COVID, but so does regular testing.
Since the Government insists on mandates, they should be vaxx or test. It would have been easier if testing was more widely available, also in line with ACT policy.
Testing has been an obvious solution for a long time and to be fair, Seymour did suggest this last year. However, he has not fought hard for it but instead promoted the same ‘vaccinate vaccinate vaccinate’ twaddle that we get from Labour.
Then we hit this gold.
As the numbers change, the response needs to change with it. Evidence from the UK is now showing tested infection rates twice as high for vaccinated as unvaccinated. If vaccination does not affect transmission of Omicron, then what is the justification for vaccine requirements?
Seymour? See less. This UK data is not ‘now‘ showing higher rates of infection amongst vaccinated people. The data has shown this since last year as Mr Seymour should be well aware. The data has been showing this since at least mid-September.
If Mr Seymour has only just become aware of this data, one wonders why that is the case. Is it because he is unaware of the UK government data? If so, why is he not paying attention to countries that are further through the pandemic than we are? If he did know about it, why didn’t he make a big deal about it last year? Either way, he doesn’t come out of this looking like a competent politician.
He points out what many have been saying for some time now. The rules make no sense. Why are we punishing the unvaccinated? It makes no sense whatsoever. The mandates have got to go.