Mike's Minute: The real reason for the Covid report

I am glad the Covid report has been released. 

Why wouldn’t it be? It's ours, we lived it and are living through it. 

It says a lot of stuff you thought it would say; compulsory mandates were one of the most controversial measures. No kidding. 

The country was not prepared for border closures or MIQ. Really? 

They run the line that we had fewer infections and therefore fewer deaths than other countries. 

I note Chris Hipkins yesterday was still rejecting the idea that vaccine mandates were a mistake. And in that is the problem. 

Incompetent Governments lead to incompetent responses. Arrogance leads to an inability to do things differently, which is I think in part, the point of the report, to give us a blueprint for next time. 

The blueprint says mandates were a mistake. Hipkins, who could be Prime Minister as soon as 2026, seems to think he is more right than the inquiry. So are we any further ahead? 

You need to also factor in that phase one, despite what Tony Blakely told us yesterday, is not the full picture. It’s a comprehensive picture within the guidelines he was given. 

The guidelines he wasn’t given are why we are having phase two. 

I still argue it would have been better if we had taken the British route, the adversarial approach. Put Ardern and Hipkins and Bloomfield on the stand and ask some penetrating questions. 

It doesn’t have to be a court to illicit material this report hasn’t found. 

The really important part for me is not what we did then, but what the outworking of what we did then produced what we have now. 

What we are still living through and why, because what we have now is so badly damaged. We must learn not to do what we did last time. 

The kids not at school, the behaviour of so many that has been out of control, the moral fatigue, the social decline and the malaise. That is not measured totally in statistics. 

But the overarching feeling is this country is a shadow of what it once was. That's the real story of Covid. 

But I still maintain that you can write all the reports you want and inquire until you are blue in the face, but a pandemic is luck. 

If the Government that’s in on the day the pandemic arrives is good, you will be OK. 

If it's Labour 2017-23, well, you don’t need the report.  

Just look at us. 

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