12 Comments
Sep 5, 2021Liked by Melanie Newfield

Yes, I like the new font and more importantly, I'm keen to read your answers to the questions you posed at the end.

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Thank you, I appreciate your support.

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I really enjoyed reading this, Melanie. You've written thoughtfully and with care to make good arguments. I learned about the 3Cs from reading this piece. Thank you. Look forward to the next one!

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Thank you, I really appreciate your feedback.

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Sep 5, 2021Liked by Melanie Newfield

Yep, I like it too Mel, very easy on the eye :-)

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Thank you, glad you like it.

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Sep 5, 2021Liked by Melanie Newfield

We need the vaccine for all school aged children... before we can really have safe institutions

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I agree with you. Until a vaccine is available for children, there's going to be too much risk to them, as well as to those who are immune compromised. I feel as if we are going to be in an arms race with this virus for some time longer sadly.

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yes, new font is great and looking forward to your next week; as usual a really great piece this week, thanks

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Thank you, I'm glad you found it interesting.

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founding

A great read, as usual, Mel. Your point about the importance of confidence really strikes a chord with our experience in Australia, and it goes beyond vaccine hesitancy to the support (or not) of the entire pandemic-response apparatus - the mask regulations, curfews, etc. It's been highly polarising.

The broader challenge for governments is to get the policy settings right without losing too much confidence. There's no perfect way to govern in a pandemic (or ever). There are lots of pretty good ways, but they all require the confidence and the compliance of enough of the population. It's easy to imagine a government cleaving to a package that is known to be suboptimal because they fear that too many changes will leach confidence, and without confidence there's no chance of keeping the curve low enough to avoid significant harms. The virus moves so quickly that governments want to be nimble, but the cost in confidence for rapidly and frequently changing positions can be high.

Ironically the leader of the state opposition has been turfed out this morning for not making enough of an impact, but in the times, it's hard to imagine what a principled opposition can do to get clear air. Presumably the charge is that he hasn't been fulminating enough.

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It really is difficult, and to some extent things are going to be polarised no matter how well the response goes, just because it is in the interests of some people to create that polarisation.

New Zealand's political opposition has also struggled over the last year and a half - not surprisingly because the majority of people are in support of how the government has handled the pandemic, whether or not they are keen on that government. In my view, a principled opposition needs to think of the big picture at a time of crisis, and not oppose for the sake of opposing. There are plenty of small things that need fixing in the New Zealand response, and there has been the odd success for the opposition in getting improvements in it (mostly last year, I think they've gone a bit silly this year).

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