Stop the paranoia about fleeing Aucklanders
Our paranoia about fleeing Aucklanders is a serious road-block to Jacinda’s mantra of being kind and reaching out to neighbours so our team of five million can better weather an emergency. Six months ago we were welcoming Auckland visitors as the saviours of our tourist and hospitality industries. We can’t always have it all ways.
It is manifestly unhealthy in the midst of a health crisis to have a correspondent from Rawhiti diss and dismiss the good folk of Warkworth as ‘not of our tribe’ because they are Pa¯ keha¯ , middle-class, welloff and of a different demographic. It is not appropriate even for the rich-listers with bolt-holes at Snells and Omaha. Must we descend from a one-nation polity to a tribal jungle as the USA has done under Trump? I find such ideas alarming and offer the following fanciful/farcical worst-case scenario as an antidote to hysteria and a return to rationality with debate . . .
“So! Mangawhai has been plucked from the jaws of Northland and plonked into the great maw of Aucktopussy whose tentacles continue to sucker up the titbits of Te Taitokerau!
“What next? Exponential ‘coastal creep’ along our eastern shorelines where ever increasing enclaves of exiles ensconce themselves? Impending colonisation and conquest of Laings, Matapouri, Whananaki, Oakura, Taupo Bay, Coopers, Karekare and so on? A western wedge via Tino Pai, Glinks, Bayleys, Kai iwi, Omapere, Ahipara? Holiday highways to tighten the link? But it will not be our infrastructure, will it?
“Northland will end up as a rutted, potholed, landlocked ghetto constrained by glitzy gated communities. Do we want to see Te Taitokerau pukerooed and Tamaki-Makauraued? Come on Hone, Hemi, Pita — kia kaha. Sound the sirens and throw up the roadblocks to stem the tsunami of SUVs. Pull out the stops before they pull out our teeth. Mangawhai is te mangai (the mouthpiece). Shut the trap of Auctopussy before we become skinned cats eking out a feral existence in the shadows of the Jafa juggernaut. Aaargh!”
Tony Clemow Kamo
Some thoughts
It appears Northland is putting a high reliance on wastewater testing along with the normal Covid-19 testing in an effort to find or detect the areas with the virus.
This may cover a large section of the community however the biggest threat is from those that opted out of Auckland before the lockdown came into effect. Although breaking no law before the 12pm lockdown, they have put us into a situation that aligns us with Auckland as far as alert levels are concerned.
While a large number of these AK people may be residing in areas where wastewater is connected to council operated treatment stations, I suspect the majority of them are in a bach serviced by septic tanks, hence missing out on the testing surveillance presently being undertaken within the council systems. Bearing this in mind, it makes me nervous that there could be infected people out there possibly knowing they have the virus but are worried about being tested or even coming forward for a test knowing they
have morally let us down and side stepped the law.
The Northland councils must have a record of property owners and their contact details.
Would it be worth the effort of an electronic search of the records to identify Auckland owned baches with septic tanks and checking on all of these contacts to verify exactly where they are residing at the moment, making an assessment from the information gathered to whether further testing should be undertaken of these families?
If these AK families have children with them I believe it is quite obvious they have travelled north before the 12pm lockdown as school attendance was still required before lockdown. Flaunting the law in this way may not actually breaking the law but is morally wrong and dangerous to all concerned. I personally could not bear the possibility that I had spread the virus in this way.
Should you be one of these people I would like to suggest you get tested before returning to Auckland as you just may be taking it back with you? Should we be going to level 3 when there is a possibility there could even one infected person in the thousands of Auckland residents who travelled too Northland. I guess the odds are a thousand to one and we have all seen the outcome of one delta infected person in the community.