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In the Ashley Bloomfield Michael Baker battle over masks versus social distancing, you have the crux of where this country is going wrong on the economic side of the Covid equation.
One of the most overworked phrases from this government of overworked phrases is, "there is no playbook." If that’s true, why would we not err on the side of common sense, progression, and even an element of entrepreneurial risk?
One of the developments of the Covid coverage is you can now pick your specialist, and you, broadly speaking, know what the answer is depending on what expert you pick.
Epidemiologist Michael Baker is, without question, one of the most conservative operators out there. He would probably have you in lockdown for the rest of your life. We would not be coming out of level 3 and 2 this Monday, we'd need longer. He's been like this all along.
Bloomfield isn't seemingly as conservative. But Cabinet papers have shown he's gone for longer lockdowns than the government ultimately have decided upon.
But now we are at a junction that is critical to the economy. And the government seem less interested in the economy than they do the health side of the mixture. What have they said? In another overworked phrase, "the best economic response is a good health response."
And yet, Baker says masks mean more normality. He says with masks you can fill a plane. Wasn't that the deal? With new measures we get more freedoms? Except it appears we don't.
Why have mandatory masks if we don’t get more freedoms? Fill the buses, the trains and the planes. The more people work and move, the more bottom lines are positively affected.
Jetstar is going nowhere, Air New Zealand is heavily curtailed and can't operate commercially with empty middle seats.
With masks, Bakers says fill those rows. Bloomfield says social distancing beats masks, why? Why is he right and Baker wrong? Why does the government not look at every opportunity to leverage our success in having minimal numbers?
Like Australia and their international students, as we still don’t have the answer as to why they can, and we can't. Unless you have concluded like I have, it's only because we don’t want to.
At some point the economic carnage will loom so large and so dangerous even this lot with their blinkered ideological blindness will no longer be able to ignore it.
When you're more conservative than Michael Baker, that’s setting new records in looking to go nowhere fast.