Life after omicron
The variant likely won’t be dominating life at the end of the year, so what’s coming next?
Mōrena and welcome to The Bulletin for Friday, March 4, by Justin Giovannetti. Presented in partnership with Z Energy.
In today’s edition: Parliament grounds a crime scene after riot; who started the first fire; Kāinga Ora reprimanded for partisanship; but first, the future of Covid.
What comes next for the world is a bit of a mystery. ( Fiona Goodall/Getty Images)
The omicron wave is still growing and New Zealand now has one of the highest infection rates in the world. This variant won’t be the end of the Covid-19 pandemic. As Sir David Skegg said at parliament this week, speaking virtually for the country’s public health group, it’s possible a variant more transmissible and severe than omicron emerges. He said it would be unlikely that we’d be talking about omicron by Christmas. The NZ Herald’s Jamie Morton (paywalled) looks at what is likely next. Covid-19 is a virus that seems to have been born to spread, with dozens of variants detected over the past two years. There are even sub-variants of omicron.
There’s no proof yet Covid will only be growing milder. While omicron’s symptoms have been milder than delta, that doesn’t mean the next variant will carry on with that trend. According to Nature, the world’s ability to track the next variant is weakening as many countries drop widespread testing regimes. Viruses are unpredictable and experts don’t really know what to expect in Covid’s future. Writing in The Spinoff, Mirjam Guesgen explained that a number of the mutations seen in omicron just baffled scientists. So what’s to come? The next significant variant is going to be the one that transmits more readily, either by being more infectious than omicron or by avoiding the protection provided by vaccines and prior infections.
But first, will everyone catch omicron? It’s a good question and might appear that way with over 20,000 daily infections, but it isn’t inevitable. While the current level of restrictions isn’t designed to stop transmission of the virus, health workers are still calling for caution in the population. Stuff reports that nearly everyone in New Zealand will likely be exposed to omicron, but exposure doesn’t mean infection. So no, everyone won’t get it. Eventually this wave, like those elsewhere in the world, will fizzle. What’s likely to confuse the issue for a few days is that there won’t be a single peak to the ongoing wave, but one for each region, with Auckland expected to be first. At the end of this will be a very long tail that isn’t headed to zero.
The Spinoff’s Covid data tracker has the latest figures.
Life will move on beyond the pandemic as well. The prime minister has already announced that vaccine mandates and social distancing measures will be dropped after the omicron peak. The world is moving towards an unpredictable future of coexistence with the pandemic. It’s just one of the uncertainties of the coming year. The NZ Herald (paywalled) also looked at the big trends of 2022 that are likely to impact us all. Some, like the shifting geopolitics due to the war in Ukraine are relatively new, while others like the great resignation have been talked about for some time but seem to be gaining momentum now.
With omicron cases increasing and tensions running high, fact-based and level-headed journalism is more important than ever. The generous support of our members powers all of The Spinoff's journalism, including live updates, the award-winning collaborations between Toby Morris and Siouxsie Wiles, and richly reported feature writing. It's what you need to know, without the sensationalism – and member donations keep it free to all, without a paywall. Tautoko mai, join The Spinoff Members today.
The parliament grounds are now a crime scene as police investigate riot. Forensic investigators are trying to establish who is responsible for the arsons at yesterday’s riot outside parliament. According to the Dominion Post, police have begun looking through the massive amount of footage taken at the protest by media, police and the protesters themselves, to identify possible prosecutions. 100 people have now been arrested in the dismantling of the occupation, including 10 arrested on Thursday for a number of charges including arson and grievous bodily harm. After not setting foot on parliament’s forecourt for 23 days, the prime minister returned yesterday to see the damage left behind. George Block was with the protesters and has written a feature for Stuff about the battle for parliament. Some of the protesters have now set up camp in Shelly Bay and Ōwhiro Bay, but in Wainuiomata, locals rushed to protect the local marae as protesters tried to occupy the grounds.
Setting the record straight on who set the first fire at parliament. The Spinoff’s Dylan Reeve has looked at footage from the riot to understand how the first fire started. A number of people running protest streams were telling their viewers it was the police, so Dylan also followed how those comments spread through the crowd as well. I was at the protest and based on what I was seeing and the chaos of the moment, thought it was “possible” police had accidentally started the fire removing a tent. I wrote as much in yesterday’s Bulletin. It’s a sign of how hard it can be to understand a frantic situation right in front of you. Based on Dylan’s work, the proof seems to clearly show that police didn’t start the fire. They didn’t light it, but they tried to fight it.
Kāinga Ora failed to uphold standards for political neutrality. The public service commissioner’s report into the government housing agency has a damning conclusion. Peter Hughes found that the agency violated a fundamental principal of the public service, which is political neutrality. And really, it failed three times. As BusinessDesk reports, the agency published an advertorial featuring soon to be Labour MP Arena Williams in May 2020. She warned them she was going to run, they published anyway. Her candidacy was announced, they didn’t take it down. Then there were internal emails where agency officials said they could pretend they didn’t know. Strike three. Then the agency brushed off wrongdoing when confronted with evidence by Newshub. The housing minister is now asking Kāinga Ora to clean up its affairs. It’s worrying that the agency isn’t focusing on its main job, which is housing New Zealanders.
A strike involving 10,000 health workers today has been ordered not to go ahead. The Employment Court ruled in favour of DHBs and ordered no strike be held, RNZ reports. Health workers were left angered by the decision, which seemed to follow a narrow technical reason that the strike was about equal pay rules and not ongoing pay talks. The court also warned that the strike by 10,000 health workers would put pressure on hospitals. The union had already said there wouldn’t be a strike in Auckland because of the omicron surge. Pay talks are meant to resume next week, continuing 16 months of failed negotiations.
The government wants to ban newly planted ‘exotic’ forests from the ETS. Exotic in this case means pine trees and ministers don’t want growers to get credits for planting an ocean of pine that can then be sold on the carbon market. As Farmer’s Weekly reports, the government wants much slower-growing native forests to still get credits. It’s the second big move in a few weeks on the carbon farming sector as many in rural New Zealand fear that productive farmland will be covered by trees that fetch a hefty profit on the carbon market.
Got some feedback about The Bulletin, or anything in the news?
Get in touch with me at thebulletin@thespinoff.co.nz
Right now on The Spinoff: Anna Rawhiti-Connell writes that society in Aotearoa is different now. Josie Adams looks at how we are memeing our way through the war in Ukraine. Don Rowe (partnership) reports on a company trying to boost the EV revolution in NZ. Reweti Kohere speaks with takatāpui artists on what it means to be Māori and queer. Ben Fahy (partnership) considers how there’s more than one way to intensify Auckland.
Global rugby competition back on the table. Talks for a world championship and global competition between rugby clubs have foundered in the past because unions didn’t see a reason to compromise, Stuff reports. That’s now changing as Covid-19 has decimated their revenues. The head of NZ Rugby is headed to Europe for talks on creating a global competition, either between a number of clubs or some north vs. south playoff. It would make an interesting competition. A lot of the popular support and best known clubs are in the southern hemisphere, but those teams all got mauled playing north of the equator last year.