In an era of shout radio and social media degenerates, political endorsements have about as much value as Donald Trump’s alternative facts. A few newspapers valiantly press on, but those endorsements are not much more than vanity plates in print, especially in provincial communities like ours. Thankfully FlaglerLive as a nonprofit cannot endorse, and wouldn’t do so even if it could. But this year I’m personally going to break that rule and borrow a page from my Zarathustran colleague John Walsh. I’m making just one endorsement. I’m endorsing the same person for president, for governor, for state attorney, for county and city commission, for mosquito control, for P-Section prime minister and of course for Beverly Beach mayor.
I endorse Jacinda Ardern. (She’s not a friend.)
The name might not ring too many bells. I still have a hard time with it myself. (Contrary to the way many pronunciation guides have it this side of the planet, you don’t pronounce the first r.) She’s New Zealand’s prime minister. In 2017, when she was 37, she was the world’s youngest woman to take any country’s leadership. In eight days she’s poised to win a second term. Polls have her ahead of her challenger by 15 points. She’s the Angela Merkel of the southern hemisphere, but better. She managed not only to tame the coronavirus, but essentially to kill it in New Zealand.
As of Wednesday the country had gone 10 days without a single new case. All restrictions have been lifted. No social distancing, no masks required, no limits on gatherings. It’s the result of what the prime minister calls “go hard, go early” (the strategy Flagler’s own Dr. Stephen Bickel was pushing early in the pandemic) a strategy that meant immediate and strict but brief lockdowns backed by grown-up enforcement–none of that infantile do-as-I-please selfishness so common in Flagler-flavored bacchanals–and an entirely scientifically based approach to tracing, containing and smashing the disease before it turns into a mass killer. I wouldn’t be surprised if Arnold Schwarzenegger yielded the seventh Terminator movie’s title role to Ardern.
New Zealand is a country of 5 million people, or 45 times the population of Flagler County. Keeping in mind the absurd back-patting of our own elected officials about how this county has kept its numbers low, compared to other counties in Florida, here’s how we compare to the real world. This week Flagler recorded its 1,800th case. That’s 300 more cases than for the entire country of New Zealand for the entirety of the pandemic. We boast about our infection rate of 1,575 per 100,000 population, because it puts us at the bottom of counties in Florida, that inferno of viral indulgence. You want to know New Zealand’s rate per 100,000? Thirty-eight. This week we recorded our 32nd covid-related death in Flagler County. New Zealand, that country of 5 million, has had a total of 25.
It’s not fail-safe. Nothing is with this Strangelove of a virus. New Zealand declared the virus defeated a few months ago only to see a small resurgence, though the term “resurgence” is relative: a few dozen cases reemerged, and just because of that, major cities locked down again, briefly. (When we get a spike in Flagler, we just turn up the karaoke machine at the local social club.) New Zealand’s grown-up approach worked again. The few dozen cases were traced and contained. And now its society has reopened without virus, without limits.
Of course the country has suffered economically. Every country has. But not anywhere near the sort of cratering that took place in the United States. New Zealand’s unemployment rate is at 4 percent after a peak of 6 percent in June. It’s going to have a hard time in coming months, but nothing on the scale of American Darwinism, where government abandoned workers when they needed safety most and is abandoning them again when they need economic lifelines. New Zealand was successful because the only thing it battled was the virus, not untruths, not a president’s incendiary calls to “liberate” this or that state, and because New Zealand’s leader, unlike Donald Trump, was not the enemy of her own people. Not surprisingly, Jacinda Ardern never faced the risk of getting kidnapped and “tried” by rogue militias, as Michigan’s governor did by our very own right-wing terrorists (those “very fine people” the acting president admires) when Gretchen Whitmer did her best to go Ardern on her state.
New Zealand is the exception, an island nation with natural barriers, but many other countries have been nearly as successful by being equally deferential to science, because they’ve refused to let politics drive the response, because grown-up nations don’t let a cult of personality dance on 200,000 graves. For all its colossal medical, technological and economic advantages, the United States failed that test, because we have a failure at the helm, a superspreader worried less about his own staff than about the the right camera angles catching the bulk of his next advertisement for himself. Even Narcissus wasn’t a walking biological weapon. I suspect Jacinda Ardern could run the United States by Zoom better than Trump could run so much as the Rose Garden, covid’s favorite Washington petri dish.
Speaking of endorsements, the New England Journal of Medicine has never in its 208-year history done any. It ended that tradition this week, not quite endorsing Joe Biden, but endorsing giving Donald Trump the boot, which amounts to the same thing. As the editors wrote, “Our current leaders have undercut trust in science and in government, causing damage that will certainly outlast them. Instead of relying on expertise, the administration has turned to uninformed ‘opinion leaders’ and charlatans who obscure the truth and facilitate the promulgation of outright lies…. When it comes to the response to the largest public health crisis of our time, our current political leaders have demonstrated that they are dangerously incompetent. We should not abet them and enable the deaths of thousands more Americans by allowing them to keep their jobs.”
The editorial’s indictment in the plural is the chilling caution. Trump is merely the bulky goon above the surface. Nine-tenths of Trumpism is a viral load we’re not about to be rid of no matter what happens on Nov. 3. And Joe Biden is no Jacinda Ardern. But getting this dying country to convalescence is victory enough for now.
Pierre Tristam is FlaglerLive’s editor. Reach him by email here. A version of this piece airs on WNZF Friday.
Robjr says
Pierre watch out.
The local yokel trumpsters may try to hold you hostage and make you write how great a job is being done containing the virus.
PCier says
Ha ha ha…yes, that seems to be the norm lately.
Dennis says
Your comparing apples to oranges here. Not apples to apples. Get real.
Pierre Tristam says
No, just comparing Kiwis and quacks.
A scientist says
Pierre doesn’t actually understand how science actually works – A scientist
TR says
And here’s just another example of the left doing whatever they want with a double standard on rules. Do as I say and not as I do.
No wonder there is so much division in this country. It starts at the lower levels and goes right to the House. If anyone else would have broken a rule on here they would have been punished or warned. Oh but because you are the CEO you do whatever you want. Not fair just like the rest of the left breaking the rules and no accountability to be handed down.
Just say NO says
No thanks……. I DO NOT want to live in a country under dictatorship rule like New Zealand (or Michigan). Keep trying to “tie down” Americans and you will get more of the Michigan Wolverines . Be VERY CAREFUL what you ask for. If its left-wing, it will come back and BITE YOU in the wallet and in the ass.
PCier says
Grow up please…stop this childishness with threatening tantrums. Do what is best for mankind and not just yourself.
Just say NO says
I’ll stop the childishness when Pelosi, Schumer, Schiff, Nadler, Feinstein, Waters, Harris, Biden, Cnn, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, PBS,etc. stop their childishness. Until then, I will continue to fight for my RIGHTS, CONSTITUTION, FREEDOM.
MAGA 2020
Steve says
The POTUS is the child of the Century. I guess its all in the blind eyes of the beholders. But Good luck with that MAGA thing let me know when it starts would like to be part of it. ok?
Justin Case says
Um, didn’t the author of this op-ed piece begin by insulting the POTUS with the very first sentence? Name calling and insulting people is as childish as it gets. Until everyone learns how to accept differing opinions, nothing will improve. Stealing signs from people’s yards because you don’t like that person’s choice, is illegal at best, and dangerous at worst. Maybe you get bit by a dog, maybe you get shot. Perhaps both parties suck, and we should all find NPA candidates that share our values..
Really says
So scared listen this is what is asked of you wear a mask and dont spread a virus that is lethal to many. Who knows you could die of it. Dictatorship necause of a mask and social distancing LOL
Norm says
However, New Zealand is now suffering its worst recession since 1987 due to Ardern’s extreme Covid measures. GDP shrank by 12.2% from April to June.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-54186359
Trump/Covid 2020 says
Compared to the 2nd quarter drop of 31.4% of the US, 12.2% sounds pretty good.
U.S. gross domestic product, the economy’s total output of goods and services, fell at a rate of 31.4% in the April-June quarter, only slightly changed from the 31.7% drop estimated one month ago.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/30/us-gdp-q2-2020.html
A Concerned Obsetrver says
Aw come on Pierre! As much as you and so many other left-leaning 4th-Estate colleagues thoroughly enjoy bashing President Trump at every opportunity, the difference between New Zeeland and the United States approach to dealing with the COVID-19 Pandemic is not in its leader, but in its people. Can you imagine the reaction here if our president imposed the same level of draconian restrictions imposed in other countries where the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in far fewer deaths and confirmed infections? The demonstrations would have far eclipsed the worst public outcry ever seen anywhere, to include Tiananmen Square and the Arab Spring combined! Would they have resulted in fewer infected people? Undoubtedly yes. I fear, however, the death toll from riots would have far exceeded that of this virus. The (righteous?) outcry from all camps would have resulted in a civil war of epic proportions. We have to look no further than the mirror to see who is to blame for our pandemic outcome. “We have met the enemy, and they are us…”
PCier says
Why should there be riots in the first place. Eriedicating the virus is the one thing that everyone globally wants. This should not be political. Save mankind, save our seniors, families and friends.
Trailer Bob says
There is medication for your mania.
Pierre Tristam says
Yes, the only free one in the country. Voting.
CB from PC says
Approximately 97% of U.S. population is not infected. Of those infected, approximately 3% die, many with other health complications.
Here is a reason why NZ has few cases:
“New Zealand’s population density of around 18 inhabitants per square kilometres is among the lowest in the world.”
(Roughly 30 people per square mile).
Nice try.
Pierre Tristam says
Approximately 97 percent of the US population did not die in World War II. FDR must’ve been such a putz to put the country on a war footing instead of urging us to keep on shopping.
CB from PC says
405000 U.S. deaths in WWII÷140000000 U.S. population in 1945.
= 0.0028928571
Actually approximately 99.971 per cent survived.
As a son of the Greatest Generation, I will say if anyone like Obama-Biden had been in charge on 12/7/41, we would all be goose stepping under a Rising Sun.
William J Moya says
Love it, Pierre, VOTE JACINDA. But, alas, to our disagreement, Trump is the result of a static system (the Constitution) which is for all practical purposes impossible to transform, and is aided by the Capitalist system, wrapped itself in the divine. To expect change under these circumstances without addressing the epistemological issues is an act of self delusion. We still have time to summon the American spirit to its rebirth, we were born from seditious conspiracy (something Barr conveniently forgot) but to do so will require much more than Biden, a toady that got lucky with the help of the Democratic party’s establishment. He will only exacerbate the status quo and reinvigorate Trumpism. So by all means, VOTE JACINDA.
C’mon man says
Thanks. I know who I’m not voting for now.