In her first speech to parliament Jacinda Ardern promised her government would be the most open and transparent in history.
I’m unsure why she made this promise. I don’t recall there being a massive hysteria in New Zealand about the secretive and closed nature of the previous government. Perhaps there was and I just didn’t see it. Perhaps she meant it then, but then the realities of power forced her hand to something different. In any case this Stuff reporter does not agree.
From the recent allegations of the Labour MP Gaurav Sharma nor does he.
These allegations bought to mind my mixed experience with Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. As you can see from the RNZ article on Sharma, the media seem far more concerned about “bullying” then the whole “MP’s trying to lie to the people they are supposed to represent” thing. Freedom of Information requests are supposed to be a powerful tool to counteract this.
I never made a freedom of information act request before covid. But the largest over reaction in human history required me do something, anything really, in an attempt to make sense of nonsense. It wasn’t much but hey, two months in lockdown gave me time to do a bit of research on the “threat” of covid.
And it didn’t take long to get more than a little sniff of panic, hysteria and bugger all science.
I don’t know how many people remember the Diamond Princess. It was a perfect natural experiment for covid. An isolated, enclosed place where most of the passengers were old while most of the crew were young. This was at a time when the hysteria was beginning to really ramp up (Feb 2020). Not a lot was known so it was not unreasonable to be wary. But it was also not unreasonable to be sceptical.
And which gets more clicks?
From the start it seemed to be a disease that badly affected the elderly and the frail while largely passing the young by. And the Diamond Princess confirmed this. In an enclosed space, with a predominantly older population 14 people died out of 712 infections. That gives a mortality rate of 2% which is admittedley alarming except there are plenty of “buts” to that data.
For instance, in the wikipedia article the age of the passengers is not given accurately for some reason. Three of the deaths aren’t even given an age!! These are people travelling on a cruise ship, around the world. They would have to have passports you would think and a passport allows you to quickly calculate someone’s age. And given this was an excellent natural experiment you would think that there would be high level detail especially given it’s relationship to a potentially catastrophic situation. Wouldn’t you?
Gaping gaps in important studies makes me suspicious.
So we have to make a few assumptions. Let’s assume all the cases were picked up. And that all of the deaths were from covid. Lets be generous to the fear brigade and also assume that all the people listed as “in their 70’s” were all 70 and the same for the other groups and exclude the people who have no age (or are of infinite age).
This gives an almost certainly too low average age of death of 74.45 years old.
It also seems that the supposedly super infectious covid virus didn’t seem to infect too many people. Less than 20% of all of the people on the ship were infected. So much for an R0 of 3.
None of the (younger) crew died and they got infected at a much lower rate then the passengers. All without masks, social distancing, arrows telling you which way to walk, experimental vaccines and with the virus circulating for some time before anyone realised, in a location highly geared for socialisation and very much enclosed.
This did not seem to be the super infectious, super deadly virus that it was made out to be.
What has this got to do with my FOIA?
Not much exactly. It is more a framework to understand how a normally apolitical person could be roused up enough to try demand some answers from the clowns running the place.
This is part one. Here I will show how easy it is for those clowns to legitimately reject giving those answers and how the process is badly rigged in their favour (not necessarily unreasonably). Given the disastrous outcomes from the covid over response this is something we should worry about.
In part two I will show how not only do the political class try and hide stuff but so do the people who work in out institutions.
I am not a scientist. I am not an expert. I am a moderately intelligent, moderately educated average sort of a person. I do not have access to university labs, or super computers, or grad students or attend conferences. I don’t have a phd.
Yet, just using the internet, some basic math and some common sense I was able to see that the truth of covid was not “unprecendented pandemic” but closer to “unprecedented loss of shit”. Perhaps it was not “nothing to worry about” (although unless you are obese, over 75, severely immunocompromised and carrying at least a couple of serious comorbidites it isn’t really) but it certainly wasn’t the complete and utter batshit crazy over response we have witnessed. As always the truth will be somewhere in between but clearly, obviously, undeniably it is closer to “not much to see here”, then “you or your loved ones might realistically die”. Do you know anyone who has died from covid? Probably not. Just like you probably don’t know anyone who has died of flu.
Anyho.
Following the Diamond Princess the hysteria continued to build steam. Italy was a horror story; even though it wasn’t it just has one of the oldest populations in Europe. The word unprecedented began to be over used. The media focused on things that looked scary on the outside like tent hospitals in central park without contextualising that focus by mentioning LA resembling a “war zone” US hospitals setting up……tent hospitals in carparks, during the 2017 flu season. Nor did they bother to add that the tent hospitals were barely used. Or that, tragically over 60% of deaths in New York were in care homes, where the local idiot in charge, had sent very vulnerable hospitalised elderly, recovering from covid, back to their care homes to spread amongst equally or more vulnerable what is to them, a very dangerous illness.
Nope we got none of that. It was “The Covid” like “The Plague” and it was coming for all of us.
And so the powers that be in this country aided by relatively like Siouxsie Wiles began to think “drastic times call for drastic measures”.
Especially after those fine, honest, reputable, non genocidal, general GC’s of the Chinese Communist Party had “totally stopped covid” in its tracks in Wuhan earlier in the year, by locking everyone in their homes in defiance of everything we had learned about trying to control epidemics but keeping exactly in line with dictatorial control freak governments that we obviously don’t like, or we would live in China wouldn’t we?
“Alas no, good New Zealanders” cried Michael Baker, we should do what the CCP do because it’s not like they don’t lie through their fucking teeth about anything that makes the CCP look bad. Or good.
So our conversation got dominated by dumb and dumber and these two fearful people were sprayed over the media endlessly. And they were right onboard with China. And lockdowns. And modelling. And any pseudoscience they could dig up to maintain their new found limelight.
And then one March day we had this speech. Where Jacinda Ardern revealed herself to be a great “communicator” with very little grasp of science, very poor judge of character and very little idea about how the world works generally.
I’m sure many of us remember that speech and have various memories of this little shared moment of insane zeitgeist.
Listening to the speech in an increasingly stunned manner, it was instantly alarming the way she took epidemic modelling which is truly awful and completely useless for any sort of predictive value and then used this child-like pseudoscience to make the statement that:
If that happens unchecked, our health system will be inundated, and tens of thousands New Zealanders will die.
There is no easy way to say that – but it is the reality we have seen overseas – and the possibility we must now face here.
This part of her speech was when I realised we were in a lot of trouble. Not because of the words themselves, they are bollicks. But because she was saying these words to justify some truly crazy behaviour.
Firstly what she was saying was not a reality that had been seen elsewhere. Sweden as of today has just over 20k covid deaths with twice our population. But more baffling to me was where did she get that “tens of thousands” number from? And where did she get the certainty to say “will die”.
“Will” is a statement of certainty. Not “could”, “may” or “might”. But will. Great communicators must think about this stuff right?
How could she be so certain based on the chicken-entrail-reading-woo-woo that is epidemic modelling? Did she have some special knowledge she wasn’t sharing? “Tens of thousands” are a lot of deaths. This just wasn’t happening even in the places that were being “hit hard”. To me “tens of thousands” must mean at least 20 001 right? That means if every single person in the country got covid you’d have a mortality rate of 0.4% which is 4 times average flu….which maybe wasn’t too far off…….but would require everyone in the country to catch covid in a period of a month or so! This didn’t seem likely to me and it sure as shit wasn’t happening overseas.
Then we started to see hints of, well, bullshit modelling. Imperial College London’s Neil Fergusson was the figurehead of modelling. His pesudoscientific waffle based on terrible code, bad assumptions and a general hubristic idea that you can actually predict something as complex as a pandemic with any sort of accuracy was getting a hard time in some places. Not nearly enough and too late, but still. It was becoming ovbvious that epidemic modelling was pretty shit and was a pretty terrible basis for making any sort of decision. The top guys in the business had an awful track record getting things wrong by orders of magnitude and more.
So that “tens of thousands will die statement” it stuck with me. It grated on me.
Here was possibly one of the most consequential speeches in New Zealand history. A speech that would see us lose various democratic rights, wipe out our largest industry over night, hurt our children and our poor, and put our nation into tens of billions of dollars of debt.
It was given by a person who, by that stage, was being heralded as some sort of communication guru. A person who chose her words carefully, and precisely and formulated them into a simple coherent narrative that told us all what we needed to do.
So that speech must have been a function of those careful words. It must have had input from various advisors. She must have been getting advice from various “experts”. And with that advice she had come up with a draconian action that was not supported by any real science or data, while stating drastic future outcomes as if they were facts.
From the New Zealand media? Crickets. From the opposition? Fatter crickets. No one was pushing her on this. How the hell do you make a speech with outcomes as drastic as the first lockdown and use “facts” like “tens of thousands of people will die” and not get challenged in ANY MEANINGFUL FUCKING WAY by anyone in media, opposition or barely anywhere in public?
This demanded action. Unfortunately of an inept kind!
So on 5th of May 2020 I sent a FOIA request to the office of the Prime Minster. In it I asked too many things. I was too broad, I was inexperienced and this sort of thing requires a bit of nuance to get results. But I had been wating for months for someone to ask these questions. And although angry, I still had faith in the idea that the political system is ultimately there to serve us, the demos, and that acts like the FOIA were set up to protect us from despots, idiots and zealots.
I no longer have that faith. Covid has broken many things.
So I wrote:
I would like to request information on what advice the Prime Minister took on the decision to put the nation into lockdown. In particular correspondence between the Prime Minister and her Director of Health, her Minister of Health and her Minister of Finance as well as advice from external experts. I would like to see all guidance she gave on the writing of her speech of the 23rd March 2020 (announcing entry into level four lockdown) with her speech writer (if she has one) in particular the wording around thousands dying, and health system being inundated. Also any other advice she took on the wording of that speech from any other parties on March the 23rd 2020.
I would also like information on any advice she received from Professor Nick Wilson and Professor Michael Baker.
I would like to see the modelling and reports on the covid outbreak as presented to the Prime Minister before the decisions to enter level 4 lockdown as well as similar information on the decision to enter level three.
I would like to see advice taken by the Prime Minister, on the decision to enter lockdown and the decision to enter level three from experts outside the realm of epidemiology and public health. For instance economists, social scientists of any sort, mental health experts, crowd behavioural experts, education experts, defense experts etc.
I would like to see any criticism or questions the PM made of any of the modelling that was presented to her.
Finally I would like information on any discussions the Prime Minister had either directly, or on behalf of her, with representatives of the national media regarding the 50 million dollar media bailout.
Too much. I should have just focused on the speech and the tens of thousands claim. It’s a big claim, used to make a massive decision…..you would hope there was strong scientific rigour behind it and it should not be unreasonable for someone to ask where that claim comes from. You would have thought the media would grill the shit out of it…..
So, I asked too much which is a bit unreasonable considering the amount of requests they get but also it makes it easier for them to answer more generally and with less potentially embarrassing detail.
But how would I know this? I’m a non politician who typically does not have much to do with the state if I can avoid it.
It also turned out the Department of the Prime Minister and the cabinet was not the right place to send an FOIA for the Prime Minister. Bit weird right, given the name says it’s her department, but hey what ever. So on the 15th of May they transferred the request to her personally. However all they told me was that it had been transferred.
So on 11th June I emailed them again asking where it had been transferred to, and how I would follow up.
The next day, I recieved an email with this letter attached as reference:
FOIA request have a limit of 20 working days. If they have to be transferred, the time limit is reset.
By 12th of June I had not heard anything which was 23 days, so I followed up and was told by one of Jacinda’s secretarys that there was a public holiday in that time and it was working days.
Rookie error Tim. Just one of many. But all goods. Because I am actually a rookie.
Anyway that made the due date for a response June the 15th:
On the 22nd June I finally received my response. Five days later then required, but you know, shits going down and like all good kiwis I’m strongly ingrained with politeness and not wanting to make a big fuss……even when I’m in the process of trying to actually make a fuss. We are a funny tortured little people, at times.
From the government wanting to be the most open in history it seemed a bit of a whitewash to say the least. It came from Raj Nahna, Arderns chief of staff and a somewhat shadowy figure that no one seems to know anything about but at the same time is one of the most powerfull people in the country.
I don’t know if Ardern ever read this request. I don’t really know who Raj is, nor does anyone else seem to. Certainly no one voted for him. He prefers to take care of problems and not distract the limelight…..which sounds like the heroic and selfless servant every leader needs. But at the same time shouldn’t we have a pretty good idea of who the people are, that we didn’t vote for, but that kind of run the country for the people we did vote for?
The first parts he crapped on because “too much work”. Not unreasonable. It was a dumb question with too much going on. An easy dodge:
The next part was rejected on grounds that I have more issue with:
My question here is very specific. Paraphrasing, I asked “where the fuck did she get this idea that tens of thousands of people will die?”
It was then, and it is now, a perfectly legitimate question and it has still never been answered despite the monumental cost of the policy. We don’t even have a Royal commision. Nothing.
And why did Raj reject this part of the request?
Because, apparently people who give advice to the governement should be kept secret otherwise they might not give more advice. This is not Raj this is a failure in the Act, it allows the refusal of information based on the fact that it might stop people from giving advice in the future.
I have a massive, massive problem with this. If you are going to give advice to the government, than the public should be able to see that advice if they ask for it. If you are worried that your advice will upset people….don’t give it. If you know that there is a chance that your advice to a politician may become public than it should be good advice that you can defend should it not? Otherwise you can just say any old shit like, I dunno, tens of thousands of people might die if we don’t do this thing we have just made up in the last couple of months?
Don’t we want our public officials to be only receiving good advice that the advisor stands by? Aren’t we going to get better advice if the person thinks there is at least a possibility of the advice being seen by a wider audience.
Doesn’t Democracy die in the dark?
This part should be stripped from the act. It does not serve the public good in anyway, it covers the arses of people advising politicians on matters that may be of grave impact to the public. It also covers the politicians arse for chosing to listen to people who give crap advice.
While it’s not Raj’s fault it’s there, it was a useful tool for him to fob me and anyone else off.
“Sorry Tim, can’t tell you Michael Baker advised us to do this because he is an absolute sissy and you might make him cry”
Note that he says there is no public interest in this outrageous statement that our Prime Minister seems to have made up. It’s seems to me to be problematic that a person not actually voted for by the public, who serves someone who occupies a party that only about half of the nation voted for, gets to decide what is in everyones interest to know.
The reply goes to five pages. In it Raj does not give me any information that is not publicly available. For instance when I ask if Ardern ever offered any critique of the information she was receiving (particularly modelling):
Let’s be clear. He wouldn’t tell me because Jacinda needs people to be able to give her advice which she may criticise in private or in person, but no one else should know about that because the advisor might get hurt feelings and not offer any advice ever again.
Which again comes back to the point….if the advice is good then the advisor has nothing to worry about. If they are giving shit advice that turns out to be terrible why should the public care if that advisor refuses to give advice in the future?
And I would think it is very much in the public interest to know what reservations our Prime Minister might have had about one of the biggest decisions in the countries history. We should know who told her what. We should know whether she grilled these people or not. We should know if there was swearing or shouting, or if Michael Baker started crying again.
Because currently in spite of the fact that a gowing number of even mainstream outlets are beginning to say “you know that lockdown thing that may or may not have saved a few lives, it certainly has fucked a lot of shit up in the time since”, we don’t even have a public enquiry into New Zealands lockdowns. There is plenty in the published literature showing lockdowns had a pretty neglible effect on covid (largely because working from home and banning large indoor activites had already impacted covid about as much as you can) some 400 odd of those studies are listed here. Yet Wiles and Baker and Ardern and all the other who have a lot to lose given how great they have made lockdowns out to be, happily talk about a parallel universe where we were all saved by these clumsy, over bearing, repeated interventions. And your average chump New Zealander still believes them.
Have we become like Germany, post war? Almost everyone went along with this. There was little criticism. When I was saying these things in March 2020….well it was hard to say these things. I was a madman raving into the storm. Everyone was sure lockdowns worked and were neccessary because the government and our media and a few “experts” repeated this lie so many times, it became the truth. In 2020, throughout the Western World, a majority of society acted like fools. They let their fear engulf them.
So perhaps now there is no apetite for an enquiry that might make everyone, top to bottom, look a bit stupid.
So perhaps everyone just pretends. That lockdowns work well, that they were neccessary and that the costs out weigh the benefits.
Which is almost certainly not true, if you read just 10 of those 400 odd studies.
The covid response has been an unmitigated disaster. The way it was handled, the theories, the modelling, the suspension of rights, the mandates, the lockdowns, the masks, the “science”, much of it was terrible.
But possibly the worst aspect has been the complete control of information and the way media, politicians, regulatory bodies and various NGO’s have gone along with it completely. The “one source of truth” was not challenged by the media, opposing political parties or virtually anyone. And the internet that was meant to set information free was censored up the wazoo (and still is) by a bunch of dysfunctional, fearfull dorks in Silicon Valley.
What chance for society if it’s elected leader can give a speech, heralding such consequential events, but critical points in the speech reamin completely shrouded in mystery. Figures are made up out of thin air, and when anyone tries to challenge it with the one weapon they have (a Freedom of Information request) it is effortlessly batted away without offering a single sentence of information.
Sure my questions were inept. Sure politicians are busy and we can’t have everyone just doing FOI requests all the time.
But lockdowns have been shown to be a disaster, while covid has been shown to be not much at all. Was I the one lone genius who was going to show them up and save the world?
Of course not.
But is Ardern a great leader? Are Wiles or Baker brilliant scientists? Should we be chastened by fear?
Of course not.
If we must pick a single important lesson from this mess it must be that our systems need to be more open. Leaders, not just here but everywhere have hidden behind “experts” who don’t seem to have much expertise. What the hell does expert mean when someone like Siouxsie Wiles is described as such, a failed scientist, who tries to blame her mediocrity on sexism and the fact that she sacrificed her career to move to tin pot New Zealand. Our leaders have used emotional blackmail, snake oil science, “messaging”, nudging, every controlling trick in the book to make us afraid of other countries, afraid of each other, afraid of a virus very much comparable to viruses we encounter winter after winter for as long as we have existed.
One of the early cries of the internet was that information wants to be free. Yet government decisions, government advisors, regulatory bodies, giant international corporations, and the internet itself, supressed debate, hid and distorted data, vilified any who challenged the status quo, and made an absolute cock up out of this whole thing. Much of their decisions have, at best, done nothing and more often than not probably made things worse. Society is measurably worse off.
The only solutiuon I can see is to let the sunlight into all of it. Let people argue and debate and drag decisions, bloodied and battered into action. Protect freedom of speech. Protect the bill of rights. Strengthen the FOIA. Put it all in the open and let us hash it out in the open and may the best argument win.
It may be a bit ugly. Impolite. People might end up with dirty hands. It won’t stop wrong decisions or people saying and doing stupid things.
But at least it will be honest. And at least we will all know where we stand.