New Zealand’s government imposed a nationwide lockdown after a single COVID case was discovered in the country.
On Tuesday, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced that she would impose a three-day lockdown over the entire country. This was in response to the diagnosis of COVID-19 in a 58-year-old man, the first coronavirus case in the country in six months. Officials were presuming the Delta variant had infected the man, though this was unconfirmed at the time the lockdown was announced.
In addition to the three-day nationwide lockdown, the city of Auckland and the town of Coromandel, where the man had been, will be under lockdown for seven days. Furthermore, New Zealand will be under a “level 4” lockdown, the strictest lockdown under the country’s rules, meaning that only “essential services” will be available while schools, offices, and businesses are forced to close.
Announcement of the imminent lockdown prompted New Zealanders to rush to the supermarkets, while the New Zealand dollar fell significantly.
Justifying her draconian response to a single coronavirus case, Ardern claimed that “the best thing we can do to get out of this as quickly as we can is to go hard.” She also pointed to Australia, stating, “We have seen what can happen elsewhere if we fail to get on top of it. We only get one chance.”
However, there is little difference between New Zealand and Australia, where the army is helping enforce the country’s lockdown of Sydney. In both countries, there has been an unprecedented loss of freedom, all because of a virus whose average survival rate is nearly 95 percent for those over 70 and whose average death age is greater than the average lifespan.
Even before the most recent lockdown, New Zealanders had been subjected to draconian COVID policies. For example, the government had been relying on contact tracing to limit outbreaks, compromising individuals’ privacy. Additionally, in February, the government imposed another lockdown on Auckland after three coronavirus cases were reported.
Ardern, the leader of the leftist New Zealand Labour Party and the former president of the International Union of Socialist Youth, has promoted other Marxist and anti-freedom policies, ranging from imposing draconian gun control laws, censoring content on the Internet, and pushing radical pro-abortion laws.
Ardern’s premiership illustrates the consequences of electing leaders with no respect for individual freedom and natural law. Rather than submit to tyranny, pro-liberty individuals around the world must stand up for their God-given freedoms and resist COVID restrictions and other types of infringement.
