When Covid reached the Shores of New Zealand… Severe Lockdowns, Distancing and Masks

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When Covid reached the shores of New Zealand in 2020 and the official governmental response kicked in – a response that included mandates for severe lockdowns, distancing and masks – I noted the absence of anything regarding actual treatment for an illness whose severity ostensibly demanded such measures. It became clear to me that Prime Minister Ardern, the Director-General of Health at that time, Ashley Bloomfield, and the Ministry of Health headed by Chris Hipkins, had engineered a trajectory that was as dangerous as it was incompetent.

I began to articulate my questions and concerns through a series of letters to local media outlets, to the Prime Minister and to Parliament. Not one missive was published, nor were any of my concerns or questions addressed by the elected officials of our government. In retrospect this is not surprising, but ‘in the moment’, as it were, I was dumbfounded: surely the Dominion Post or the New Zealand Herald would have allowed the voice of a citizen compass.

The failure to respond to legitimate medical and humanitarian and political queries has now become a characteristic feature of the Corona War. When protesters from all walks of New Zealand life gathered on the grounds of Parliament in early 2021, not one single politician deigned to answer our requests for a hearing, a discussion, a debate about the mandates, which by then included a mandate to be inoculated. Not a single one would lend an ear to the citizenry.

Eventually I stopped attempting to reach the establishment outlets and the government, but I shared my missives with friends and acquaintances who subsequently sent them around and even posted them on their own alternative sites.

I believe that it is quite illustrative to present them, in sequence, for the tale they tell of an authoritarian regime bent on pushing an agenda that had little if anything to do with the actual health of the population.

The reader will note that, among other things, I warned very early on that the government’s goal of ‘zero Covid’ in New Zealand was ludicrous. Their policies of lockdowns, masks, distancing, a jab apartheid, and the neglect (and active suppression, as I will show in greater detail in a forthcoming publication) of early treatment had no rational foundation. Nonetheless, they proceeded blithely with their measures, and as I write today the country is still under the dark shadow of emergency legislation.

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1 April 2020

Is a Draconian Lockdown Necessary?

To the Editor:

Not even a week of this harsh lockdown has passed and I am already hearing from patients — I am a psychiatrist — about the terrible effects of what amounts to house detention. I am amazed that so many have accepted such a curtailment of basic freedom — with so little scientific evidence.

The more we learn about COVID19, the more we know that it is FAR LESS DANGEROUS than initially touted. And the more we are locked down, the more terrible will be the economic and emotional and human hardship: lost businesses, lost jobs, lost lives in fact, and for what?

To save a few lives that would have been similarly lost if an ordinary flu came round?  Look at the numbers, please.

It is terrifying to think that with the stroke of a pen our smiling PM can easily declare yet another emergency lockdown, perhaps seasonally when the flu hits — and people will go along…. or will they?

(unpublished letter to New Zealand’s Parliament and the Dominion Post)

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5 April 2020

Lockdown about Water Sports Unscientific and Ridiculous

To the Editor:

Just when people were beginning to breathe a sigh of anticipatory relief, as the real medical toll of COVID-19 amounts to virtually nothing, we hear that new lockdown rules forbid surfing and boating.

Why? The hospitals are empty, the percentage of COVID-19 carriers – and I use the word justly instead of the erroneous label ‘cases’— aamounts to 0.06 percent or less of the country’s population. Much needed and long-awaited surgeries are being postponed meanwhile — and for what?

It is disheartening to realise how unscientific and how damaging this lockdown is.  Japan and Sweden have taken vastly different and far more successful courses.

I hope the people who rule us and who have invoked Emergency Powers wake up.

(unpublished letter to New Zealand’s Parliament and the Dominion Post)

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15 April 2020

Concerns about the First New Zealand Lockdown 

Dear Prime Minister Ardern,

I am a psychiatrist employed by the Hutt Valley DHB, with whom I have worked for over 14 years. I am writing to express my concerns about the effects of the lockdown and isolation imposed by your emergency decrees on people generally, particularly those with mental illness. I also believe that any extended lockdown will be medically unsound from an infectious disease perspective, as it will prevent the development of natural group immunity.

People must be people: we cannot live for very long without the sustaining glow of human companionship, or the productive cooperation that employment affords. Businesses are going under, workers are losing jobs they will never recover, anxiety and depression are worsening, and for what? While we may make a daily ritual of counting Covid-related deaths and Covid carriers, the vast majority of whom are asymptomatic, will there be a similar toll of the misery that is unfolding as a result of depression, isolation, unemployment and the interruption of religious celebrations?

In summary, how many people are we actually saving from an infectious disease that is turning out, according to the most reliable statistics, to be no worse than an ordinary flu, and at what cost to our mental, emotional, economic and spiritual well-being?

Please allow me to refer you to the superb interview with a medical expert from the United States (see below), as well as the article in which other experts weigh in on COVID.

I am a dual citizen of the United States and New Zealand, by the way, and I am doing my bit during this difficult time to sustain the health of my fellow New Zealanders, as a doctor.

Sincerely,

Emanuel E. Garcia, MD

212 Experts Questioning the Coronavirus Panic
Off-Guardian, 24 Mar 2020

Perspectives on the Pandemic Episode 3: A Conversation with Dr. David L Katz concerning “Total Harm Minimization”
The Press & The Public Project, 9 Apr 2020

(unpublished letter to New Zealand’s Parliament and the Dominion Post)

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11 August 2020

New Zealand’s Covid Policy is Simply Wrong 

To the Editor:

We have all been notified that because a family of four in Auckland has been found to test positive, all of Auckland will be on Alert Level 3, and the rest of the country Level 2.

But why? Testing positive for COVID does not mean one is necessarily ill, or that one will become ill. In fact, a positive antibody test for the majority of New Zealanders would be a blessing, as it would signify natural herd immunity.

This policy of attempting to eliminate the virus is medically unsound, impossible and incomprehensible. Who is advising the Prime Minister? Who bears responsibility for the destruction of livelihoods, the death of the tourism industry and the imposition of unnecessary restrictions on our already restricted lives?

Sweden has shown the way forward, despite how a biased media have sometimes portrayed it: they have never locked down, the population has reached herd immunity, deaths from the virus are now virtually nil, as can be expected from their wise leadership.

When will New Zealand wise up? Or will our borders be virtually shut forever to outsiders in this vain quest to get rid of a natural phenomenon to which we, as citizens, should instead be developing resistance?

(unpublished letter to New Zealand’s Parliament and the Dominion Post)

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15 August 2020

Five Questions for Dr. Bloomfield and Prime Minister Ardern about COVID 

To the Editor:

Five Questions for Dr. Bloomfield and Prime Minister Ardern about COVID

1. Why are you not promoting hydroxychloroquine — a safe and inexpensive treatment and prophylactic? See this
2. How do you think you can eliminate COVID without sealing off New Zealand’s borders forever?
3. Why are you not actively promoting healthy immune systems in the citizenry (exercise, sunlight, vitamins C, D, zinc, socialising) and allowing for natural herd immunity?
4. Where is the scientific evidence that lockdowns and quarantines for the healthy have helped in any way? See this
5. How accurate and specific are the COVID testing kits?

I can understand at the beginning of the pandemic why severe measures were taken, but since more and more data have emerged enough knowledge has been gained to show that the risk posed by COVID to those who are not elderly and/or already medically compromised is minuscule.

(submitted to the New Zealand Herald on 15 August 2020 but never published)

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15 February 2021

An Open Letter to Prime Minister Ardern 

Dear Prime Minister:

Like all New Zealanders I received an emergency alert yesterday evening via my mobile informing us of your decision to impose Level 3 restrictions on the Auckland region and Level 2 restrictions on the rest of our country, as a result of the discovery of people who have tested positive for COVID.

I offer my opinions, as a physician (M.D. 1986, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine) on what I believe is a dangerously misguided policy that New Zealand has adopted towards viral infections.

Viruses will take their course throughout a population. They typically become attenuated and community immunity is eventually reached. It is impossible to ‘eliminate’ this or any other Coronavirus, of which the common cold is one. People will forever ‘test positive’, particularly given the known fallibility of the PCR testing method.

As a practicing psychiatrist I am seeing a plethora of patients who have been adversely affected by snap lockdowns and liberty-destroying restrictions that result in escalating levels of stress and depression, diminishing incomes and the losses of jobs and businesses.

Would it not be a more eminently rational approach simply to promote preventative measures, efficacious treatments and normal – not ‘new normal’ – living?

Instead of relying on measures that seek to isolate and extirpate this infectious agent, meanwhile choking off our joys, our pleasures, our economies and our hopes – why not

1. Treat those who are sick
2. Test only those who are actually sick
3. Promote the use of hydroxychloroquine/zinc and other effective therapeutics
4. Encourage the use of vitamins D and C, exercise, healthy nutrition, etc.

I fear that your administration’s approach will lead to nothing but an endless cycle of lockdowns, fear and ongoing mental and economic damage – damage that is, in essence, far greater than what is attributed to the virus. It is an approach which, I am sorry to say, is highly unscientific.

I will also point out that it is perfectly normal for people to die – from influenza, from cancer, from heart disease and many other eventualities. We will never, in my opinion, be able to eradicate death in our country, but we can certainly optimise the joy of living.

As hastily developed vaccines begin to reach our shores I encourage you to think about their role, particularly in light of the adverse effects that have already been widely reported, and in light of the efficacy of cheap and easily available treatments at our disposal.

Respectfully yours,

(aside from an automated email acknowledgement I received no response)

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29 May 2021

New Zealand’s Irresponsible Rush to “Vaccinate” 

To the Editor:

On 19 May 2021 Dr. Peter McCullough, one of the most prestigious medical scientists in the world, was interviewed by journalist John Leake. During this remarkable interview (available here), Dr. McCullough meticulously exposes the highly flawed medical response to COVID, a response in which there was a global suppression of early treatment, in violation of all medical reason and protocol, and a headlong rush to universal vaccination with experimental biological agents that have not been adequately tested for safety or efficacy.

In light of these facts New Zealand’s Ministry of Health should immediately reverse course and halt their promotion of the Pfizer injection in favour of prevention and early outpatient treatment with therapies that have been studied and shown to prevent hospitalisation and death (e.g., Ivermectin and other medicines in combination regimens about which Dr. McCullough and others have published).

In 1976, after 45 million people had been vaccinated for the Swine Flu in the United States, some 50 odd deaths occurred and these deaths were enough to stop that vaccination programme in its tracks.  Far more people have already died worldwide after administration of the COVID agents and I myself personally know of a New Zealand physician who suffered a life-threatening reaction after receiving the Pfizer injection.

I am certain that Prime Minister Ardern, should she take the time to listen and note the observations of Dr. McCullough, would necessarily conclude that the current COVID injection push is unnecessary, dangerous and highly irresponsible.

If not, will she and her government assume liability for the serious damages that have already occurred and will only multiply significantly in future as a result of her public health policies?

Sincerely,

(unpublished letter to the Dominion Post)

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27 June 2021

The Covid Injection: Letter to Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern 

Dear Prime Minister,

I implore you, as a physician, to call a halt to this reckless and unwarranted push to vaccinate New Zealanders.  As you must undoubtedly be aware, the COVID ‘vaccines’ have resulted in thousands of deaths worldwide and many thousands of adverse events.  One of my physician colleagues here in the Wellington region suffered a life-threatening event after the first of the Pfizer injections.

Surely you know about the efficacy of therapeutics such as Ivermectin, and surely you know that COVID has an infection fatality rate comparable to that of a seasonal flu.  Is there, in actual fact, any kind of emergency here in New Zealand where out of a population of five million, a minuscule percentage have been affected by the coronavirus?

Why would you advocate so relentlessly for mass inoculation of the residents of this land with an agent that has not been fully tested for safety and efficacy, an agent for which long-term studies have not been conducted?

In the name of everything medically rational, I urge you to pause, survey the mounting evidence of international concerns about the COVID ‘vaccinations’ (which, as you yourself have admitted, neither prevent infection nor transmission of the coronavirus, strangely enough), and cease and desist all attempts to inject us.

Finally, your push to extend the use of these injections to our youth — the least vulnerable to COVID — is, in my opinion, frankly criminal. As Prime Minister you are charged with safeguarding the wellbeing of our population — and this clearly unnecessary extension of an already dubious intervention demonstrates dereliction of duty.

Sincerely,

(mailed via post and emailed as well; no response except for an automated email acknowledgment)

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18 August 2021

Another Disastrous National Lockdown: Letter to Prime Minister Ardern 

Dear Prime Minister Ardern:

Another meaningless ‘positive’ coronavirus PCR test, and another national lockdown to do what –  keep healthy people imprisoned while chasing the illusion of viral elimination?  It’s time for you, Hipkins and Bloomfield to admit the utter bankruptcy of a ‘health programme’ that has no real basis in any kind of actual science because actual science shows:

1. lockdowns do nothing to prevent viral spread but they certainly heighten anxieties, destroy businesses and rend the social fabric
2. masks simply do nothing to prevent infection or transmission of viral particles that are three times smaller than the openings in them
3. the PCR coronavirus test has already been admitted by the CDC to be extremely faulty; testing ‘positive’ therefore means virtually nothing
4. natural immunity to a ubiquitous family of respiratory viruses is the greatest defence

Is there a medical emergency in New Zealand?  Has there been excess mortality worldwide from what we have been told is a ‘pandemic’?  Why aren’t the efficacious medical treatments available for them being actively promoted by our Minister of Health instead of inoculations that have caused tens of thousands of deaths worldwide and that neither prevent infection nor transmission nor are effective against emerging viral variants?

Finally, as a psychiatrist allow me to ask how many New Zealanders lost their lives to suicide over the past 18 months, and compare that number to those who have lost their lives due to COVID.

Sincerely,

(unanswered)

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19 October 2021

A Dangerous Health Strategy in Disarray: Letter to Prime Minister Ardern 

To: Prime Minister Ardern

As a physician and New Zealand citizen, I am writing in stupefied disbelief at the enormously damaging COVID policies you and your government have pursued and are continuing to pursue.  I will disregard the hubris of your contention that your Ministry of Health is the ‘single source of truth’ about COVID matters, but will instead focus on several facts.

1. the elimination of a respiratory coronavirus is not possible – as you are now grudgingly admitting
2. relying on ‘vaccines’ such as the Pfizer mRNA injection – agents that neither prevent infection nor transmission and that have resulted in enormous numbers of deaths and adverse events worldwide – is foolhardy
3. neglecting to encourage and pursue preventative measures and EARLY TREATMENT of COVID is incomprehensible

One would think that during what has been billed as the most lethal pandemic in human history the energies and enthusiasm and intelligence of Medicine and health policy would be directed towards prevention and treatment.  Highly effective and evolving protocols are already in use in other parts of the world (see this).

How can you explain the suppression and ignorance of such treatment?  How can you explain policies that are geared towards blackmailing the populace into accepting inoculations when in fact efficacious treatments are available?  How can you explain the vast ignorance of primary health practitioners about early treatment?  This omission is, in my considered opinion, nothing less than criminal.

New Zealand now finds itself in disarray. Disastrous lockdowns, the imposition of mask-wearing and distancing, none of which is based in science, are destroying human commerce and human freedom, and are conditioning us to expect the disappearance of human intimacy, love and joy in favour of endless fear and anxiety.

I sincerely hope you will reflect upon your decisions and look towards those true experts such as Dr. Peter McCullough and others for guidance out of this horrifying mess.

See this.

Sincerely,

(unanswered)

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I hope this has been an interesting excursion for the reader into the past, as we continue our battle for sanity in the present.

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Dr. Garcia is a Philadelphia-born psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who emigrated to New Zealand in 2006. He has authored articles ranging from explorations of psychoanalytic technique, the psychology of creativity in music (Mahler, Rachmaninoff, Scriabin, Delius), and politics. He is also a poet, novelist and theatrical director. He retired from psychiatric practice in 2021 after working in the public sector in New Zealand.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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