The health ministry is downplaying the highly-infectious new XBB.1.5 variant, while the Labour government continues to defend the homicidal policy of mass infection.
An Auckland-based teacher told the WSWS how his increasingly severe Long COVID symptoms were misdiagnosed by doctors who said he had mental health issues. He said the government was allowing COVID to spread and ignoring the consequences for people’s health.
In 2022 the accumulating pressure of these intersecting elements of the world capitalist crisis attained the equivalent of critical mass: that is, they have reached the point where the dynamic of crisis has passed beyond the ability of governments to control the movement toward a social cataclysm.
The war in Ukraine had long been planned by American imperialism, but the pandemic heightened geopolitical tensions and set the stage for the outbreak of the war.