The ‘Contact Tracing’ Contract
April 21, 2020
By NZB3
The State broadcaster today interviewed the State contractor (who I’m sure was paid handsomely) recruited by the Government to put an academic seal of approval on what Labour 6.0 surely desire to do regardless.The Freudian slip by the Fourth Estate is the symbol for all you need to know about the new Government program called ‘Contact Tracing’. John Campbell on TVNZ Breakfast let slip the word “contract” with reference to Dr Ayesha Verrall’s new government gig. He is not the first to do so but these incidents¹ in the ODT have since been redacted but if you look quickly enough you may still be able to see…
Dr Verrall is a Labour Party politician, elected to the Capital & Coast District Health Board in 2019. She’s also a high-flying academic Feminist who raises a young daughter with her lesbian United Nations bureaucrat partner. Those other things are on hold though as her speciality has just drawn the winning lotto ticket in terms of being useful to her political party.
In my experience, Governments cannot control science but they can control scientists. They pick out experts who already happy to think and say what the Government wishes them to think and say. If that’s you, it’s pay day. What Dr Verrall thinks and says in her Contact Tracing Draft Report….
- Expand Contact Tracing
- Hire an Expert to Plan more Contact Tracing
- Buy someone’s Contact Tracing System
- Make Special Task Forces and give them lots of money and power
- Rapidly complete Development of a Smartphone App for Contact Tracing
“At the time of writing the Ministry of Health and local developers are building a smartphone app to assist with contact tracing… First, it needs to be available quickly, piloted and continuously improved. …potential impact will not be realised unless it is acceptable to a large proportion of the population and enjoys high uptake… Less than a fifth of the Singaporean population downloaded the tracetogether app in ten days”- Ref. Contact Tracing Draft Report, Dr Ayesha Verrall; Health.govt.nzRef. also Tracetogether; NZB3
Naturally, Labour 6.0 gave this woman the Contract. I think we’ll be seeing lots more of her and less of Dr Bloomfield whose work she is ‘auditing’ and gently nudging out the way. Bloomfield, whose interview came second to Verrall’s this morning on TVNZ, gave what I thought a threatening chuckle at his counterpart’s challenge².[click image link to view video clip]
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1 I’m willing to suppose accidents were on purpose. The authors are probably annoyed with the Government enough to want to be made to change the word. Passive aggressive much?
2 Specifically to how she came up with the numbers used in her audit
Also interesting, Verral was Otago University Students’ Association president in 2001. Current Minister of Finance, Grant Robinson, had the same job in 1993
Image ref. Verrall’s election campaign blog
Update June 2020: Bloody knew it: “High Labour list place for epidemiologist“; Newsroom
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