Afternoon roundup

Another long-belated closing of the browser tabs:

• Requiring MIQ for people arriving in Auckland is nonsense when the Covid-positive rate among vaccinated and test-screened arrivals is lower than the Covid-positive rate in Auckland. Labour wants to ignore it, because the status quo is the thing always to be defended against challenges from the outside; National ignores that the recommendation here also says to strengthen the defences at the Auckland boundary. See also coverage at Politik ($). It's particularly messy for travel from India.
• Getting carbon accounting right matters. So this is depressing. 
• If you didn't already read it, and I did point to it earlier this week - Jenny Ruth's story on RBNZ burying research that contradicts Adrian Orr's assertions around systematic financial sector risk from climate change. 
• Select Committee has reported back on COVID-19 Public Health Response Amendment Bill (No 2). All the bad stuff is still there. They are still letting MoH supplant ISO standards with their own worse standards. They are maintaining the ability for the government to just take testing away from private providers. Our submission on it was here. At least National and ACT said how stupid this all is. 
• Singaporeans choosing to be unvaccinated will be out of pocket for more of their Covid treatment costs
• Kate MacNamara has another shocker. Te Punaha Matatini worked to block more Covid testing in South Auckland by claiming that it would be racist to have more testing in South Auckland. They wanted that relatively scarce testing resources be devoted to symptomatic testing rather than broad surveillance testing where it looked like there were undetected cases. You may recall my yelling around that time about getting more testing capacity, thinking about rapid antigen tests, finally getting Rako's saliva testing rolled out everywhere.
• The government will finally have some AstraZeneca available for those with allergies relevant to the Pfizer vaccine, and for workers under vax mandates who just don't like mRNA. I don't understand why this has to be so restrictive. AZ holds in fridges for a long time. Just make it broadly available. If that's the vax someone will take, it has to be better than their remaining unvaccinated. 
• The scrap between MoH and the folks who could actually get vaccines out in Northland continues. MoH doesn't want to give individual-level data to one agency. And one can imagine good reasons for that, especially if there are local iwi objections. But I'd wonder whether MoH couldn't give fine-grained meshblock detail on vax rates. Like, "Here are the census meshblocks in your area where less than half of the eligible population is vaccinated. If you go fishing there, you'll likely catch some." 
• Too many people still see climate change as a "We have to transform all of society into the vision I have for what good looks like". Like read this on urban planning and transport. It totally makes sense for councils to think hard about what a $100/tonne carbon price would mean for transport demand and how to build the infrastructure that people will want when the price gets there. But this isn't that. Turn GHG mitigation policy into some demand that everyone buy in to particular versions of urbanism, and you're not gonna build support for mitigating emissions.
• Sadly, I'll soon get to start pointing at NZ data rather than Alberta data on vaccines and Covid risks. The Spinoff's been tracking it. It's still not as good as Alberta data, because they won't have as fine-grained official data to work from. But it does show very clearly the overrepresentation of the unvaccinated in hospitalised cases, and the underrepresentation of the fully vaccinated. 
• The government had well over a year to prepare for the Covid outbreak. They spent it cheering themselves for having defeated Covid rather than preparing for what would be needed if it ever did get out. A few months ago, even suggesting that it was gonna get out and that obvious holes needed fixing was considered treasonous. And now, just look at this mess. 
• In a just world, this move would make it easier for older people to move to New Zealand. 
• NZ remains relatively unpolarised.