Hipkins: 5-11 year old roll-out ‘safe and necessary’, MIQ changes announced

Minister of Health Chris Hipkins yesterday announced a suite of changes agreed to by Cabinet in response to the Omicron variant’s arrival in New Zealand.

Hipkins was joined by Dr. Ian Town, Chief Science Advisor for the Ministry of Health and Dr. Danny De Lore, Paediatrician.

In announcing the roll-out for children aged 5-11, Hipkins said this was ‘necessary and safe.’ This contradicts the opinion of Dr. Robert Malone (and other leading world scientists), a key scientist in the development of mRNA vaccines, who did not regard the mRNA vaccines as safe, ‘particularly for children.’

• Omicron – the most transmissible variant yet. It is now in more than 70 countries around the world and was detected in New Zealand last week.
• Every case coming into our borders will be the Omicron variant.
• Our immediate job right now must be to slow it down.

Cabinet has agreed to a ‘suite of precautionary measures’:

• Timeframe for people to get their Pfizer boosters reduced from six months to four months. Shorter timeframe will start in early January.
• Where workers are required to be vaccinated, this mandate will now also extend to booster doses. Border and health workers initially, then all other mandated workers by the 1st of March.
• Date for self-isolation for those travelling from Australia pushed back to the end of February.
• Requirement for travellers to return a negative pre-departure test will reduce from 72 hours to 48 hours before departure.
• Managed isolation extended to 10 days with a negative day 9 test.
• Vaccination roll-out for 5-11 years will begin on 17 Januaru 2022.
• While vaccination of children will always be choice made by parents, in the interests of our ‘collective safety’ and vulnerable members like grandparents, vaccination is important.
• Vaccination of 5-11 year old is ‘safe and necessary’.
• In the event of a community case of Omicron, the traffic light system will be used first. To slow the spread, the red setting may be used earlier on in order to try and slow that spread. No intention to move to lockdowns unless it is absolutely necessary to stop the spread of a widespread outbreak, where our health system comes under considerable strain, and our overall health risk becomes too much to bear. But even then any lockdowns are to be highly targeted.

This week, Neil Oliver of GBNews interviewed Dr. Robert Malone, one of the key scientists in the development of mRNA vaccines. Malone is a well-known critic of the mRNA vaccine roll-out and pandemic response. Oliver asked Malone if he thought these vaccines were safe.

Malone replied:

‘I do not regard them as safe, particularly in children. The risk/benefit ratio is completely upside down. More children will die from these vaccines than will be saved.

The data are quite clear. I have always held two key positions. The vaccine should be reserved for those at highest risk of this disease. I have not said they shouldn’t be used. I have said they should be reserved. We should not have universal vaccination, we should absolutely not have vaccine mandates. That is, in my opinion, illegal and grossly immoral, based on the Nuremburg Code, the Common Rule, the Helsinki Accord.

We do not have adequate disclosure, and unfortunately, as the data have emerged increasingly, I’m increasingly forced into a position where I’m not even sure if they have a merit for those at highest risk. Particularly given that we have therapeutic drug strategies that work, that keep people out of the hospital. And if that wasn’t enough, the data with Omicron is creating an even greater imbalance between risk and benefit.’