Announcing announcement of changes sometime

Has there ever been a government as practiced at announcing announcements as this one?

Cabinet has made a decision about changing the country’s Covid-19 rules, but Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says the decision won’t be announced until Wednesday. . .

Earlier in the pandemic, it became common for these press briefings to include major announcements about alert level shifts. But ahead of Monday’s Cabinet meeting, Ardern said its decision about the future of Covid-19 restrictions wouldn’t be revealed until Wednesday.

The Government was expected to loosen Covid-19 restrictions, as the Omicron outbreak appeared to reach its peak in Auckland.

During Monday’s press conference, Ardern said the Government would detail changes to vaccine passes and mandates on Wednesday.

She said this would give everyone “plenty of time to prepare”.

“There is literally no-one that will be impacted by us taking those extra 48 hours, because the changes aren’t immediate,” Ardern said.

The two-day wait was needed, she said, to sort out orders and prepare clear information.

“Over the next 48 hours, there is some additional pieces of work we need to finalise. We will be updating guidance, preparing orders, and ironing out some final details, to ensure everything is as straightforward as possible,” she said. . .

At first glance that appears to be reasonable. A deeper look begs the question – why hadn’t all the updating, preparing and ironing out been done already?

Unless the government thought it could keep us tied up in the yellow tape of Covid restrictions forever, Ministers, their advisors and the relevant agencies would have known that sooner or later the tapes would be loosened and ought to have been preparing for that long before now.

The announcement on Wednesday would be focused on the future of the Covid-19 response rather than enacting immediate changes, Ardern said. . . 

That means that tomorrow’s announcement foretold in yesterday’s announcement wont be an announcement of impending freedom but of more of the restrictions we’ve got for who knows how much longer.

In the meantime businesses are failing, jobs are being lost, babies are missing out on the socialisation which is essential for healthy development . . .

The government and its modelers have done such a good job of keeping us fearful that there will no doubt be some who prefer the restrictions.

Even if the yellow tape was loosened some, perhaps many, would continue to do what they consider is necessary to keep themselves and others safe from infection.

How long before we get an announcement that we’ll be trusted to do that rather than carrying on with no choice and growing frustration over some of the restrictions and requirements that no longer make sense?