I'm confused by the negativity here. The guy's child is not okay. Me being a nobody could get a special visa to visit Germany from India on requesting.
Of course, if someone wants to visit a country for an HCP of their choice they should be allowed to.
You're confused by the fact that people are fed up with various elites pushing for restrictive policies, then routinely bypassing and ignoring those policies when it comes to their personal lives? What is so confusing here?
This is a medevac flight and Auckland is the closest major city to where he was located. It's not clear that he's being treated differently than other people would be in the same situation.
If the guy was going there for a vacation, yes I would 100% agree with your sentiment. But from the story it sounds like his son had to be medivaced from Fiji.
Since this is a medical emergency I would imagine that they would grant this to whoever, not just Page.
Never take a statement from Larry Page that his kid is sick and he needs to move to NZ at face value. Larry has a long history of exploiting the law to get what he wants. Also, he could have returned to the US, it's not like flying to NZ suddenly saved his kid where going to the US couldn't have.
His presence in Fiji was already controversial as he entered Fiji via his wealth, even as the country closed its borders to traditional travelers. It was on the basis of
"medical donations" as reported by the press.
Nobody here would want to endanger the life of a 12 year old and hopefully his child is doing fine now.
It has been reported by the press, several times, he was spending most his time at the remote Island of Tavarua with both a 12 year and another child of 10:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tavarua
The main resort there will ask you to sign this waiver who says between other things:
"...I understand that the Island of Tavarua is a remote, undeveloped island. Further, I understand that the Released Parties do not provide medical services and that medical facilities do not exist on the Island of Tavarua. If I am injured, I understand that I will have to be transported to mainland Fiji to receive medical services and that the Released Parties do not provide such transportation..."
The main issue is that the NZ government, under the excuse of privacy, did not make it clear if this was really an emergency and his child needed urgent medical care,
or just needed medical care not available at Fiji
and a billionaire could not be bothered to return back to his country or to Australia who had easier entry requirements, and was roughly at the same distance.
The fact that it was a air medvac that not says much. It was not disclosed if it was an airplane with special medical facilities or just Larry Page private jet. It was only mentioned a request was received January 11, 2021
no comment on how much time it took to approve it and when the flight actually happened.
I am sure any journalist worth it's salt should be able to track easily any medvac Auckland - Fiji flights on
11, 12 or later days. If the flight happened a few days after the approval, then it was just planned medical care not available in Fiji.
If he really loves Fiji so much, maybe he can help
donate an Hospital, sounds like they really
need it, and its probably pocket change:
“The day after the application was received, a New Zealand air ambulance staffed by a New Zealand ICU nurse-escort medevaced the child and an adult family member from Fiji to New Zealand,” https://apnews.com/article/technology-lifestyle-travel-new-z...
Willing to wait extra 24 hours instead of flying straight to Australia, doesnt sound like emergency.
A bit speculative, agreed...for an armchair detective with a brandy on the hand... It matches the only airplane from Air Ambulance companies in NZ, that went out of NZ direction Fiji that day and returned to Auckland the next day from the corresponding direction. ADSB gets lost after a little bit over the ocean so not 100% sure final destination or origin. Really a wonderful place for billionaires to disappear from the common gents.
This story is awful, but you should also know that Trev Ponting's application decision was reversed 24 hours after this made headlines. Yes, it should absolutely have been approved in the first place, but he made it home to Christchurch in February and passed away in April.
This doesn't seem like a fair comparison. The person in the article you posted was terminally ill and wanted to return for personal reasons. Based on the posted article, Page is seeking medical care for his child that cannot be provided in Fiji. In fact, the article explicitly mentions that New Zealand has two separate categories in which both incidents explicitly fall under. Page's case is category 1 while the man in your article is in category 2 based on my reading.
I can see why there is a difference between being medevacked (accompanying a minor child with a medical need) and someone who wants to see their family and friends before they pass away (tragic, but not an urgent medical need).
>"New Zealanders stranded overseas who are desperate to get home deserve answers."
Is New Zealand not even allowing their own citizens to return to their home country?
Either way, as rich as he is; allowing a sick child to enter any country for emergency medical treatment is always the right thing to do in my books.
The whole point of the covid restrictions is to save lives, and they could very well have just save his son's life for all we know.
I am sure that the medevac paramedics and the hospital he was treated in took all of the right precautions to prevent him from spreading covid in New Zealand.
> Is New Zealand not even allowing their own citizens to return to their home country?
Only the rich ones, same for Australia. At least NZ is still letting people leave the country. The behaviour of both countries during this has put them near the bottom of the list for places I'd ever want to go to.
If New Zealand is like Australia, I wouldn't say it's only for the rich ones but you do need to be middle class because the flight costs + hotel costs are obscene. But you don't need to be a millionaire or a celebrity or anything like that.
I'm a NZ citizen living overseas and it's currently impossible to fly home over the new year because of limited mandatory quarantine locations.
The booking system is flawed in a way that scalpers have already dominated supply and are selling slots for thousands of dollars, reinforcing that NZ is becoming increasingly unaffordable for typical people.
I believe there was plenty of time to fly home before the MIQ was put in place. (I was told about MIQ when I went to vote). However, yeah, I've never seen open spots on the MIQ.
According to the article, he has been "based" there. It doesn't seem like a vacation, so much as a place to isolate. Is it fair that Larry Page gets to go to Fiji to isolate while the rest of us are at home? No. But it's not exactly irresponsible either (from a health perspective).
My daily anxieties are "I need to find time to make dinner/shop.", "I need to fit in a run into this crazy day.", "Do I have enough money for retirement?", "My co-workers are stressing me out.", "Can I get this project done on time?"
I literally can't think of a common daily anxiety or frustration that would not just evaporate if I was a retired multi-billionaire.
"And, for an instant, she stared directly into those soft blue eyes and knew, with an instinctive mammalian certainty, that the exceedingly rich were no longer even remotely human."
"More simply, satire serves to remind those who’ve placed themselves above us that they, like us, shit and they, too, will die." [1]
The super-rich aren't gods, they just have something people want. However rich Bezos was, his junk is still on the internet for anyone to go see, so money really can't solve everything.
An unusual life path leads to a unique experience: A life of a professional politician, or an olympic sportsmen, or a Nobel laurate might look very different from a life of an ordinary person. But saying the "human condition" is diffetent? Let me disagree, I think it's too much-- all people all Earth have the same basic condition: sometime we are happy, we suffer, fight addictions, look for purpose, struggle, experience betrayal, overwork, worry for kids, look for a significant other, get disappointed, get excited... that is just like the rest
Super rich people have the same phone as me. They got the same vaccine as me. The same flue as everyone else can knock them down every winter. On average their kids die with the same frequency and for the same reasons as mine.
Once you get a decent salary utity of money decreases badly.
I find this story to be mainly sad. Larry Page had a 12 year old son that was sick enough that a 1500 mile medivac seemed like the best option. New Zealand is somehow shut tight enough that this shouldn't have been possible. I think regular people SHOULD be able to medivac to western medical care during medical emergencies, even during pandemics. I feel bad for the New Zealanders that their government went to such isolationist extremes that this could even be in the news.
Apparently not sick enough to consider immediate flight extra 500 miles to Sydney, but instead wait an extra day. Oh and as a coincidental bonus he was able to complete his residency application and receive it right away.
“The day after the application was received, a New Zealand air ambulance staffed by a New Zealand ICU nurse-escort medevaced the child and an adult family member from Fiji to New Zealand,” https://apnews.com/article/technology-lifestyle-travel-new-z...
> Larry Page had a 12 year old son that was sick enough that a 1500 mile medivac seemed like the best option.
Best option for whom? It is entirely possible that the child wasn't especially sick and could have been treated in Fiji, but paranoid billionaire parents didn't believe that Fijian medical care was good enough.
The fact is we don't know and likely never well. I have no doubt though that billionaires are given privileges that are supposedly not for sale.
There are countless measures that could be taken that would arguably save just as many if not more lives, but we (collectively) don't believe they're worth it. Many people also believe that the things NZ and AU have done to battle Covid are not worth it.
Hard to say. They're obviously still very isolated--which they presumably can't do forever. But they were able to wait things out until a vaccine was developed (elsewhere) though their vaccine rates are still pretty low.
Clearly you haven't been denied at a border last year when trying to visit your fiance or sick loved one only to watch the celebrities and super-rich breeze through borders as if lock-downs don't even exist. I had to experience that last year, and it hurts to watch this double standard.
There's been other regular people admitted in NZ despite the pandemic. The "Gone with the Wynns" sailing channel is an example, their boat being in need of repairs they couldn't get in the Kingdom of Tonga.
The reports you linked measure "access and equity and outcomes" - i.e., averaged cost-effectiveness for people who rely on popular insurance programs, rather than paying out of pocket.
US scores poorly in those due to high sticker prices; the quality available for those who can afford is the best in US; both for specialist rare cases and for mundane cases.
I don't think CNN is what we should use as "evidence".
If you look at any of the research, the US has effectively the same survival rate of an emergency admission or elective surgery as the rest of the world (within a small margin).
This doesn't even control other items such as age, violence, body weight, pre-existing conditions, etc etc. Arguably the U.S. has a bigger issue with weight, which would indicate the U.S. healthcare system may be slightly more robust.
I'm not saying it's perfect, but I'd avoid diving into political leaning pundits -- common wealth fund and CNN are both political pundits. Looking at the raw data it is not as clear.
> Most western countries have better healthcare system than the US, New Zealand included.
Canadian here. The AVERAGE Canadian's health care is MUCH better than the average American's.
But the best hospitals and the best healthcare in the world is in the US ... if you can afford it. Most of our multi-millionaires and billionaires go to the US for anything critical.
If rumours are true and he and his family have been doing that because of Covid that is a very stupid strategy, especially coming from a billionaire. First of all because in medical emergencies you have to travel 1000+ miles to the closest decent hospital (or to the hospital that can save your child's life), even if you have the fastest jet always on call that takes time.
And second, apart from living in the middle of Siberia [1] or in the Amazon jungle with literally no contact with anyone, believing that you won't get Covid in Fiji because it's more isolated is just a wrong premise. Unless they are airlifted all your supplies get, well, supplied to you via direct human contact, no matter how much you try just one small slip/moment of not paying attention can make the difference between being infected and not being infected. And if you do get infected it's better to be located close to a hospital, not literally on an island in the middle of the Pacific.
Readit News
Of course, if someone wants to visit a country for an HCP of their choice they should be allowed to.
Since this is a medical emergency I would imagine that they would grant this to whoever, not just Page.
Nobody here would want to endanger the life of a 12 year old and hopefully his child is doing fine now.
It has been reported by the press, several times, he was spending most his time at the remote Island of Tavarua with both a 12 year and another child of 10: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tavarua
The main resort there will ask you to sign this waiver who says between other things:
"...I understand that the Island of Tavarua is a remote, undeveloped island. Further, I understand that the Released Parties do not provide medical services and that medical facilities do not exist on the Island of Tavarua. If I am injured, I understand that I will have to be transported to mainland Fiji to receive medical services and that the Released Parties do not provide such transportation..."
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/58f5426737c581de8a8d7...
The main issue is that the NZ government, under the excuse of privacy, did not make it clear if this was really an emergency and his child needed urgent medical care, or just needed medical care not available at Fiji and a billionaire could not be bothered to return back to his country or to Australia who had easier entry requirements, and was roughly at the same distance.
The fact that it was a air medvac that not says much. It was not disclosed if it was an airplane with special medical facilities or just Larry Page private jet. It was only mentioned a request was received January 11, 2021 no comment on how much time it took to approve it and when the flight actually happened.
I am sure any journalist worth it's salt should be able to track easily any medvac Auckland - Fiji flights on 11, 12 or later days. If the flight happened a few days after the approval, then it was just planned medical care not available in Fiji.
If he really loves Fiji so much, maybe he can help donate an Hospital, sounds like they really need it, and its probably pocket change:
"UN's Fiji medical evacuation flight unfair, says human rights advocate" https://www.stuff.co.nz/tarana/125963687/uns-fiji-medical-ev...
Willing to wait extra 24 hours instead of flying straight to Australia, doesnt sound like emergency.
https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=c8276a&lat=-23.171&lon=...
Returning the next day...
https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=c8276a&lat=-38.872&lon=...
A bit speculative, agreed...for an armchair detective with a brandy on the hand... It matches the only airplane from Air Ambulance companies in NZ, that went out of NZ direction Fiji that day and returned to Auckland the next day from the corresponding direction. ADSB gets lost after a little bit over the ocean so not 100% sure final destination or origin. Really a wonderful place for billionaires to disappear from the common gents.
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https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/covid-19-coronavirus-dying-man...
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/12410323...
Is New Zealand not even allowing their own citizens to return to their home country?
Either way, as rich as he is; allowing a sick child to enter any country for emergency medical treatment is always the right thing to do in my books.
The whole point of the covid restrictions is to save lives, and they could very well have just save his son's life for all we know.
I am sure that the medevac paramedics and the hospital he was treated in took all of the right precautions to prevent him from spreading covid in New Zealand.
I hope his son is better now.
Only the rich ones, same for Australia. At least NZ is still letting people leave the country. The behaviour of both countries during this has put them near the bottom of the list for places I'd ever want to go to.
The booking system is flawed in a way that scalpers have already dominated supply and are selling slots for thousands of dollars, reinforcing that NZ is becoming increasingly unaffordable for typical people.
More information including petition to overhaul the booking system can be found here: https://www.groundedkiwis.com/
I believe there was plenty of time to fly home before the MIQ was put in place. (I was told about MIQ when I went to vote). However, yeah, I've never seen open spots on the MIQ.
No I don't think so. All citizens can return home. Believe the issue is booking over booked quarantine facilities for arrival
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Not to suggest that it’s not seriously advantageous to have eliminated the frustrations/anxieties that you can purchase your way out of.
My daily anxieties are "I need to find time to make dinner/shop.", "I need to fit in a run into this crazy day.", "Do I have enough money for retirement?", "My co-workers are stressing me out.", "Can I get this project done on time?"
I literally can't think of a common daily anxiety or frustration that would not just evaporate if I was a retired multi-billionaire.
William Gibson, Count Zero (1986)
The super-rich aren't gods, they just have something people want. However rich Bezos was, his junk is still on the internet for anyone to go see, so money really can't solve everything.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/21/satire-...
Once you get a decent salary utity of money decreases badly.
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“The day after the application was received, a New Zealand air ambulance staffed by a New Zealand ICU nurse-escort medevaced the child and an adult family member from Fiji to New Zealand,” https://apnews.com/article/technology-lifestyle-travel-new-z...
Best option for whom? It is entirely possible that the child wasn't especially sick and could have been treated in Fiji, but paranoid billionaire parents didn't believe that Fijian medical care was good enough.
The fact is we don't know and likely never well. I have no doubt though that billionaires are given privileges that are supposedly not for sale.
Choose your poison.
Nothing to see here AFAICT.
Is the healthcare system in New Zealand better than the states?
Most western countries have better healthcare system than the US, New Zealand included.
- US comes in last in health care rankings of high-income countries - https://edition.cnn.com/2021/08/04/health/us-health-care-ran...
- Health Care in the U.S. Compared to Other High-Income Countries - https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/fund-reports/2...
US scores poorly in those due to high sticker prices; the quality available for those who can afford is the best in US; both for specialist rare cases and for mundane cases.
If you look at any of the research, the US has effectively the same survival rate of an emergency admission or elective surgery as the rest of the world (within a small margin).
This doesn't even control other items such as age, violence, body weight, pre-existing conditions, etc etc. Arguably the U.S. has a bigger issue with weight, which would indicate the U.S. healthcare system may be slightly more robust.
I'm not saying it's perfect, but I'd avoid diving into political leaning pundits -- common wealth fund and CNN are both political pundits. Looking at the raw data it is not as clear.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4515980/
Even this is political, but it's more clear: https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/quality...
U.S. does a lot better in some areas, worse in others. But if you control for weight it's going to be better.
If you're 'poor'. If you're rich it's an entirely different situation. And I think it's fair to classify Larry Page as rich.
Canadian here. The AVERAGE Canadian's health care is MUCH better than the average American's.
But the best hospitals and the best healthcare in the world is in the US ... if you can afford it. Most of our multi-millionaires and billionaires go to the US for anything critical.
The average US HN user has better care than the average HN user from elsewhere because we gainfully employed techs have decent insurance.
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And second, apart from living in the middle of Siberia [1] or in the Amazon jungle with literally no contact with anyone, believing that you won't get Covid in Fiji because it's more isolated is just a wrong premise. Unless they are airlifted all your supplies get, well, supplied to you via direct human contact, no matter how much you try just one small slip/moment of not paying attention can make the difference between being infected and not being infected. And if you do get infected it's better to be located close to a hospital, not literally on an island in the middle of the Pacific.
Just bad decisions all around.
[1] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/for-40-years-this-rus...
EDIT : wrong year!
https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/industry/tourism-and-trans...
borders open, ~8K arrivals. 1h flight time difference between Auckland and Sydney.