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| Michael Woodhouse |
Not only has the former Health Minister recently been in the news promoting a number of unverified claims designed to try and discredit the Government's response to COVID-19, the mainstream media generally seems happy to publish his misinformation without much critical analysis as well.
In fact Woodhouse's latest claim that received widespread media coverage, about a homeless person attaining free accommodation at a COVID-19 isolation facility in Auckland, appears to be an entirely fabricated story.
Yesterday, Stuff reported:
Woodhouse sticks by story of homeless man's isolation hotel caper
Michael Woodhouse is sticking by his claim that a homeless man wandered into an Auckland isolation hotel and enjoyed a two-week taxpayer-funded stay.
The opposition health spokesman first made the claim during a television interview last Thursday.
But Director General of Health Ashley Bloomfield said during a press conference on Tuesday that the claim could not be verified and appeared to be an urban myth.
That’s Bloomfield’s nice way of saying that Woodhouse is probably lying!
Following those comments, Woodhouse stuck to his guns when approached for comment by Stuff.
His source for the story was a senior member of the health sector, he said.
“I didn't make it up.
“What I also know is that source is a very reliable senior health professional.”
So we’re meant to believe that a senior health official went to the National Party about a homeless person, but that same "reliable" senior health official ignored his obligations to alert proper authorities and the Ministry of Health? Yeah right! There isn't even any CCTV footage of the homeless person at the facility during the time Woodhouse claimed he had free lodging.
I Call BS -- the formal edition pic.twitter.com/lAk82xPugB— antihobbes (@antihobbes) June 23, 2020
We’ve also heard similar unverified claims from Woodhouse before. Three months ago he tweeted that somebody had overheard a Ministry of Health official in Wellington talking about 'how many body bags NZ had' in relation to the COVID-19 response.
Then there are the more recent contradictory claims surrounding two returning travellers from the UK who received a compassionate exemption to leave quarantine early. The two sisters attained this exemption without first being tested and after only one days lobbying from National Party MP Christopher Bishop.
Questions still remain about National’s involvement and what communications their MPs had with the two sisters after they tested positive for COVID-19. Once again everyone is wondering why Woodhouse and his colleagues failed to alert proper authorities about what could have been New Zealand's first case of community spread of the highly contagious and deadly disease?
Even though a number of other National Party MP’s are also politicising the COVID-19 crisis, Woodhouse seems to be the only one consistently using outright heresy in order to try and besmirch the Director-General of Health, the Minister of Health and the Prime Minister. He is the only one consistently failing to report important and potentially life threatening information that he apparenty attains from reliable sources to the proper authorities as well.
What all this shows is that whatever Woodhouse claims cannot be relied upon. In fact the MSM would be well advised to treat everything the desperate clown says with a grain of salt...because without a good amount of incredulity, they also run the risk of looking foolish when the truth comes out.
