Hacker News Reader

Comment by belter | Hacker News Reader

"Covid 19 coronavirus: Dying man denied last chance to get home as emergency managed isolation spot rejected"

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/covid-19-coronavirus-dying-man...

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.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/12410323...

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.

Yes, the issue is that regular people are denied the same chance.

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).

But he didn't have an urgent medical need his kid had. Why let him get in as well?

Medical evacuation is common enough--I'm guessing that there are policies / laws in New Zealand to keep parents with their minor children. There are medical evacuations across borders all the time so I doubt this is treading any new ground.

People generally consider it horrifying to forcibly separate parents from minor children, unless it's in the child's interest. "Or else your child doesn't get treatment" counts as force.

It's not a medical emergency though, it's someone's wishes. Cruel but not the same.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com