The Daily Blog Open Mic – 26th January 2022

1. Earth to Kris Fa-a-a-a-f-f-foi, are you receiving in this space going forward? Over

   https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/460219/border-reopening-plan-stranded-new-zealanders-to-learn-about-self-isolation-scheme-soon

   Maybe relying on advice from those ‘officials’ really wasn’t such a good idea. Ah well, you wouldn’t be the first that’s hitched their baubles to the wrong wagon.
   Next

   • Thinking about space going forward reminds me of David Bowie and Major Tom.
     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFks9A9TCF0

     Faafoi is not Major Tom, it is us floating away, driven away, from our life on earth by people like Faafoi using systemic instruments to degrade our society in the name of financial systems and efficiency. He is a convinced proponent of the system that actually, it seems to me, is gradually de-civilising us. We are being separated from our past and its discoveries and inventions, its learnings and quirkiness, and vital occasions of magnanimity.

2. A monster has died, may he rot in whatever hell will take his twisted soul

3. Doesn’t this take the cake! The National Party continues with its anti-government private sector interests, trailing the people behind it like a kid with a helpless toy being dragged through the sdust.

   https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/460227/government-commandeering-rapid-antigen-tests-secured-by-private-sector-national-party-says
   here are 4.6 million of the Covid-19 tests in the country and another 14.6 million will arrive over the next five weeks.
   An additional 22 million have been ordered, but officials are yet to receive a delivery date, in what the director-general of health describes as a very competitive global market.

   National Party leader Christopher Luxon told Morning Report, “After months of denying that rapid antigen tests were the go, the government is now embracing it. That’s a good thing.

   “The challenge they’ve got (is) they’re scrambling. They have only approved seven, maybe two more … (types of) tests. Australia, to give you a feel for it, has over 50 approved tests.
   “The prime minister says we’ve got 4.6 million in the country. What she doesn’t clarify is whether they’re in the private sector, or whether they’re actually held by government.

4. Rangiora signwriter Pete Solvander has been arrested by police after he was sprung making fake vaccine passes for anti-vaxxers, because Pete doesn’t believe in all this Covid stuff and he’s big on freedom. Pete’s son James Solvander doesn’t believe in all that Covid stuff either, which is why he was driving his van during one the lockdowns. He then ran down and killed a 44-year-old cyclist who was riding with his daughter (who received minor injuries). The fruit of Pete’s loins was on his way to see a bloke about a tattoo when the crash happened. James Solvander was also being sought by police regarding a burglary at the time, and investigators found a .22 pistol and ammunition dumped in the long grass beside his van. His DNA was all over the recovered firearm. Pete’s boy got sentenced to five and a half years in pokey in October 2020 after pleading guilty to drug-driving causing death and injury. James, who told the court he was unaware of the nationwide lockdown, was full of meth and diazepam when the crash happened. He had eight previous convictions for impaired and piss poor driving. The fact that Pete Solvander thinks his actions are in any way acceptable following his son’s fuckwit behaviour beggars belief. Every moron who brought one of his fake passes might pause to reflect on what sort of individual they were dealing with. I suspect old Pete was doing a roaring trade on Slater’s website. They’re big on this sort of shit. I also suspect I am not alone in being over showing tolerance and kindness to these people.

   • Labour has just seen fit to cut out the three strikes law, which culd have been very good if properly devised. But now, they have to be holier than thou. The law should have been amended so that the third strike was of sufficient badness to justify a lont time away. Don’t pollies care about the people scuttling round on the gameboard down here. It is one thing to be a tough line feller and the group Sensible Sentencing wanting longer sentences for everyone but letting repeat offenders who are lowlifes out after a few years doesn’t lead to a happy society either.

5. Nuclear leaves a trail behind and around it. Perhaps we shouldn’t indulge – some Japanese are suing their government or the Fu. plant operators. They might get something but what about the site being damaged and the sea life affected plus the rest of the world being just a bit more irradiated.

   We have sites of awful chemical dumps so a similar problem.
   Going back to 1960, I remember this being talked about.

   https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/460229/new-plymouth-mayor-wants-government-involved-over-corteva-s-exit-from-controversial-plant-site (New Plymouth)
   Corteva has recently closed the 16-hectare site which borders Paritutu Centennial Reserve and residential housing.
   Under previous management, it produced the herbicide 2,4,5-T which has been linked to health concerns.
   From the 1960s through to 1987, Ivon Watkins (later Ivon Watkins-Dow) made the herbicide 2,4,5-T at Paritutu – which contained the toxic dioxin TCDD.

   In the mid ’80s, elevated levels of TCDD were found in the soil on the site’s boundaries with reserve land and a residential street.
   In 1998, similar levels were found on Mt Moturoa some distance away.

   Dioxins are insoluble and break down very slowly in soil, if at all.

   How could we do this? Well I note that Roundup is still being sold here at regular stores. Yokels?

6. A wee bit of Scotland lies in Trump’s heart! Perhaps a shard?
   Jan24/22 Howard Davis https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/CU2201/S00129/dennis-villeneuves-idunei-a-brief-history.htm
   When Donald Trump announced plans to build a golf complex on the ancient sand dunes of the Aberdeenshire coast in Scotland in 2006, he told a group of assembled reporters at the windswept 2,000 acre site at Menie “As soon as I saw it there was no question [that] it would be the world’s greatest golf course.” After he purchased the land for US$12.6m, local fishermen denounced him as a “loudmouth bully” and outraged environmentalists warned the development would destroy the natural habitat. Today, the Scottish complex stands as a “premier luxury golf experience,” replete with five-star hotel and helicopter landing pad, at a membership of US$3,518 a year, inflicting so much damage to the ecosystem that the site was stripped of its protected status.

   Within five years of purchasing the land, the Trump Organization’s financial statements valued it at $161m, a thirteen-fold increase. By 2014, its total value was put at $436m. These ridiculous price hikes caught the attention of Letitia James, New York state’s progressive attorney general known for her relentless pursuit of the rich and powerful, who forensically dissected how such strikingly large valuations came about in a 114-page New York court filing lodged this week.

7. I consider that freemarketcapitalism is decivilising us in a , planned predatory way.
   As in prisons getting tougher.
   https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/audio/2018827806/pulitzer-prize-winning-journalist-chris-hedges
   Chris Hedges, a former war correspondent in the Middle East and the Balkans for The New York Times tells Nine to Noon his time teaching in prisons helped him better understand the lives of those who make up the 2.3 million people incarcerated in the US.
   Hedges says the prison population has ballooned enormously with the de-industrialisation of US cities and a move towards criminalisation of the poor, many of whom are now forced to work in prison ‘sweat shops’ for big US corporations.

   This discussion is interesting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory

   To get down to basics, crime occurs less where people feel that there is pride and caring and commitment in the community. I think that sizes it up. I don’t think that many people on lower incomes feel all of the above. all the time.

8. https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/460225/rising-cost-of-living-in-aotearoa-may-trigger-civil-disobedience-social-service-says
   …A “perfect storm” of the rising costs of basic necessities, inflation, and Covid-19 have a social service warning of possible “civil disobedience” – with people forced to take what they need to live…
   He said the cost of living was out of control, and people would do what they had to do to get by.
   “It’s on the verge of civil disobedience. [The] people who ‘have-not’ will be taking what they need – and food is a basic human right – they will be taking from those that ‘have’.
   “It has to be fixed, the government has to intervene.
   “People will be sleeping in their cars [if they can’t] pay their rent. But if they can’t afford to get petrol for their cars, they’ll be sleeping in tents and cow sheds and buses and lean-tos, and they won’t be eating.”

9. https://wellington.scoop.co.nz/?p=142137
   Now 56 omicron cases, 27 more than yesterday; and one new covid case in Wellington
   January 26, 2022 3 comments

   Is this right: The figures I mean. I looked at Prof Plank’s figures in stuff and these ones confuse. Is it an R2 level with a 2 day frequency?
   Associate Health Minister Dr Ayesha Verrall told a press conference this afternoon that new reports suggest Omicron cases double every two to four days, which meant a 10-case outbreak could mean more than 1000 cases per day within six to 12 days. “It’s important to remember that Covid-19 is markedly different to what it was in the beginning of the pandemic.”
   A new three-phase public health response to Omicron will include reducing the isolation period for cases and close contacts at Phase Two and Three to 10 and seven days.

   This on R factor and Doubling time from India – what I have found so far on line.
   The reproduction number is a measure of transmission–the average number of people infected by one infected person. The government announced on January 5 that the R is 2.69 and this is higher than the R during the second wave. That is, each Covid-19 patient is infecting 2.69 others, on average.
   If the R of a disease is greater than one, it means that the number of cases is growing fast and can cause an epidemic. If the R is equal to one, the disease is growing slower but is still dangerous and many could contract it. If the R is lower than one, that is, one person infects fewer than one other person, on average, then the disease will slowly die out.
   Doubling time is the number of days taken for cases to double. India’s doubling time fell from 3,684.4 days on December 27, 2021 to 454.9 days on January 6, 2022. During this period, there was a corresponding eighteen-fold increase in daily new cases.
   https://www.indiaspend.com/data-viz/the-omicron-surge-in-numbers-reproduction-number-up-doubling-time-down-796341

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