Life in Lock Down: Day 31 & 32
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April 25: Day 31 of living in lock-down…
It’s ANZAC Day. I was planning to get up early to stand outside… but didn’t wake up till much later. I guess that’s my body telling me it had other plans (mostly involving rest).
It’s another work-day so prep accordingly and hit the road. It’s reassuring that there are no cars at the nearby Park N Ride. With it being a fine, sunny summer-like day, it will not bode well if people decide to flock to parks and beaches.
And traffic did appear to be slightly heavier than during the week. Which meant people were making the most of a fine Saturday/ANZAC Day to get out and drive somewhere. Not good.
In the harbour, the red freighter was still sitting where it had first been spotted;
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It seems a double-standard that the crew of the freighter are expected to be in quarantine whilst flight crew on Air New Zealand flights are exempt from the same protocols.
Traffic around the Terrace Tunnel was definitely busier than during the working week (such as it is).
Queues at Chaffer Street New World stretched around the block. Good personal distancing on the footpath. Though as my experience at other supermarkets showed, people struggled to maintain that distancing in the aisles. Some forgot; others couldn’t care less.
Both beaches at Oriental Bay were largely deserted;
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Campervans at the Evans Bay Marina carpark had changed; some had gone; others had arrived.
Question; do these campervans have GPS tracking? If so, the companies leasing these vehicles should be able to determine when they are on the road, flouting lock-down.
Meantime, in another example of lazy thinking mixed with self-entitlement, the owners of Black Sands Lodge seem unable to understand what lock-down and stay at home means in simple english;
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The Lodge owners asserted,
Owners of an Auckland lodge offering a “get-away” escape during alert level 3 say they are well within their rights to do so because they are an essential service.
More like taking-the-piss.
Businesses that are scrupulously respecting the lock-down and suffering because of lost income must be spitting with fury at outfits like Black Sands Lodge and it’s owners.
When I start taking holidays again (and by Thor, I need one), it won’t be at Black Sands Lodge. Like, ever.
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Current covid19 cases: 1,461
Cases in ICU: 1
Number of deaths: 18
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April 26: Day 32 of living in lock-down…
Day of from work. But housework remains; dust and dirty laundry wait for no man, woman, or virus.
It’s still lock-down so I stay home. Though I wonder if I’m the only bugger doing it. Glancing out the window, my neighbours (couple in their late 20s) are loading up their car with household items, including what looks like camping gear. At around 1pm they drive off.
It’s the 1pm daily announcement; there are nine new cases but mercifully no deaths.
The couple return about an hour later. They’ve dropped of the items to god-knows-where.
On Radio NZ, epidemiologist Michael Baker answers questions from listeners. Thankfully, RNZ has weeded out the more gormless ones from conspiracy theorists nutcases and the question and answer session is productive.
The issue of Sweden’s light-handed approach to the pandemic is raised. Sweden has opted for no lock-down and instead left it to individuals to keep themselves safe. It’s a libertarian’s masterbatory wet-dream.
Swedes are paying for their light-handed approach in blood. According to Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center global data-base, as at 5.00PM on 26 April, their death toll stands at 2,192;
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Sweden’s population is approximately ten million, just a little over twice Aotearoa New Zealand’s. But the death toll from covid19 is nearly 122 times ours.
There those who would makes excuses that such a death toll is a worthwhile price to pay to open up the economy again. The usual refrain is that fatalities are mostly amongst the old who would be dead anyway soon from old age and/or age-related causes.
Which is untrue, as covid19 also kills younger people. The youngest, to date, was a six week old baby.
A lax approach demands a high price which will be paid by others than mercenary capitalists, and their political puppets, who are desperate to see consumers spending their dollars again.
It’s ironic that the cries of over-reaction by critics to the government-mandated lock-down are able to do so only because that lock-down has been (relatively) successful. When idiots like David Seymour assert;
“That really I think is not quite right. I think the risk posed by the virus is not as great as it was sold to us.
The Prime Minister said tens of thousands of people would die if we do nothing. I don’t think there was any plausible scenario given what we know now about the virus in general – especially in New Zealand – where that would happen.
If we know that the virus was not as bad as we thought, and the lockdown is worse than we thought, then the right thing to do is to actually change the balance between the lockdown measures and the virus.”
— they are playing with people’s lives for political gain (votes).
And when populist, right-leaning media such as Newstalk ZB misrepresent statements from experts;
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— then it compounds confusion in the public mind.
In fact, Dr Wiles did not say “NZ is unlikely to see a coronavirus outbreak“.
Within the text of the article, beneath the staggeringly misleading headline, her actual statements are published;
Auckland University’s Siouxsie Wiles says we are likely to see cases here due to the high number of overseas cases, but told Mike Hosking the number of cases is likely to be limited.
“We don’t have the same population density and when small number of cases come in, they can be easily isolated and stopped.”
The misleading headline has been quoted ad nauseum by right–winger trolls on social media who have either not read the actual text of the article, or have willfully exploited the lie to sow uncertainty. (Many of the trolls are pathologically misogynistic in their smears against Dr Wiles.)
When government hands out taxpayer’s dollars to prop up the msm, I hope they by-pass NewstalkZB. A media company that peddles outright lies is not fit to survive.
With nine new cases in Aotearoa New Zealand, the question begs to be asked; where and how are transmissions taking place? We have passed through two cycles of transmission/symptomatic of the virus. How is it being spread?
If, as I suspect, people are breaking their ‘bubbles’, then they should be held to account. They are holding the entire country to ransom.
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Current covid19 cases: 1,470
Cases in ICU: 1
Number of deaths: 18
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References
Day 31
Fairfax/Stuff media: Beach lodge offers discount ‘get-away’ accommodation during coronavirus Alert Level 3
RNZ: Covid-19 update 25 April – Five new cases, one death
Day 32
RNZ: NZ’s responses to Covid-19 and polio vastly different
RNZ: Time will tell on Sweden’s relaxed approach to Covid-19
Mediaworks/Newshub: Coronavirus – Six-week-old US baby youngest to die with COVID-19
Mediaworks/Newshub: Siouxsie Wiles claps back at David Seymour’s claim coronavirus risk ‘not as big as it was sold’
NewstalkZB: Siouxsie Wiles on NZ is unlikely to see a coronavirus outbreak
Twitter: @JintyMcGinty35
Twitter: @miscreantinc
RNZ: Covid-19 – Nine more cases, no new deaths
Must Read
Democracy Now: Madrid’s Ice Rink Turned to Morgue as Spain Exceeds China in Coronavirus Deaths
The Independent: Is Sweden having second thoughts on lockdown?
The Out And Abouter: Reached For Comment, Coronavirus Says It’s Also Very In Favour Of Reopening The Economy Immediately
Elemental: Hold the Line
Other Blogs
Resources
Johns Hopkins University: Coronavirus Resource Center
Ministry of Health: Covid-19 – current cases
Previous related blogposts
The Warehouse – where everyone gets a virus
Life in Lock Down: Day 7 (sanitised version)
Life in Lock Down: Day 8 (sanitised version)
Life in Lock Down: Day 16 – Bad Friday
Life in Lock Down: Day 22 – Is that a light at the end of a four week long tunnel?!
Life in Lock Down: Day 24 & 25
Life in Lock Down: Day 27 – and it’s been a shit day
Life in Lock Down: Day 28 – An Open Letter to Prime Minister Ardern
Life in Lock Down: Day 29 & 30
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Acknowledgement: Royston
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This blogpost will be re-published on “Frankly Speaking“. Reader’s comments may be left here (The Daily Blog) or there (Frankly Speaking).
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= fs =
Frank, Maybe Jacinda knows something we dont???
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8259803/New-Zealand-Prime-Minister-Jacinda-Ardern-skeptical-Australias-coronavirus-tracing-app.html?ns_mchannel=rss&ico=taboola_feed
QUOTE: – ” Revealed: Why New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is ‘skeptical’ about Australia’s coronavirus tracing app
Jacinda Ardern says New Zealand ‘cannot rely’ on the coronavirus tracing app
She said ‘we can’t put all our eggs in one basket’ as the app uptake must be high
New Zealand are reducing coronavirus restrictive measures on Monday night
Thousands of Kiwis will go back to work though social distancing is still in place
Here’s how to help people impacted by Covid-19″
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has outed herself as an app sceptic, but still plans to push on with a version of Australia’s COVIDSafe app in her country.
More than one million Australians downloaded the coronavirus tracing app within hours of its release.
The Australian app uses similar technology to the Singaporean tracing program, which is also being used as the foundation in New Zealand.
‘I remain a bit skeptical about what it’s going to be able to deliver because the uptake has to be so high,’ Ms Ardern said on Monday.”
CG, at a sheer guess, I’m speculating that Ms Ardern knows full well that New Zealanders are suspicious of State surveillance in our lives.
Especially after it became known that the GCSB illegally spied on eighty-eight New Zealanders. In that instance not only was no one held to account for that illegality – but instead the GCSB was rewarded with heightened surveillance powers.
Personally, I think an app like the one being discussed is a good idea if it will save lives. We have only two weapons at our disposal against micro-organisms and that’s our intelligence (ok, with the exception of Donald Trump, whose evolution seemingly stalled at the Cambrian Era) and our ability to act collectively for the common good. Take either one of those two away, and we are at the mercy of whatever Nature sends our way.
Yeah, I’d be uneasy to take up an offer of such an app. So would thousands; hundreds of thousands, of other New Zealanders.
I’m also uneasy at the way Air New Zealand flight crews have been given an exemption from fourteen day quarantining when they return from overseas flights. This one is a ticking time bomb for Ms Ardern and the government.
If/when I take up that app, it’ll be one f*****g big rat I’m about to swallow.
And if we get a re-infection from a returning Air New Zealand flight crew person, I will be mightily f****d off.
But do I trust the State – even under a centre-left (now almost fully socialist, the way it’s propping up failing businesses) government?