Bringing you all the news
Diary of the last 36 hours
Sunday 10.45 am
I bring alarming news from the seaside village. Two weeks into lockdown, the state of the economy is clearly precarious.
Studies conducted over the weekend, by going out for a bike ride, show that fully one third of Devonport people can not afford a face mask.
This is grim.
The anguish they must feel! Imagine wanting to go out for a walk but not having the money to buy what is universally acknowledged to be a crucial tool - albeit ridiculously basic, simple and easy - in limiting the spread of the Delta variant.
How must they feel, knowing the plague virus can just whizz up into your gob, or someone else’s, in seconds?
Why! It passed from one person to another in a managed isolation facility just in the few moments the the doors of two rooms in the same corridor happened to be open at the same time. A few moments! That’s all it takes! In you breathe, and in goes the Delta variant and, well, it makes you think, doesn't it?
What anguish must they feel, knowing they might be in danger of catching it, or unwittingly giving it to someone else?
How must they feel knowing how much of a risk they’re posing but being powerless to do anything about it for want of a few dollars?
How they must look on with longing at the other two third of us, doing the thing they so ardently wish they could do - the small contribution that protects the rest of the community.
How valiantly they struggle on, bravely pretending not to be tortured with anguish that they may prove to be the hole in the defence that stops us from containing this spread and instead puts us in the same slow moving nightmare as Sydney.
How strong to go on laughing and smiling and stopping to chat to friends and not let on how tortured they feel that they have no choice but to let the village down, the country down, their two little dogs down, and most of all themselves down, for want of a few lousy bucks.
Sunday 10.45 am
Peter Fitzsimmons brings alarming news from Sydney speaking with senior ICU nurse Michelle Rosentreter.
She says,
We are exhausted. Last night was brutal. We literally hit capacity … Just holding on. None of us have ever faced anything like it. Nothing in our studies ever prepared us for this, and not even the most experienced of us have ever seen anything like it.
Fitzsimmons asks:
You must have patients who regret not taking the virus seriously, who now realise what they are facing?
All the time, she says.
And it’s heartbreaking. Usually, when you intubate someone and put them in an induced coma, you say “we’re just going to put you to sleep, and wake you up in a few days”. But with COVID patients we can’t say that because we don’t know if we can get them back. And they know that.
Fitzsimmons:
This week we cracked 1000 fresh infections in a day. What will happen if it goes to, say, 1500 or worse? Can you cope?
Rosentreter:
I can honestly say we can’t. We are at breaking point right now.
Scary eh, but don't worry! Things are very different here in New Zealand! We don't have nearly as much ICU capacity!
Monday 7.15am
Morning Report has questions about the state of our hospitals. How full are the ICU units getting with Covid patients? Not too many yet, is the answer.
Later in the morning we’ll be hearing that treating a Covid patient in an ICU is resource-intensive in a way that means with each one you’re effectively taking a couple of ICU beds out of play.
Good thing we're doing our best to keep our masks on and stay inside our bubbles eh?
9.15am
Amanda reports in from out West:
Level 4 means you can have different visitors every day and also your children can play with the other neighbour's children in the park according to my neighbours. I am, at the end of the day, a white woman and so the urge to nark is incredibly strong.
On the other hand, from Taranaki, Abbie - Hi Abbie! has more encouraging news.
10.13am
Hello readers of the free edition. I wrote yesterday about Men Who Hate to be Wrong, the kind who will not stop and read the map because he knows how to get there, and this was with reference to the Plan B frame of mind.
Many readers nodded their heads and said yeah that sounds right but reader Jono had some reservations.
He wondered if Men Who Know Best syndrome could also afflict someone on the other side of the argument.
How? By digging in one's heels in defence of one’s country’s (and one’s political team’s) elimination strategy, in large part because those who criticise it come from the other team.
Ouch. One’s political team. The other team.
He sees a risk of polarisation of political debate. He sees that potentially getting in the way of finding the most effective Covid strategy as things change and develop.
Do I take a polarised, politicised view?
Do I discard a good idea because it comes from the other side?
I would say no, really I don't. I will pause here for a moment for the raucous laughter and catcalls to subside before I insist: no really.
What I’m writing for, am maybe biased for, when I’m writing about the pandemic is the war effort. This stuff calls for collective will and determination. Bad faith or unconstructive criticism stands to fray that collective will. I will oppose that, and it may get noisy, and it may look like political polarisation but I'm really not doing it with politics in mind.
Secondly I believe in the idea affirmed this morning by the epidemiologist Rod Jackson on the radio: you can absolutely knock this virus on the head in a matter of weeks if you keep infected people away from uninfected people.
His advice is wherever you go out: assume you've got Covid and everyone has Covid.
Around the world, the coming adrift has had everything to do with trying to pretend you can do it without completely isolating people. Whatever strategy you pursue, it needs to recognise that the less you're prepared to isolate people with the virus, the more you’re going to need to draw up a list of priorities you're prepared to trade away.
That’s my most earnest belief. But I'll be happy to be proven wrong.
11.05am
Twitter draws my attention to Broadcaster of the Decade - or whatever award it was he got last time - Mike Hosking, mocking Dr Ayesha Verrall following his interview with her. There are sound effects. Turkeys, trucks, schoolboys in designer jeans.
My untrained ears can't work out exactly what kind of noble journalism this is. Guess I’ll have to wait to Sunday for Andrea Vance to tell me whether he’s being Woodward or Bernstein.
11.35am
I bring alarming news about your cat. A study by James Cook University has found about half of cat owners reported feeling their cats were "put out" by their increased presence during the height of COVID-19 lockdowns.
11.55am
I bring imaginary news.
12.35pm
I bring a welcome hilarious distraction.
4.00pm
That’s enough distraction. Back to the Beehive theatrette.
The Graph is moving in the right direction. The Graph could maybe still come back up again though. Let's not get too confident, let’s just feel reassured:
you can absolutely knock this virus on the head in a matter of weeks if you keep infected people away from uninfected people
PM pulls out a graph and shows the likely trajectory if we’d not gone into lockdown.
Yep. Meanwhile keep wearing the damn masks.
Does Dr Bloomfield have comforting words for anyone fretting about this saddest news of a myocarditis death from the vaccine?
Yes he does.
It's a lot safer to have the vaccine than it is to have Covid.
4.20pm
Went to get my second test during isolation yesterday. Had to wait on the footpath. People, unmasked and yelling into their phones, strode by very close, while I tried to shrink back into a stone wall....not very successfully. Honestly, WTF are people thinking??
I am appalled at the behaviour of at least two political parties (do I need to name them?) who seem to be filled with aliens, who are working steadily against whatever the Labour Government does, and so, against the people. We are definitely at war. The enemy can breach the walls at any time. What then? The blame game? Finger pointing? How bloody useless!!
I remember once, about to go off yet again to a country plagued with malaria, saying to my gp that I might not bother with malaria prophylaxis this time because of possible side effects. No problem he said and handed me a book with a marker on the page with the side effects of Larium and on another which detailed what malaria does to you. Your choice he said. I read both pages . Taking the drug was so far and above the lesser of two evils that I did ...