From the end of the world to your town

Diary of the last 20 hours and 46 years

7.23am

My radio is full of questions about vaccine supplies and I’m thinking about Elton John.

I was 14 when Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy came out, and boy was I excited to get a copy. In those far off days, you had to be very patient, and wait and wait and wait, especially if you lived in a little country town in New Zealand. I put in an order at the record section of the DIC in Palmerston North. They tended to get new stock sooner than Fauldings Electrical in Feilding. 

I waited. And I waited. Nothing happened for days and days and weeks and weeks.

So a routine began. I would get home after school, dump my bag on the table, go to the phone, ring the DIC, get put through to the record section and ask if Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy had come in. 

I don't think I did it every day.

One night at dinner, Dad said: 

I got a phone call today from the manager of the DIC. Have you been ringing them every afternoon to ask about a record?

I looked at my plate and mumbled:

Not every day. 

He said:

Well they want you to stop doing it.

A vaccine is a bigger deal than a new Elton John album although maybe not all that much bigger; it was one of his best. Even so there’s something a bit tragic about the way certain parts of our media, and by that I mean just about bloody all of them, are going: when are we getting more are we going to get more OMG when exactly are we getting more you said Tuesday and now it's Wednesday you said Thursday and now it’s Friday what are you people hiding?

Someone made wording changes on a website and this got them really excited.

Will anyone in Group 4 be getting a vaccine before September? Or December? Or 2025? 

When exactly are we getting the vaccines? 

OMG are we getting them at all?? 

Someone fetch the smoking gun detector! 

To all staff: help pls anyone know how to use a smoking gun detector?

Unsurprisingly Lisa Owen on Checkpoint was getting fully stuck in yesterday. Of course she was. You could be a girl guide coming on the programme to talk about selling biscuits and she would be wanting to know just what are you hiding missy, never mind actual people in charge of actual vaccination campaigns, and all the things they’re covering up.

I mean, they must be covering up and hiding things, what other explanation could there be? What’s going on??

I'm just going by actual numbers but what would appear to be going on is: more and more people are getting vaccinated, and more stocks of vaccines are on their way.

We’re told that most of the crucial Groups 1 and 2 are now vaccinated, meaning frontline staff and their families are now much less vulnerable, meaning our border is now less vulnerable. 

Now they’re on to Group 3. That would be my group.

No, I have not yet had an invitation. Am I as perturbed about this as Lisa Owen on Checkpoint or a 14 year old on the phone to the DIC? No I am not, and here's why:

So far, the proposition has been that they would be steadily getting vaccines and steadily rolling them out. The bulk of the vaccines would arrive in the second half of the year and we would all be done by Christmas.

It’s the last week of May. They expect large deliveries of vaccines to begin some time in July. In a time of uncertainty and huge demand, would a few weeks' slippage be so surprising?

In the meantime we are protected by our border controls, and the prospect remains that we can all be fully vaccinated come the end of the year. 

If anyone wants you to believe that we are in some race against time and that every day matters I would suggest to them to just calm the fuck down.

Normality is coming back to the rest of the world only gradually. We’re not getting lost in any slow lane by completing our vaccination a few months after the UK, or the USA - assuming they can manage to get all those sons of bitches in MAGA hats to give up the idea that vaccination is a Pizzagate Soros 5G plot, and get immunity up past 70%.

If we get all the way to November and we still don't have any vaccines, then sure, ask me again. If you also want to ask if I think the government wasn’t pushing hard enough to get supplies I might have a different answer then.

But right now, my answers are:  

Do we really think they would not be pushing hard? Do we? Really? 

and 

It's the last week of May right now. Let's not get too excited.

8.35am

Thinking about better questions to ask than what are you hiding minister and when will you be resigning?

Question 1

Here’s something Dunedin Doctor Dan was reporting yesterday about vaccination programme messaging, and his patients.

With that in mind, I suggest this question: Minister, can primary care services be funded to provide IT and phone support for the Covid vaccination programme rollout? 

Question 2

Here’s a top suggestion from MTAF reader Paul. How about it Minister?

9.35am

Plenty of appalled people online this morning sharing a trailer for a coming Aussie edition of 60 Minutes. It dares to ask:

Just what are the Kiwis up to now? SUNDAY on 60Mins, we thought they were our best friends, but it looks like they’ve ditched us for a fast Chinese buck.

Digger, please. Rebekah Holt has your number. 

What’s going on here, do we think?

Theory one: someone senior in Australia got affronted at our slightly independent foreign policy and wound up the media to have a go.

Theory two: with all those borders closed, she's a bit hard finding somewhere to go overseas to film a story.

Someone says OMG the melodrama of this voiceover and yes, it's a classic of the genre. The whole thing looks scarcely distinguishable from Frontline, especially when you see that the local ‘experts’ they’ve wheeled out are Michael Barnett and Mike Hosking.

If you can't wait to see it, no worries: any old episode of Frontline will do the job, just imagine it also has Hosking. 

9.42am

Catching up on a night of outrage. Began last night to watch live testimony of Dominic Cummings but then thought why stay up late on account of this bastard, wait for the highlights tomorrow.

Already the best thing anyone could possibly write about it has been written.

Memorably dismal features of the testimony:

He says on the day he wanted to introduce coronavirus quarantine, Downing Street was distracted by Carrie Symonds going 'crackers' over a story in The Times about her dog.

He also says 

I'm not smart, I've not built great things in the world. It's completely crackers that someone like me should have been in there just the same as it's crackers that Boris Johnson was in there.

What he doesn't say is: I have thought of a way to make sufficient amends for all the unforgivable harm that he and I have wrought, and here it is.

I'm not saying it's possible but I'd like to see him try.

11.45am

Earlier this week this newsletter had an item about the malign role of cryptocurrency in its enabling of ransomware. Let's add this from the Wall St Journal. They probably have some compromising vested interest in Fiat money but never mind, this is a good argument.

There is a simpler and more effective way to stop the ransomware pandemic: Ban cryptocurrency.

Ransomware can’t succeed without cryptocurrency. The pseudonymity that crypto provides has made it the exclusive method of payment for hackers. It makes their job relatively safe and easy. There is even a new business model in which developers sell or lease ransomware, empowering malicious actors who aren’t tech-savvy themselves to receive payment quickly and securely. Before cryptocurrency, attackers had to set up shell companies to receive credit-card payments or request ransom payment in prepaid cash cards, leaving a trail in either case. It is no coincidence that ransomware attacks exploded with the emergence of cryptocurrency.

12.45

What will be exciting and unmissable and happen this Sunday at 10.00am? Why, the Liberate The Lane rally of course.

Have any questions? No worries, Greater Auckland has all the answers right here.

4.20pm

Also bought this from the DIC in Palmy. Didn’t have to order.