Give the virus nowhere to go.

Diary of the last ten hours

6.10am

Poor America.

The absolute state of it.

Their appalling president has got himself in trouble by opening his mouth and being appalling.

A February interview with Bob Woodward reveals him to be, to the surprise of no one really, a dissembler, a bullshitter, an empty shell where a person should be.

His own words damn him: he has shared what he has been told and managed to grasp: that the coronavirus is a very big, very deadly, highly infectious deal.

Meanwhile, as we all know, he was at the very same time serving up an entirely  different shovel of it to the American people; breezily talking the whole thing down.

He tells Woodward then, and is telling America now that, oh, he didn’t want to cause  panic.

Well yes, that checks out. Not for any admirable reason like, say, concern for another living person; but simply because he cares madly and deeply about the polls and the stock market; anything that measures his popularity, anything that keeps him in office and shielded from prosecution.

If he had the inclination to sit still for half a minute and watch footage of other leaders - ours, for example - talking to the people frankly about that peril, he would get to see what an actual leader does talking about what's at stake, what will happen if we don't act and what’s being done to keep everyone safe and being reassuring and showing the way forward, with no panic at all unless you cut toilet paper.

But you just know that he’d be clicking straight on over to FOX to see what they were saying about him.

7.20am

Slugging the coffee and talking with Karren about the National Infrastructure Bank of the NZ National Party and why you might come up with such a thing.

It feels more like an effort to differentiate for marketing purposes than a thing that really needs to happen; a kind of working group only with decent directors' fees.

The National party says it would provide advice and finance to local and central government projects and act as a careful steward, and okay, but they might want to promise to make a better job of that than, say, Southern Response. And they might want to promise not to stand it up  alongside the Border Security Agency and have the whole lot careening under the control of  Gerry Brownlee. 

Good on them for their devotion to branding, though. It means something, for sure.

Labour wouldn’t call it National Infrastructure Bank, they’d be more like KiwiSomething.

NZ First would make it the NZ Infrastructure and Racecourse Fund

And if it were the NZ People's Party it would be the What Do You Mean You Made A Deposit Who Are You I Haven’t Got Your Money Mate Bank.

8.10am

Vox pop time, and someone in Karori has her doubts about the new tax rate Labour’s proposing. She doesn’t think they're being transparent. She thinks they’ll put up the other brackets after the election, or something. I have no idea what might move her to see things this way. They're abundantly transparent; they're cautious to a fault; they’re quite the disappointment to a progressive, tbh.

David Seymour  is trying to bullshit this too but Neale Jones rightly points out that Grant Robertson promising “no new taxes” is an enduring myth.

In fact, the Labour Party specifically promised the extension of the bright line test and closing tax loopholes for speculators.

Meanwhile the NZPSA has measured words to say about this gradualism.

Labour’s announcement of a new 39% tax rate on income over $180,000 is a step in the right direction. However, the proposed tax increase covers only those taxed under PAYE. Many of the wealthiest report personal incomes well below $180k.

The innate caution Jacinda Ardern and Grant Robertson learned in Helen Clark’s office never seems to lose its gravitational pull. The taxing of wealth is being handled a whole lot better by TOP and Greens at this point.

They’re quite likely playing with the political third rail, but too bad. The way we share wealth is hopelessly lopsided. This shit is broken.

11.40am

Slugging coffee and talking with Karren about the Oxford vaccine trial being on hold. She's a little dejected. I offer this expert opinion from my inbox, accompanied by two or  three other expert opinions. Upshot: this is how trials go, you stop sometimes to see if the reaction is a deep problem, and sometimes it is and sometimes it’s not. Suspending the trial gives time to investigate whether the incident is related to the vaccine or is happening by coincidence.

Dr James Gill, Honorary Clinical Lecturer, Warwick Medical School, and Locum GP:

Personally, I would be suspicious of a vaccine for a novel virus which was developed without any hiccoughs or pauses. Science on TV is great, and usually gets completed in the course of an episode. In a real lab, chemistry, patients and biology don’t often follow a nice simple course, which is why from the start scientists have said that this COVID vaccine development will take considerable time to get right and safe.

1.00pm

Today’s briefing is brought to us by the Minister of Health and he’s talking about how we make our way back to level one and how we need to give the virus nowhere to go. We need to make that our absolute jam, really. Give the virus nowhere to go. If you learn that you were nearby any place that people were infected, go and get tested. The rest of the time, do the right thing, follow the protocols, keep the numbers down, treat it like it matters, because FFS it does.

He’s also talking about the harm that can be done and the good work that can be undone through people spreading disinformation and bullshit. His recommendation is to ask: can you verify this?

And this is no time to be going all Old Testament on the church folk, he says, no matter how much great wrath and furious anger we might have worked up.

We need information, we need people coming forward, he says, and that makes it a bad idea to be punitive.

2.40pm

My old mate from talkback days,Dal, has been in  touch about radio hosts having  been all this time stirring up ant -Govt rebellion regarding the Covid response, but now urging the law to come down hard on one such rebellion in Mount Roskill.

He has been putting it to various hosts that it seems they are being, how to say, inconsistent. They have told him they’re being paid to give opinions and there's nothing wrong with pointing out flaws when you see them.

He finds this true as a general principle, but:

in a state of emergency I think we need to consider what effect our words may have on groups like Mt Roskill.

I endorse all of this. It’s an altogether more courteous response than one I tweeted at the start of August, because I had just read this:

Turn down the volume, you can probably hear the keys thumping.

All things considered I wouldn't change a word.

3.15pm

Slugging my coffee, reading NZ Geographic, and being informed about seabirds, and its enthralling and marvellous. Thanks to trackers, we can now know exactly where they're going - northern birds to Hawaii and California, southern ones to the eastern pacific, travelling thousand of kilometres, guided by ancestral memory, foraging until the northern spring when the urge to breed returns, and somewhere in their brain they know they have to be back at a certain time, and the breeding pairs generally  arrive within a day or two of each other. Where the Seabirds Go is in your NZ Geographic right now and it's tremendous.

I mention the Albatross because I saw it today being promoted for the Bird of the Year, a contest in which I have made a prick of myself a time or two by advocating unto death for the hauntingly beautiful Kokako.

In my efforts I was greatly supported by a North Shore school student named Oscar Thomas, who made all manner of graphics incorporating his wonderful photography, and who persisted long after I gave up and saw our beautiful bird go all the way.

Now Oscar is at university and his talent for photographing birds has grown and there is a splendid book to his name. It's here, it's glorious and you should absolutely buy a copy.

But wait, there's even more top bird content today.  Get a load of this. Just amazing. Even the pigeons are incredible if you have the right sort of retina.

Ad Infinitum @Ad_Inifinitum

Most birds are tetrachromats and can see into the UV range and it's unfair that we can't see all their markings like they can