Or it's just one big coverup which is completely what it is
Diary of the last ten hours
7.12am
My radio is full of someone fully going off and I’m wondering if Siri has moved us over to Magic Talk.
But no, it’s RNZ doing its best to prove it's no suckup to this government.
It had a scoop yesterday about the possibility that five people at a mass vaccination last month got saline in their arm and not Pfizer.
This is day two of the big scoop and we’re moving on from who what where and why to OMG how did it make you feel because they’ve found someone who just happens to have been highly vocal previously about the health system’s failings.
Of all the vax clinics in all the towns in Aotearoa she had to walk into this one.
She says,
They probably thought ‘no one will ever know about this little itty bitty mistake’.
She says,
And then well hello Delta and hello honesty and truth but too little too late.
I used to get callers like this on talk radio. You would be listening with your finger poised over the mute button.
She says,
It's just appalling. I honestly cannot believe they are: 1, unapologetic, 2, didn’t front it in the first place, and 3, think that this is the actions of an honest and truthful government. This is absolutely appalling and I think that there should be heads that roll over this.
Once upon a time on Morning Report that's where the unloading might have ended. But we’re not on Walton's Mountain now.
She says,
This to me screams of a lack of honesty and integrity and a lack of ethics.
She says,
They need to own it and they need to apologise.
She says,
We need an explanation as to why it was covered up because you can't tell me that they've spent five weeks talking to experts when internationally they were able to make the right call on the same day that it happened and alter it so they are either completely undermining the people that they would call experts or they never went to experts in the first place or it's just one big coverup which is completely what it is.
Next on the line is known dissembler and slippery character Dr DG Ashley Bloomfield and what does he have to say for himself? According to caller Fiona, it's just one big coverup which is completely what it is. What have you been up to, eh?
He says there was always the intention to tell people.
We were getting advice around whether or not we offered people a further dose. There was some question about that, because of the uncertainty about whether anyone had missed out in the first place. I'm completely committed to open disclosure on these events. There's always a balance here, and what we were really keen to do was get right to the bottom of whether or not there was an issue and also what we could tell people.
He said all 732 people will get sent an email or have a letter couriered to them and there will be a follow-up phone call outlining their options.
It is far from unknown in the doings of people that you can fuck something up, look around, ask yourself has anyone seen?, decide they haven’t, and act like it never happened.
Angry caller Fiona is sure this is what went down.
I’m not. When the DG says I'm completely committed to open disclosure on these events, I tend to believe him.
There are a lot of balls in the air managing all of this dark carnival. It's entirely plausible it could have dragged on for some weeks as they worked out what was best to do before they told people.
Angry caller Fiona says to her it screams of a lack of honesty and integrity and a lack of ethics. I don't hear any screaming, but to be sure the noise in each of our heads is different.
What's most frustrating about the coverage day after day of this pandemic is the excitement to get the scoop and bring extra drama, as though what’s playing out each day is not drama enough.
What do we want most?
To get through it with the least difficulty, constructively identifying and dealing with problems?
Or would we prefer to fray the social licence that underpins this all by chasing sensation and noise, and see what that does? Do we really want to be shouting fire in a crowded theatre?
It was intriguing to hear Rodney Jones on the same programme earlier this week deliver his blunt assessment of the numbers without making the least effort to hold the patient's hand.
As Susie pried him for that last consoling note of optimism you look for to bring the interview to a positive end, he was not selling, no ma’am. You sensed a chastening as she apprehended the potential grimness of this. And the whole tone tilted.
Reader Hayden Wilson - hi Hayden! - was on Twitter last night making sense of this for us, and I wish to cite him now, your honour.
I’ve worked in the medico-legal sphere most of my career. The following things can all be true simultaneously:
(a) errors happen;
(b) as errors go this is a very minor one;
(c) the impact of the error on those affected can feel hugely significant.
(d) this says nothing about the effectiveness of the substantive process;
(e) the response to the error should have been far more immediate and patient focused as it appears to have been (the simple answer being you get a jab, you get a jab and you get another jab)
And (f) our media needs to be very careful to avoid the understating the complexity of a mass medical exercise in a way that might lead people to make bad choices.
Want to really understand the properly risky bits of medicine? Try being intubated.
Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk
9.32am
This appears on Twitter without context so I don't know exactly how the former electorate MP for Hutt South was framing the argument. But floated out alone, this is some dismal shit.
FFS. Really?
It might seem like just another jolly for the man from debating club, just another cynical gig like taking coin from the tobacco death merchants, but I wager if you asked most any random voter whether they think your job in opposition is to gum the government up they would say he what now? We’re paying him tax money to do that? Fucksake.
10.33am
Quote of the day Number One
I must say I have been puzzled as to why an entirely predictable community outbreak has led some people to form strong opinions about the viability of the current elimination strategy.
Sir David Skegg
10.57pm
Quote of the day Number Two
12.57pm
Quote of the day Number Three
4.20pm
I guess if she’d been injected with saline solution, you’d expect her to be a bit salty.
Of all the vax clinics in all the towns in Aotearoa she had to walk into this one. 🤣🤣 My husband just said he'd understand the reaction had it been battery acid injected in her arm. Oops.