Unavoidable reality, and more virus at the border. Now what?

Diary of the last 20 hours

8.40pm last night

On couch, watching movie about admirable life and times of admirable Ruth Bader Ginsberg.

This is a sweep of a monumental life, and at any moment a singular one.

Second year at Harvard she is a young mother with a baby on her knee and a husband having radiation treatment for cancer.  Once their daughter is asleep she types up the notes his friends took in his law classes, then turns to her own class work. Through the night she goes.

This is the pattern for a lifetime of fierce accomplishment: powerful intelligent advocacy before the Supreme Court for equal rights; on to the bench; on to a cameo from ol’ Slick Willy who is full of praise for her as a fellow legal scholar and makes her his first Supreme appointment, and man what a compromised Shakespearean character he is but  anyway on we go.

As you watch the whole story it's as though she's sitting quietly glowing with goodness, while behind her, out past the picture window, there’s a sunny blue sky that steadily goes darker as the years pass and politics go feral and the whole country seems to lose its way.

First, darkening storm clouds, then heavy downpour, then it’s a deluge, and then the deluge isn't just rain, its lizards and newts and alligators and we say to each other as the credits roll, full of admiration for her and dismay for the rest of it: man it’s horrible watching America fall apart. 

7.40am this morning 

OMG get a load of the worst president in the history of the union talking about Aotearoa New Zealand. Until now the only thing he associated with us was Bob Charles and possibly that chick Prime Minister he met.

Look at him, pawing all over our good name, grabbing us by the policy.

All of a sudden a lot of the places they were using to hold up, they are having a big surge ... you see what's going on in New Zealand.… they beat it, they beat, it was like front page, they beat it because they wanted to show me something. The problem is big surge in New Zealand, you know it's terrible - we don't want that.

The reliably excellent Simon Marks is on the radio to describe the spectacle: seeming to wallow almost joyfully in the uptick of other countries he says. Yep.

Roll more audio tape, here’s Michelle Obama endorsing Joe Biden with a most excellent line indeed: 

He lives a life that the rest of us can recognise 

Hey Siri, do you have any other examples of politicians of German extraction setting out their views of New Zealand?

Well as a matter of fact it comes up in a speech in 1925 by one Herr Hitler.

Many New Zealanders live in trees and many still climb around on all fours, very different from a European, who walks on two legs and does not live in trees, but wanders the streets. Now you might say: 'That is the effect of climate.' My friend, if all Europeans left the continent and the New Zealanders slipped in here, you will surely not believe that the climate will make a European out of a New Zealander.

In other words, New Zealanders were another example of a lower form of human being, and you know where that all goes.

We can only ponder what might have happened if the Trump family had remained in Germany for the rise of the fascists. Would Father Fred have perhaps bravely confronted Nazis? Or would he, too, have been held back by bone spurs?

9.40am

A little withering derision from a veteran defending his mailbox from the Commander in Chief's latest acts of electoral sabotage. 

10.40am

Meanwhile back in the land of the big terrible surge, Kate Hawkesby is having fresh opinions for money.

Labour now has a good chunk of time to distance itself from their North Korea vibes of "we are the only source of truth", whilst locking us all up.

Not at all kidding, these are things that she said with the microphone on and her mouth open. 

11.40am

Coming towards the end of my run, down quaint seaside village streets, there is an election hoarding. What’s fascinating about it is that as I move toward it, the Prime Minister's eyes appear to follow me. 

I’m not saying Kate Hawkebsy is actually onto something and not just a huckster of crackpot hysterics, but what exactly is wedged inside that corflute watching me? This is what I want to know from the Deep Nanny State, frankly.

Do you see it? Do you see it?

12.28pm breaking news

Well wouldn't that rip your ration card. Now what?

1.00pm briefing 

Now what?

Maybe what this tells us is that this virus can move: even with all the testing, even with all the PPE, even with all the protocols, and you cannot hope to rely on a foolproof shell at the border. Everything they do there matters and is vital: the testing; the protocols for handling arrivals, but it’s too hopeful and confident to rely on that without further layers of protection inside the community.

The last line of defense is each one of us. The last line of defence is the simple low-tech stuff we can each be doing: put on masks, keep up the distancing, keep up the hand washing, stay home if we’re sick, get tested. And the smallest simplest bit of tech, get the phone app and use it.

Doing that even when we're down to level one, offers the prospect of carrying on as we were and want to.

Feels like a relatively small inconvenience for a substantial degree of daily normality, reality and functioning economy. Best offer going. We don't make the rules, the virus does.

Maybe this might dampen agitation for a Swedish approach for a while now.

But if not, then we really need to recognise that trope for the false dream it is, and heed some expert advice.

Rod Jackson,  Professor of Epidemiology at the School of Population Health Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences, University of Auckland says that argument overlooks the reality that Sweden still had a raft of restrictions, and is showing one of the highest number of deaths per million population. 

And crucially: only about 6 percent of the population have been infected so far. That’s not remotely herd size.

He writes:

For Covid-19, it is estimated that about 60 per cent of the population need to be immune to gain herd immunity, yet, despite the havoc already caused by Covid-19, no country has even got to 10 per cent infected. 

And:

The 60 per cent immune figure is based on the assumption of a controlled increase in immunity, as a result of vaccination.

He says our best option is to take advantage of what good news there is, namely Covid-19's golden window of four to five days between when you are infected and when you become infectious. That makes it possible for an efficient testing, contact tracing and isolation system to stamp out new outbreaks rapidly by identifying infected people before they infect others.

Additionally, the one-month lifespan of a Covid-19 infection means that a four- to six-week lockdown can also stamp out the virus, as we did here a few months ago.

Those are the two choices: there are no other unless an effective vaccine is developed or the virus mutates into something less serious.

The best thing we can do is recognise that, and get to work adapting to unavoidable reality. 

4.16 pm

Was going to write a bit more about Kate Hawkesby. Unfortunately current sitch is: hateful government with North Korean vibes has just strapped me to muzzle of anti-aircraft gun. Am thinking that can’t be good.