The Contradictions of Covid

 

Yes, I know we are all sick of it. But I am genuinely sick of Covid. I have it, my wife has it, and both of us are in self-isolation. We are not alone, of course—well, we are in terms of the isolation, but we are not alone in having Covid; the medical people supporting us have told me that there is plenty of anecdotal evidence that in these RAT days plenty of people are not reporting their positive results. To me, that is a shame and irresponsible. Reporting is easy to do, it is the right thing to do, and you are showered with an amazing amount of support from various agencies when you do.

Until now, I haven’t shared that I/we have Covid. What’s the point? As already stated, it is not—these days—uncommon, nor if my experience is anything to go by, does it have dire consequences. It is no big thing

So, why do I mention it now?

Two reasons, the first of which I have already alluded to. That is the amazing amount of support thrown at you when you report you have Covid. My wife and I were contacted immediately by the Ministry of Health to offer support and then by our doctors also offering support. The Ministry and the doctors are both making follow-up calls. Equally impressive are the people running those services. They have been friendly, informative, supportive, and showing genuine empathy—even more impressive, given the pressure they must be under.

That’s the upside.

Sorry, I am afraid there is a downside.

If you contract Covid, you start to do a bit of research, and you soon become acutely aware that the “official” information out there is little more than a dog’s breakfast.

It is a mess—uncoordinated and often—too often—contradictory. For example, the simple question of how long the self-isolation is. In the leaflet they emailed us, the Ministry of Health told us they would be in regular contact, will monitor our conditions, and based on their findings, tell us when we can be “released”. There is no mention of further tests—RAT or otherwise. The Government and our doctors, on the other hand, are saying it was ten days (now seven days) with a further test the day before release—at least it says so on some of their websites.

The latest informal advice we got was that the self-isolation period was about to be reduced even further or even done away with.

I also questioned why nobody was telling us (or cared) what strain of Covid we had; the RAT test certainly doesn’t differentiate between Delta and Omicron. In reply, I was told the Ministry wasn’t bothering with that anymore: “It’s all Covid.” Really? Early on, we were told that Delta was likely deadlier than Omicron, so there is a difference, and I am surprised we are left to flounder around self-diagnosing based on the seriousness of our symptoms.

That last point does perhaps illustrate something else. How much more is the Government no longer bothering about with their “management” of Covid? For the most part, they have dispensed with contact tracing (which calls into question the value of scanning); under RAT, they have no objective measure of how many Covid cases are out there (I think it is rampant); and their agencies are no longer on the same page as far as information is concerned.

As I said, it’s all turned into a bit of a dog’s breakfast, saved in our case only by the quality and compassion of the people dealing with us at the Covid coalface.

Our gratitude for them is beyond measure.

As a somewhat funny aside, my wife was asked by the attending nurse how she was feeling. My wife responded, “I’m over it.” The nurse replied, “Yes, dear, I think we all are.” My wife had to hastily explain that by saying “over it” she meant “through it.”  For many of us, both interpretations would suffice.

 

Whetu Calls: The epidemiologist

 

I have known Whetu for a long time. Longer than anticipated and, on reflection, longer than desired. In the time I have known him I have moved house three times and on none of these have I given him my home address. Yet he crops up. He finds me. It is uncanny. The only times he has granted me a hiatus is when he is in prison, which are, admittedly, frequent. His crimes are petty, mostly involving the theft of cars, a couple of burglaries and shoplifting. As far as I know, he has never been convicted of a major crime involving violence or being a member of the Labour Party. I personally have nothing against Whetu. In fact, I admire him for being the entrepreneur he is. And the ruses he adopts and adapts to extort money from me are genuinely creative; but he is an intrusion, an unwelcome visitor, and a penetrator of my comfort zone—I do not like being penetrated. So, it was with some displeasure today that I opened my door to find Whetu on my doorstep. The exchange went like this:

HE: Kia Ora, Bro.

ME: Whetu.

HE: You gots new home?

ME: Yes.

HE: You didn’t tell me.

ME: It slipped my mind.

HE: But I found you.

ME: Obviously. Look, Whetu, what is it this time? And how much?

HE: How much?

ME: How much money do you want? Or, to put it more accurately, how much money are you NOT going to get from me?

HE: I don’t want no money from you.

ME: Really?

HE: I got plenty of money. I gotta new job.

ME: Really? With who…whom?

HE: Pacifica University.

ME: Never heard of it.

HE: It’s new. I am their epdi…epid…epri…bug doctor.

ME: Bug doctor.

HE: I tells them how much covid cases to expect. I models for them.

ME: And what does modelling mean?

HE: Standing around and looking good.

ME: What on earth do you know about Covid?

HE: Nothing.

ME: Nothing.

HE: I makes it up. Television comes to me because I am at university, asks me how much covid cases there are going to be next week, and I tells them.

ME: And how do you know?

HE: I looks it up.

ME: Looks…Look it up, where?

HE: First three numbers of last week’s Lotto draw.

ME: That’s not very scientific.

HE: Well, if you want to get scie…scia…

ME: Scientific.

HE: Yeah, that. I sometimes gives them the first four numbers—scares the shits out of them.

ME: So, what have you come to see me for?

HE: Next week there are going to be 8,433 covid cases.

ME: So?

HE: Want to buy a mask?

 

The Political Podium and how it is being used

 

The Prime Minister’s daily covid updates, usually at 1.00, are past their use-by date, no longer serve any useful purpose and have deteriorated to where they are little more than cynical manipulation for political purposes, bordering on the disgraceful.

Now, you may disagree with me on that. You may think the Prime Minister is doing a superb job communicating with the country and keeping us in touch and keeping us calm.

And keeping us kind.

But I would like to list the reasons that is not true. Some of the following may seem incredibly trivial to you, some of them are just nuances that normally would go unnoticed, but collectively they build a picture of pitch-perfect politicking. So, here we go.

·      Timing: The press conferences are scheduled for 1.00 pm. The Prime Minister is invariably late arriving, sometimes by up to 15 minutes (though she has got better of late). Why is that? If Chris Hipkins or Grant Robertson are running the conferences, they turn up on time. But the Prime Minister? No. There is no, I repeat no, valid reason for her to be consistently late. It is unbecoming of a prime minister and, to be honest, it’s rude. Simple as that. But I can tell you why I think it happens. Could it be because it gives time for fawning sycophantic Press Gallery journalists such as Jessica Much-McKay to blow the government’s trumpet as a curtain-raiser to the “big event”. Pure theatre.

·      Then there is the time the Prime Minister takes to get to the point—again, keeping us waiting for effect. These days, the announcement we are principally looking for is whether we are going up or down levels. Instead, we must wait for that one simple piece of information until Ashley Bloomfield has, in his droning delivery, gone on about the number of cases, scanning rates, genome sequencing, and vaccination rates. Why? Couldn’t that wait until later? But no, the Prime Minister needs to keep us waiting.

·      About Ashley Bloomfield, he has joined the growing list of bureaucrats and media that can’t bring themselves to say Auckland. I am sorry. But I am failing to understand why we are increasingly defaulting to a language of just 15 percent of the population, many of whom don’t speak or understand it themselves. And what is it about his use of the word motu as in “across the motu.” Motu means the country. Why can’t he just say the country? Dr Ashley Bloomfield has become the Andy Coster of the medical fraternity and is condescending and patronising of Maori and, for many of us, offensive and so unnecessary.

·      But now we come to the crux of why I think the Political Podium is past its use-by date—the Prime Minister and the Director General are bringing nothing new to the table. Watch this afternoon’s conference carefully—or, more accurately—listen to it carefully. The Prime Minister is prefacing just about every sentence with “As you have just heard Dr Bloomfield say…” or “You will recall me saying…” So, she is repeating what we have already been told. Why? Does she have nothing new to say and is just hungry for the screen-time?

My point is that if these press conferences no longer have anything to say, other than an update on the statistics, and possibly grandstanding by the Prime Minister. They should be mothballed, and a press release for the Department of Health could distribute the statistics. Now, you may counter that by saying that the press conferences open the Prime Minister to questions from the media. Do they? How about this question to the Prime Minister last week: “How important is it that people follow the rules of Level 4?”

Really?

Let’s dispense with the “press conferences" and, for goodness’ sake, get back to being treated like adults.

The Buck Stops There

My friend Zane said it well, “[Health Minister David Clark] let the Team of 4,999,999 down.” Clearly Clark is not a team player; not only did he breach the rules of Level 4 no fewer than 3 times and was missing in action for much of lockdown, he now has the temerity to blame one of his lieutenants for the parlous state of our porous border—a lieutenant, incidentally,  who never went MIA when needed and as far as I know never breeched one of the lockdown conditions.

Clark said that Dr Bloomfield had accepted responsibility for the border situation and then implied that’s where the matter ends. It does not. It defies belief that Clark believes he has no responsibility in this matter. He may have no direct culpability (I’ll come back to that later) but is morally obligated to support his department and if that means uttering that famous saying “the buck stops here’ instead of his the buck stops there, so be it.

Clark’s actions and inactions make him in my view morally bankrupt and unacceptable as a minister or even as a member of parliament.

Now let’s turn to that other matter. Clark compounds his cowardly swipe at Dr Bloomfield and his own failure to shoulder any of the blame by then accusing our frontline people of not properly executing what he said were clear instructions from the Government.

Really, Clark?

Which instructions, Clark, about what you could or couldn’t do under Level Four were not clear to you when you went on your bike-riding jaunts? It seems to have been clear to the other 4,999,999 of us. Or was it simply that you did not properly execute them.

I don’t want to see anybody out of a job—there are enough of them already. But this minister has to step down. It’s overdue, we don’t need him, and we could do without his arrogance at this time—or at any time.

Oh, and one other message—for the Prime Minister—the buck doesn’t stop there (with Clark) either.