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7:00 am, March 14th, 2020 - 135 comments
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The current rise of populism challenges the way we think about people’s relationship to the economy.We seem to be entering an era of populism, in which leadership in a democracy is based on preferences of the population which do not seem entirely rational nor serving their longer interests. ...
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A new Caste system?
A fascinating (and potentially disturbing) interview.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/audio/2018738292/does-free-will-truly-exist
and a worrying observation for 'the left' at around the 25 minute mark
The NZ Herald's coverage of the pandemic is surely the final blow to its reputation as anything other than ill informed trash. Panicking mongering on a scale that will get them rightly censored in a state of emergency is not responsible. And having reliable geriatric Tories like Audrey Young whine the government isn't panicking like they think they should is hilarious.
What a shit show of a paper.
They appear to be painting the PM as a weak leader…making me picture the alternative and it's not good
The response when the inevitable boarder closure, in reality 14 quarantine for all arrivals, comes in next week, along with social distancing enforced by a state of emergency will be a sight to behold.
An alternate view is that the ground is being prepared for the above.
Audrey has always been an obedient servant of the party.
The only thing that would make her not a weak leader is to give money to rich people and call it a 'fiscal stimulus'. That would be heroic, novel/cutting edge, courageous, far-sighted, business-savvy, street smart, and (of course) make us want to have a beer with her. Fran would be giggly with dizzy delight and Audrey could keep insisting that we have always been at war with Eurasia.
😀
Which will, of course, "trickle down".
Latest predictions from Australia, 60% of Australia will catch coronavirus. Mortality rate of 2%
thats 300,000 Australians.
its not about panicking, it’s about putting in place drastic measures to prevent a catastrophic event.
but blame the paper and the 4th estate. Who else does the government listen too?
Well, well, well. This evening, Jacinda Ardern, after correctly consulting the Ministry of Health, introduced strong moves that we all know about now. And what does the crappy Herald's Heather du Plessis-Allen have to say?? Well, apparently our PM has dithered on just about everything, but now rashly made an attempt to look strong, which could cost our beloved country dearly. (Had she read Audrey Young's column?)
This rabid right-wing propaganda is laughable. I suspect that if du Plessis-Allen had half a brain, it would die of loneliness.
If the Government had acted sooner, National's fan boys would have been screaming about "economic sabotage".
And trying to figure out a way their cronies could make money out of it.
yes 100%
The overnight explosion of Covid cases in Spain should cause NZ to close the boarder for passengers.
My current timeline =
Virus peaks May-June
July WHO finially admits it "may" be contagious when the patient is asymptomatic (something which was known by researchers back in Janurary). They will also discover research showing the virus remains active on stainless steel benches for 9 days and on other surfaces for much longer than "a few hours" (research done in February) contradicting statements made by both WHO and the CDC.
July/August governments worldwide declare quarantine, but this time all will be untied in imposing serious consequences for breaches including jail and extremely high fines
September/Oct virus is defeated due to the mass global quarantine, at this point millions will have suffered needlessly
But, but…on the upside, the economy has been allowed to tick over almost as per usual.
Whew.
When a news report about The Virus can conclude without mention of the impact on The Economy will be the day that we can be comforted that the human impact has claimed priority status.
Fuck The Economy I say….arguably, from the POV of most of us, it was pretty much fucked anyways.
This is downright offensive…are they trying to kill off old people thus solving the pension crisis?
Ministry of Health says people who are unwell must stay away from rest homes for 48 hrs. If someone is unwell with Cvd then they remain contagious for at least 10 days after they recover according to research cited by Chris Martenson during one of the Peak Prosperity YT updates.
https://www.health.govt.nz/our-work/diseases-and-conditions/covid-19-novel-coronavirus/covid-19-novel-coronavirus-information-specific-audiences/covid-19-information-aged-care-providers
Always a good idea to check the info before you opine and criticise. Last time I checked, Chris Martenson doesn’t work for MoH but is or as a YouTuber.
Chris Martenson is more credible then our own health authorities imho which is why I mention his name. He's been ahead of this right from the start pointing out on his first caronavirus video on Jan 23 (US) that given the advice from WHO the chances of it not becoming a pandemic were zero.
Because gold buggers and parasitic property speculators will be our saviours.
//
https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1238469881294721024
It’s been clear that you hold Chris Martenson in high regard, which is your prerogative. As a YouTuber, he doesn’t he carry official responsibility nor is he accountable to anyone; he can say pretty much whatever he feels like. You might think he is an authority (on COVID-19?) but he has none.
If he cites research (not his own) that states that someone who is unwell with Cvd remains contagious for at least 10 days after they recover then this appears to be consistent with the advice that I quoted (stay away for 14 days). BTW, have you checked the cited research?
In any case, MoH isn’t WHO.
Your (rhetorical?) question whether they (MoH? NZ Government?) are trying “to kill off old people thus solving the pension crisis” is beyond absurd, IMHO.
Anyone who makes such a ludicrous statement – even if it is rhetorical – is not deserving of serious consideration.
"are they trying to kill off old people thus solving the pension crisis?"
A, I too am not ok with this rhetoric, and think you can make your points here without it. We haven't seen it here yet, but there are apparent left wing people on social media running lines about covid being a boomer clear out. It's grossly anti-social, although not surprising given we've had a year of sustained ageism against older people. I know this is not what you are doing, but tensions are high and using language like that at all adds fuel to the fire.
Of those most at risk (those over 70), most are not boomers.
PS
1. I would not describe criticism of the boomer legacy as ageism, there are many critics who are boomers themselves (just as there are Jewish critics of Likud ultra-nationalist Zionism).
2. The idea that criticism of those in power (aging white men) is ageist, racist and sexist is one of the great deceits of our time.
Given that the vast majority of 'aging white men' are no more 'powerful' than any other person, it's one of the great deceits of our time to smear them as an identity group on that entirely bogus basis.
Yeah I get it, liberals and lefties calling out privilege get in the way of … those with capital who own and decide the natural order of things….
I suggest you travel to any other nation that is numerically dominated by some other ethnicity, and find out just how much 'white privilege' counts for fuck all.
Who set the WTO rules, the Bretton Woods system etc?
"Of those most at risk (those over 70), most are not boomers."
Might want to tell the ageist, bye boomer fucks that. Not that it will make a difference, because prejudice doesn't care about facts.
I wouldn't either. But that's not what I referred to. 'Ok Boomer' being used to dismiss people's arguments or thoughts based on perception of age and/or mentality was always going to intersect with the ageist strain in our society.
People thinking, and actively expressing, that it's ok for elderly people to die is just a more obvious extreme. We treat elderly people badly already, and it's no surprise that the Boomer Remover meme is inaccurate and arising fast.
Lefties defended Ok Boomer in a way that wouldn't have been tolerated for other groups, as if older people are only priviledged. We threw intersectionality out the windor. It's ridiculous, and utterly unnecessary. There's no good reason why we couldn't have coined a different terms that focuses on wealth instead of age/generation. But the reasons we didn't are related to ageism.
I was quite ok with Michael Cullen’s “rich prick” 😉
So was I.
Not all rich are "pricks" and not all "pricks" are rich, so "rich pricks" is descriptive of a certain subset of wealthy people.
Even more a stupid characterisation when many of the advantages that they think boomers got, actually happened for the previous generation.
For example 80% of pre boomers retired owning their own home. It looks like it is heading towards 55% of boomers, the "lucky" generation that were restructured out of work, by Rogernomics, paid 60% top tax rate so Rob's mob could retire at 60, and the children of the rich could get, "free" university, and paid 22% interest rates.
Even the people that started the Neo-liberal, “unfortunate experiment” that caused the problems for young people, were not, “boomers”.
As always, blaming beneficiaries, the old, and anyone else they can think of is used to mask the real culprits, the lazy entitled children of the rich, of all generations.
thank-you so much for this analysis.
Berners and co are loving it
#BoomerRemover
Probably because Sanders (and Biden) is too old to be a boomer.
But what they overlook most of those vulnerable (over 70) are not boomers.
"Berners and co are loving it"
Are you sure? Or is it shitposters and trolls?
Looking at those tweets, are they talking about removing someone from politics rather than covid deaths? Or both? I've just seen it as a meme re covid, but was it in use before that?
More than a few among the profiles.
yeah, but did you check the accounts to see if they are genuine?
Did Amy Goodman ever call Timothy McVeigh a "U.S. Opposition leader"?
Reading out the "War and Peace Report" at the start of Democracy Now! the other night, Amy Goodman identified the absurd, incompetent and discredited putschist Juan Guaidó with the bland title "Venezuelan Opposition leader."
Amy is a gem – she's allowed some carelessly-chosen words at times (assuming she even wrote the bulletin)
Quite right, AB. I am an admirer of Amy Goodman, but I was disturbed when she read that little propaganda nugget with about the same level of awareness that, say, Simon Dallow brings to his newsreading.
Yeah – let's hope it's a one-off.
Peter Dutton ordered to self-isolate on Manus Island for 5 – 8 years.
Thanks – a good laugh; sometimes schadenfreude really is the best medicine.
Quite a gathering.
https://twitter.com/AusintheUS/status/1235997767476097026
Now here is an advert one can relate to:
https://twitter.com/thejuicemedia/status/1238667841655541760
If only that were an actual news report…
That is clever
Brilliant.
While the msm choose not to investigate or report on the problems with OPCW governance, the issue is not going to go away in a hurry.
A fourth OPCW whistleblower has emerged to defend the two veteran inspectors who challenged a cover-up of the chemical weapons probe in Douma, Syria. The new whistleblower lamented that other staffers have been “frightened into silence.”
"There is still no mechanism at the organisation to enable the calling out of irregular behaviour to protect the integrity of the organisation. It is quite unbelievable that valid scientific concerns are being brazenly ignored in favour of a predetermined narrative. "
https://thegrayzone.com/2020/03/12/opcw-whistleblower-mistreatment-douma-investigators/
Sunday's remembrance service for the Christchurch mosque attacks has been cancelled.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2020/03/christchurch-mosque-attack-memorial-cancelled.html
Thanks for that, Brigid. Sadly, though, such rigorous and serious journalism holds no sway with broadcasters (and therefore shapers of middlebrow opinion) as Kim Hill, John Campbell, and Jesse Mulligan.
Why every minute counts with coronavirus response. An easily readable post with graphs, the author keeps things moving along rather compellingly…
https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fmedium.com%2F%40tomaspueyo%2Fcoronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca%3Ffbclid%3DIwAR118RhKss6bdYlulF7sonGM3rQkaL249Z5e2WE3v_75KSOWQFb7We0-1Cs&h=AT2YT2pH7IfLK7bqRxYqtUdNkRmtcltr3B1RatEMbu6IoZe–EiVCe0FpGNlvn5iqQf93T8wBvz8_fQAGrdckBS9nCAKU9PuLhckCQpWaQpLX7dZr22gJlb3Wgjzs828zJqLXsJPTXW0E1jn9lbdd6737NG3vzdGjHDykWM
The essential is to ensure the health system is able to cope (safety gear for staff, enough pulmonary respirators) – which means the “lockdown” approach when threat to it emerges.
The problem when doing this when the number cases is still low, is that this number of low instances will recur and recur – so how often does one lockdown?
In China they have replaced societal lockdown with more targeted hyper activity to stop spread (which we are doing at the moment).
Do you think that we actually have a reliable value for the number of cases there are? You suggest that it is still low but how can we know that? After all there is a claim at the link below that the person showed all the symptoms of the disease but testing was refused.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/120277695/coronavirus-auckland-mums-request-to-be-tested-for-virus-rejected
Wouldn't it be better to test people a little more freely. If the symptoms reported match the ones we are supposed to look for carry out a test. Better to know real numbers rather than fool ourselves with false numbers that are too low.
Singapore, which seems to be doing very well at detecting and isolating victims seems to be doing very well in that regard.
Short answer no, not really.
I would presume as soon as we know of community spread there will be places people can go to be tested – containers or caravans in car-parks/drive by zones (and those who have no vehicle a van that goes to their houses).
It depends how many test kits are available. If they are a scarce resource then it's not worth using them on otherwise well people who can self-isolate and recover in their own home. It's best to keep them for people who need hospital care so that the hospital staff and other patients can be protected.
Absolutely … we're making the same mistake as the US & other Western Nations. If we're genuinely interested in containment, delay & quickly detecting any signs of community spread then we need to drop this ludicrously restrictive test criteria.
Again, we're in Don't Test / Don't Tell territory … setting ourselves up for a major fall.
Okey dokey then.
Let's shut down all labwork except for covid-19 tests. If we have all the material resources for the tests, any lab techs not doing the actual tests are in training to learn the protocols.
Now people start dropping dead because none of those other tests are being done. So there's a line between the resources we allocate and (to use the economic term) the "opportunity cost" of allocating those resources to a particular condition.
Lady got sick. She's worried she infected immunosuppressed kids with covid-19, even though she doesn't meet the criteria for diagnostic (rather than screening) testing.
I'm worried she infected those kids with something else.
Case number 6, a person returning from the USA (attended a church service here before symptoms).
Time to add to the list of nations where returnees go into 14 day isolation.
argh shit.
That one's a worry.
This fucker should hang by his heels.
https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1238563294073384965
edit:
https://twitter.com/chrislhayes/status/1238552960524668928
https://twitter.com/SenSherrodBrown/status/1238571872779935744
Sanders has called for Trump to be tested after his exposure to the Bolsonaro aide with Covid-19. Here is Trump's anticipated post-test announcement – a bit ahead of time:
I had the coronavirus test – it was a very strong test. I was totally exonerated, there was no sign of the virus. I have a very strong constitution, maybe the strongest ever, history will tell. The doctors said "Sir you have a very strong constitution, scientifically speaking". The virus was very weak when it came up against my constitution – very weak. The doctors thought it almost looked like fake virus – or at least very weak. Or fake. History will tell. If you have a strong constitution you won't get this foreign virus. It's a foreign virus from the outside and we won't let it take over our country. We've built the best economy ever to fight the foreign virus. We are cutting taxes to make the economy stronger, stronger than the virus. It's like a wall, an antivirus wall against foreign viruses and people bringing it in. If you haven't got a strong constitution it's not good, not good. We might lose some people to the foreign virus. We hope not but we're doing a great job. Maybe there's not much we can do if you haven't got a strong constitution, though we can make the economy stronger, much stronger, they say the best ever. We need people with strong constitutions to fight the virus, if you're weak maybe that's not what we need? We'll see, history will tell . Thank-you
Shit you're being ironic. I didn't spot that the first time through ….
This is the problem with trying to be funny these days.
Sorry – I'm just imaging how even Covid-19 could be turned into some creepy, disgusting reinforcement of MAGA.
And while he is untested everyone else at the White House is at risk (and those they meet) – and if they they want to be responsible will have to get tested. And presumably if any test positive the Donald will be angry at them if they make that result public.
But then given the age of those on Capitol Hill, this may be Trump finally acting on his promise to drain the swamp …
Mar-a-PLago
https://twitter.com/KrisKetzKMBC/status/1238586300447547393
Maybe tRump is a "Super Carrier "? aka asymptomatic carrier. He would like that!
The greatest carrier, let me tell you!
Lovely thread.
https://twitter.com/leonardocarella/status/1238511612270690305
All of our 'social housing builders' and crappy apartment builders should watch this and learn about the importance of balconies, no matter how small.
they are truly important things.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/411738/live-ardern-briefs-media-following-covid-19-cabinet-committee-meeting
this is good.
let's hope it will help.
Personally i am not too worried about the illness itself, but the economic outfall from having the world shut down. How much of our medicine comes from overseas? Spare parts? Water treatment chemicals? and so on ….that is what i think will be long term a bigger issue then the 'flu' itself.
How much of our medicine comes from overseas?
Close to 100%. No reason to think it won’t continue to be shipped to NZ.
Well, it will have to be produced first before it can be shipped.
My Mother in Law was trying to buy panadol in Whakatane can could not find any anywhere. So you might want to check up on that.
China hopefully can go back to work – even if only running a half shift, but if it does not, then we are going to have an issue.
Same as with spare parts – my local car fixer is getting worried, parts are not coming, it appears.
my own raw material supplier already announced price increases for may, i have been hording since January but it will only last so long.
Fuck it, but we are living in intersting times.
"My Mother in Law was trying to buy panadol in Whakatane can could not find any anywhere. So you might want to check up on that. "
Bit of panic buying maybe ? There's certainly a crap load of paracetamols registered and available in NZ from lots of different manufacturers.
https://medsafe.govt.nz/regulatory/DbSearch.asp
Supply issues aren't new.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/376495/national-paracetamol-shortage-leads-to-restrictions
She lives rural and goes to town about once a month. We visited her a few days ago to speak about the virus and how we wanted to go about as a family. We live a bit all over and it does help to know where the others are at. And as we had tea and spoke about it she said the following: I could not find panadol anywhere in town, do you think it is because of it. She is old stock NZ she does not do panic buying.
There are a few big local companies like Douglas Pharmaceuticals that do excellent cheap generics of some medicines.
good. good. 🙂
Yep – don't think they supply many in NZ anymore though, mostly just do vitamins and such like for NZ these days.
https://medsafe.govt.nz/regulatory/DbSearch.asp
Most of our pharmaceutical medicines come from other companies who manufacture in Asia and Europe.
https://douglas.co.nz/products/prescription-products
Indeed not many left compared to how many they used to provide in NZ and most of those on the page are manufactured offshore by other companies.
As I've pointed out the vast majority of pharmaceuticals supplied in NZ come from offshore.
Correct, most of our medicines are imported, just like many other things that we depend on.
Some countries e.g. India have stopped exporting medicines so there could be a shortage of medicines.
Possibly, I read this in the Guardian or heard on Dr John Campbell's daily update a few days ago.
I'm expecting shortages of things, god knows what though.
There was a time Sabine, within the memory of some who comment here, that NZ imported sweet fuck all.
We made stuff….even tellyvisions and cars and clothing and machinery. We made socks.
We were not quite self-sufficient, but fairly close to it.
My bet is that we will do just fine…those that survive. We just need to try and make sure some of those really useful (but recently scorned) No.8 wire types keep kicking.
If this wee virus destroys The Economy, sinks the Good Ship Capitalism…that's fine by me.
Reset time.
Hopefully.
😉
If this wee virus destroys The Economy, sinks the Good Ship Capitalism…that's fine by me.
Reset time.
Hopefully.
Didn't take you for some who wished for the mass death of billions …
Incidentally the last great crisis we experienced in the Western world that killed a large fraction of the population was the Black Death, which is directly implicated in the end of feudalism and the beginnings of capitalism. So it's not obvious that the collapse you are hoping for will deliver the utopian outcome you dream of.
"Incidentally the last great crisis we experienced in the Western world that killed a large fraction of the population was the Black Death, "
I'd nominate the first world war followed by the influenza pandemic.
Great presentation from the late Hans Rosling. (@1.48)
Good point; Hans Rosling really pioneered the current methods of visual data driven analysis and I really like him.
But still it was the Black Death that is on the timeline with the beginnings of capitalism.
You don't think capitalism is going to cause "the mass death of billions"?
Forgotten about human caused global warming, already?
Which is already caused many more deaths than the virus is likely too.
Unless we find an alternative to the constant growth, necessitated by capitalisms, constant drive to find ever more elaborate ways of ripping other people off, and using ever more resources, we are fucked!
Yup, we made shit cars that cost a fortune (in my youth three times as many people/capita died on our roads than last year), a set of re-treaded tyres cost a months wages, a car battery cost three weeks wages, TV's were close to $5k in today's money, clothes were three times today's prices, shoes were shit and an affordable pair of NZ made socks barely lasted a school term.
/
Trekkas!
We assembled the cars and televisions … we made tyres.
The top,end of town got locally assembled complete knockdown kits. The rest of us had to settle for semi knocked down kits, assembled with locally made components.
Not correct 4 eyes. Car assembly was an import substitution regime. Hence CKD packs required glass, batteries, tyres, upholstery and wiring looms-all NZ manufactured. I spent 20 years in the industry and know a bit about it’s history.
The top end of town had to put up with the same shit. Nice.
yeah and a house was 20k.
Going back to locally producing shitty, over priced goods will make houses more affordable?
Wages were in line with costs. So a high wage economy meant that production costs were high. But the overall effect was a more equitable economy. By the way not all locally produced items were crap. The NZ clothing industry, NZ carpets, The NZ made tyres were actually exported – large countries concentrated on standard sizes and the NZ tyre industry supplied many of the older but still in some demand tyre sizes. We had the moulds and the older machinery. The loss of the PYE factory from Waihi meant the town suffered a huge loss of high payed employment. Now despite having the largest gold mine in the country – the town has one of lowest socio-economic areas in NZ.
well the inverse situation suggests it.
Not convinced all local goods were shitty,either.
Made in Hong Kong was the default for…'shitty'.
For a start, we are now importing shitty overpriced goods that last 6 months, if you are lucky. The NZ made whitewear, lasted 20 years or more.
The shitty knocked down cars were because we had to accept shitty, made for the colonies, crap from UK.
TV's were new technology back then. They were expensive, everywhere.
I was there. You?
Definitely.
Then you'll know full well that the NZ of my youth was a staid, authoritarian shit hole that chopped down anyone who stood up or stood out. It was a racist, sexist, society, dominated and controlled by the whims and wants of a small, select group; boorish white men and their tradwives. Your averring that somehow my recollections of just how miserable and overpriced the place was are wrong reminds me of those boors.
You must have lived in a different country.
Certainly not the one I grew up in.
/
https://www.blogger.com/profile/13583435107822078614
I heard statements like yours before.
Almost always from a position of intellectual arrogance, about how boring and expensive New Zealand was. In other words, working class people were too comfortable, and didn't appreciate the "specialness" of "superior" people.
The fact that, in that "boring shithole" almost all kids were fed, housed, could look forward to a decently paid job, where you could afford to spend holidays at the beach, and go tramping and sailing, and could get a good education, doesn't figure, because now, a few can get much richer, and we have cheap TV's.
The fact that many, even in a full time job, now cannot afford food or a house, means that NZ for most, is way more "expensive" than back then.
But it is more interesting now for you? Yay.
We were never comfortable. We were never able to spend holidays at the beach, and go tramping and sailing. My education stopped at the 5th form and I was never able pursue such a formidable array of middle-class pastimes as yourself and then list them as interests.
But thanks for the reminder that many of today's righteous
pontificators from the left are supercilious twats.
So far it's just a blip to the Kiwisaver.
Maybe for my industry we use up a bit of that Sick Leave accrual.
https://sciblogs.co.nz/lately-in-science/2020/03/14/news-coverage-drove-zika-interest/ [recommended reading]
From the Feeds on the RH side of The Standard homepage.
The UK is set to ban mass gatherings next week
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-51882897
The Welsh RU has admitted the reason why they cancelled the 6 Nations game with Scotland was because everything else had been called off (following the herd).
The Tory government leading from behind on this one.
But as their adviser has noted this (outdoor events) will make little difference to transmission rates (schools/universities and bars/restaurants/clubs/theatres and retail/workplaces will ensure spread).
Now sure I will always slag this lot off for weak domestic policy, but we have such a sensible and resolute Prime Minister in a crisis. Here's her key points from this afternoon:
https://www.odt.co.nz/news/national/cruise-ships-banned-all-overseas-arrivals-self-isolate
There have been some wonderful parodies on this site recently but you take first prize.
"we have such a sensible and resolute Prime Minister in a crisis".
In just a dozen words you have, with a straight face, come out with the funniest statement of the day.
Macro came up with a lovely opinion on Peter Dutton. It takes second place
https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-14-03-2020/#comment-1691295
Did fine with Christchurch massacre.
Pretty good on climate change response internationally.
Also good response on the Northland droughts.
And doing great on this one.
There's no leader in the country comes close.
your entertainment remains a priority, Alwyn
Covid 19 infection more serious in the elderly and in certain geographic areas. Antibody Dependent Enhancement a possible explanation.
sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1286457920300344
ADE has been shown to increase the severity of Dengue after previous infection.
science.sciencemag.org/content/358/6365/929
heh
https://twitter.com/west_on/status/1238552107147505664
The NHL was cancelled.
https://www.narcity.com/news/ca/sk/coronavirus-vaccine-made-in-saskatchewan-is-now-in-the-testing-stages
Shocking admission by Simon Bridges today: the National Party are not New Zealanders!
He tweeted:
"It’s good to see coronavirus being treated with more seriousness and urgency for the good of our country after a lot of pressure from National and New Zealanders."
https://twitter.com/simonjbridges/status/1238692711831502848
I smell Law & Order and a potential for electioneering.
https://www.health.govt.nz/our-work/diseases-and-conditions/covid-19-novel-coronavirus/covid-19-novel-coronavirus-health-advice-general-public/covid-19-novel-coronavirus-self-isolation [This page was last updated 14 March 2020.]
Dawn raids on old people?
Can't see that backfiring at all …
The responses to Simon’s tweets are brutal
No wonder the junior staffers who run his accounts get so emotional..
It did bring tears to my eyes …
Dammit ! We need a constructive opposition or we will become a matriarchy !
Camp Tagi in Iraq has just been attacked again.
https://www.twitter.com/SaadAbedine/status/1238743685115895808
Update:
Iraqi military says 33 rockets used in Taji base attack.
3 U.S. and 2 Iraqi soldiers have critical injuries.
Reuters reports:
The Iraqi military said the U.S. or other foreign forces should not use the attack as pretext to take military action without Iraq's approval. It called on all foreign troops to quickly implement a parliamentary resolution calling for their withdrawal.
https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN2110L4?__twitter_impression=true
Taji whack again folks, two US Air Defence personal (US Army Ground Base Air Defence) have received serious life threatening injuries.
The odds are shorting for a NZ & Australian casualties in the near future if the Iranian back militias keep this steady rate of rocket attacks.
If they want to stop these attacks on Taji someone needs to be actively patrolling on foot 24/7 right up to the rocket line the furthest limit of where a rocket can be successfully launched and be guaranteed a hit.
Could you remind me why our troops are still there ?
The Iraqi government responded to the attack by asking foreign forces to leave and to not fight back against those firing rockets at them.
"Let’s imagine as total a shutdown of Britain as it is possible to manage. Schools closed, offices empty, shops shut – save those selling food. Minimal public transport. Airports closed. Older people deliberately isolated."
"At this point, Boris Johnson and his advisers argue, they would run slap bang into the waiting Coronavirus. There would be health service carnage."
<snip>
"In that way, the population will acquire “herd immunity”. This will beat the virus in the medium term, and flatten its peak in the short – staggering out those hospital admissions over time, and thus preventing the NHS from being over-run completely. This is the core of the case argued this week by Patrick Vallance.
That it is made by the Government’s Chief Scientific Officer doesn’t mean that it represents “the science”. For strictly speaking, there is no such thing.
Rather, Johnson is being guided by a plan partly based on a certain scientific reading of events. Some scientists agree with it; others don’t. That’s in the nature of the beast. Probably because, as ConservativeHome keeps repeating, the decisions that the Government must make are not scientific, but political."
<snip>
https://www.conservativehome.com/thetorydiary/2020/03/johnsons-extra-virus-mission-to-help-save-the-world.html
Kia Ora The Am Show.
The show looks a bit worse for wear with the extra early wake up.
Twins.
What a rude person you are Duncan talking over the top of our Prime Minister. Use are just upset that our government is handling this virus situation well.
You want some more tissue for use and your m8s.
Earthquake in Christchurch this morning.???.
The Reserve Bank of New Zealand's dropped the official cash rate to 0.25.%.
Ka kite Ano
Kia Ora Newshub.
Shady move good on the defense move against him trying to get exclusive rights to a – – -.
Everyone has to be calm and careful and look for the positive phenomenon of this virus.
Ka kite Ano.
Kia Ora Te Ao Maori News.
Tangi should be able to continue you will just have to keep hygienic practices up and use the East Coast wave.
Yes most of the 100.000 students with out Internet will be Maori in rual places.
That panel found in Turanginui A Kiwa will be interesting.
Ka kite Ano
Kia Ora The Am Show.
EdTV
100.000 tamariki with out devices that could be used to educate them if our schools are closed because of the virus.
You should have seen the way your m8s reacted when I made that dig yesterday wow.
We will have to go back to the days of old one parent working and one at home there would need to be a few changes to the systems to make that work.
Its good to see a big company doing some thing for free to help it's tangata.
Going to the Auckland Islands watch out for the Great White Sharks there are a few of those in Aotearoa to.
If our country was ran fairly in the past there would be low unemployment in the regions.
Ka kite Ano.