Newsy crap

Plucked from the headlines, online and in print

Covid response bumbling, bungling and silenced

 

Covid

As much as the conspiracy theorists and general idiots are whining about us locking down here, we should all be thankful we’ve avoided the chaos of the northern hemisphere.

Coronavirus is still spreading there like wildfire, and despite the claims from the morons of this world that it’s nothing more than a head cold, it is claiming lives. It’s a brand new virus, our immune systems are vulnerable.  I guess those naysayers figure it’s not important if it isn’t someone they care about.

Anyhoo, a study by Professor Neil Ferguson’s Imperial College unit in the UK charted the spread of the virus using data on deaths. Their modelling shows infections rocketed from 200,000 to 1.5 million in the days before lockdown as UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson fluffed about, trying to decide what to do. 

Yes, between March 3 and March 14, Covid-19 cases in the UK jumped from 11,000 to 200,000. 
Johnson’s government had been warned that 250,000 could die without a lockdown but it wasn’t until March 14 that it was decided some sort of lockdown would be needed, and then a further 9 days until it actually happened. By that point, Imperial reckons there were 1.5 million cases.

There has been some debate about Ferguson’s numbers lately, but even if that estimate of 1.5 million is inflated, there is no doubt the virus was spreading like crazy, the NHS was absolutely swamped and lack of action was costing lives.

Meanwhile, it sounds like things are not at all great in Russia, with Putin looking a lot less like the in-control hard man he likes to present to the world. OK, so a few medics who dared to speak up on how badly Covid was hitting there have mysteriously fallen out of windows, but aside from that, Mr Putin reckons everything’s sweet as, bro.

I wonder if he’s tried chucking the virus out a window?

Bad apples held to account

Does the United States have the most corrupt, violent and bigoted police force in the world? No, it probably doesn’t, but there is messy minority of cops who fit that description. But one of the few good things about social media and smart phones: this sort of behaviour is getting harder to cover up.

A New York police officer has been slammed after video has surface showing him beating a bystander over social distancing regulations.

A witness said undercover cops approached a couple talking outside a store and demanded they stand further apart. Worth noting that the witness went on the record as saying they were indeed standing the required 2m apart.

As the cop tried to handcuff the pair, another witness asked what was going on. That witness, Donni Wright, was then targeted by the cop with racist name-calling and the threat of being Tased. The officer grabbed Wright, slammed him to the ground, punching him, then kneeled on his neck.

Check it out here on NZ Herald.

In these plague-y times, I’m all for social distancing (with some people, I was all for social distancing even without Covid). But this is a bit over the top. 

Hopefully, as the world sees more and more of the behaviour of this minority of cops who bring their profession into disrepute, the majority of cops who are actually decent human beings will stand up against them, and stand up for what is right. 

Ring, ring, why don’t you give me a call …

It’s important to find the positives in life, and even our current plague-y world can have an upside. It seems robocalls are down in the United States. And it’s the pandemic that they can thank. CNN has reported that the number of robocalls to US phones last month hit a two-year low. The reduction was helped by international call centers being shut down during the global pandemic and government efforts to stop Covid-19-related scams. Covid did something good. Who’d have thunk it!

TV programming worse than the plague

It’s interesting to see how some of the inhabitants of our planet are navigating our plague situation. Like the idiot who seemed a bit surprised that borders were closed and he got stranded here, so decided to have a whinge about the television programming in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Riiiight.

So it seems a British couple had been on what was described as the trip of a lifetime, including time in Singapore and Aussie before landing here on February 13.

Now, I don’t know about you, but if I had been trekking around the world AFTER the World Health Organisation had declared   the outbreak of a new virus a “public health emergency of international concern”, I would probably be considering getting the fuck outta Dodge, and flying home. In fact, on February 6, I cancelled a planned trip to the States in July because it was glaringly obvious this shit wasn’t going away any time soon, and seeing what was happening in Italy made it clear this was going to get worse before it got better. 

But nevertheless, our intrepid travellers landed here with plans to fly out at the end of March. As we all know, New Zealand went into lockdown on March 26.

So they are currently stuck here and complaining that being confined to a motel room in Auckland  feels a “bit like Alcatraz”.

Even worse, the TV programming is not to their taste, with hubby Mike Rowland saying: “Breakfast news here is like a sixth form experiment compared to Good Morning Britain … Piers Morgan is a God compared to what we are looking at.”

He said that when they started their holiday “Covid-19 was just something that affected China. By the time we got to Taupo in the North Island on March 14, it was starting to get a bit more serious but there was still no reason for us to change anything”.

No reason? How about that aforementioned World Health Organisation “public health emergency of international concern” bizzo? Even better, the WHO declared it was a global pandemic on March 11. That didn’t give a hint?

Anyway dear Mike, you poor hard-done-by traveller, sorry our telly isn’t up to your exacting standards. If you worship Piers Morgan, there’s little hope for you.

A shitty act of revenge

I don’t watch any of those Married At First Sight/Love Island/Random People Trying to Shag Other Random People on Reality TV shows, but it has become just about impossible to avoid them. Sadly, our news websites have decided trashy TV qualifies as news, so they all have this shite peppered throughout their sites.

And you would need to be living under a rock to have avoided news of toothbrush-gate, the latest outrage coming at us from the world of Married At First Sight Australia. Now, let me say right here that I don’t know who any of these people are, I don’t know who the villains are in this particular show, or even if there are any villains (but let’s face it, all good reality TV shows have at least one villain for the viewing public to hate).

Anyhoo, apparently this was MAFS Aussie’s biggest scandal yet. After a wild night on the town, two of the contentants cheated on their spouses with each other. Gasp, shock, horror.

One of the naughty twosome, Hayley, was then the subject of a revenge move by her MAFS hubby David. He took Hayley’s toothbrush and used it to clean “faecal matter” from the toilet. Yep, he used it to scrub the skiddies off his dunny bowl.

Ick. What a shit move.

Plague or panic?

Pig wearing mask.
Is this another swine flu?

There’s a new virus spreading in China and it’s giving “Swine Flu” vibes.

I know the always-right-wing, always-a-bit-alarmist Mail isn’t always the best source of news, but it is a wee bit worrying. We escaped the worst of it when swine flu was doing the rounds, but we won’t always be so lucky.

To be honest, it feels like one of those odd, in-between news moments where something sounds serious, but not quite cancel-your-plans-and-stockpile-emergency-supplies serious … yet.

Reports are coming out of China about the new virus (some sort of coronavirus), and while the numbers are still relatively small, the tone from the World Health Organisation is cautious, if not slightly ominous. There’s talk of “limited” human-to-human transmission so far, mostly within families, but officials are already warning hospitals around the world to prepare for the possibility of wider spread.

Hospitals being told to get ready suggests this isn’t just a one-city issue. And then there’s the mention of potential “super-spreading” events—something that sounds more like a plot device in a thriller than a real-world concern.

We have plans for another wee trip to the United States this year, but I’ll be keeping an eye on how things shape up before I book anything. Don’t want to get the plague State-side!

Duck, duck, go … ouch!

For all the knob-jockeys out there who spend far too much of their spare time fiddling with their peckers, Dave the Duck might just serve as a warning.

It seems the overly amorous feathered dude was getting a little too excited about doing the deed and his wee duckie dick has paid the price. Literally.

His owner Josh Watson said Dave the Duck was trying to mate with his assorted girlfriends (Dora, Freda and Edith) 10 times a day! This was too much for his bits, and he developed an infection. Antibiotics and painkillers didn’t help, and neither did the “intimate wash” Josh was advised to give his feathered companion on a daily basis.

The fornicating fowl continued his lusty pursuit of the girls and in the end, the experts at Highcroft Veterinary Hospital in Bristol decided there was no other option: Dave the Duck has had his penis removed.
RIP poor Dave’s wee dangly bits. 

 

 

 

Use your brain, get your jabs, don’t spread diseases

Hypodermic needle, vaccinationIt’s hard to fathom that here we are, sliding towards the end of the first decade of the 21st century, and we are facing a resurgence of that old enemy: measles.

Science-deniers who rant about the evils of vaccines are dragging us all back to the dark ages, where childhood diseases have the potential to claim far too many lives. They tell us that we have immune systems, that we don’t need vaccines; that we survived for centuries without these life-saving medications.

They ask: what did they do back in the old days? People just got measles, or whooping cough or small pox, or typhoid, or whatever. But here’s the thing: they also died. Take a wander through an old cemetery some time, one with headstones from before the days of safe and effective vaccines, and you’ll notice that there are a lot of headstones for children. Young children. Often more than one from a family. Yes, they didn’t need vaccines because, well … they didn’t have a bloody choice.

According to the Herald, the current outbreak in Samoa that has claimed 63 lives is just a small part of the global cited by the World Health Organisation and the US Centres for Disease Control. They reckon more than 140,000 people have died of this absolutely preventable disease this year. Many of them children. In fact, one family in Samoa lost three children to this deadly disease.

The saddest part of it all, is that it doesn’t need to happen.

In 2018, fatalities here highest among children under the age of 5. To get to the herd immunity stage where the disease stops spreading, we need 90% of our kids to be vaccinated, but that global rate is currently sitting at just 70%.

As the government in Samoa battles this outbreak, the keyboard warrior anti-vaxxers have crawled out from under their collective rocks to share all their abhorrent and idiotic anti-vax rhetoric and to leave ridiculous comments and an array of one-star reviews on the official government website.

Seriously, these idiots need to grow up.

Vaccines work.

Climate change is real. 

Peer-reviewed, scientific research out-ranks some twat Googling conspiracy websites while they are on the loo.

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