Now that Aotearoa New Zealand has lifted our COVID-19 restrictions after getting rid of the virus on our shores, other than keeping our border closed, I Tweeted:
Last time I felt this much part of a national team was when celebrities sang ‘Sailing Away’ to the tune of ‘Pokarekare Ana’. #COVID19
and between Cachalot on Twitter and I, we actually wound up with a variation of the song (incidentally, he was first with the chorus, showing that great minds think alike).
Here we come, weāre isolating Here we come, weāre on our way In a team thatās called New Zealand Weāre together, thatās our way.
Then back to the refrain.
Out of respect to the language in which the song was composed, te reo MÄori, here are the original, poignant lyrics. It’s a beautiful, heart-wrenching song. There’s a further explanation to it here.
PÅkarekare ana,
ngÄ wai o Waiapu
Whiti atu koe hine,
marino ana e.
Refrain
E hine e,
hoki mai ra.
Ka mate ahau
I te aroha e.
Tuhituhi taku reta,
tuku atu taku rīngi,
Kia kite tÅ iwi
raru raru ana e.
Refrain
Whati whati taku pene
ka pau aku pepa
Ko taku aroha
mau tonu ana e.
Refrain
E kore te aroha
e maroke i te rÄ
MÄkÅ«kÅ« tonu i
aku roimata e.
You couldnāt make this up.
Fortunately for us all, RussInCheshire on Twitter has summed up Cumgate, or whatever itās being dubbed in the UK.
No matter how bad our politics could get, I think we should be pleased that we have not followed the UK, and that we have dealt with COVID-19 far better than they have. Given the behaviour of their government, perhaps this is no surprise.
I donāt know how to combine the lot in one embed, so I hope Russ will forgive me for quoting his Twitter thread in full. The original may be found here.
The week in Tory (Cummings special):
1. Dominic Cummings, one of the few men to have ever been found in contempt of Parliament, moved onto contempt for everything
2. When the story broke, and he was accused of doing things that look bad, he said he didn’t care how things looked
3. Then ministers said press outrage meant nothing, only the opinion of the people mattered
4. Then polls showed 52% of people wanted Cummings to resign
5. So Cummings decided to show the public some respect, by turning up 30 minutes late to make his explanation
6. He began by saying he wasn’t speaking for the govt, which must be why he was in the Rose Garden of 10 Downing Street
7. Then the self-styled “enemy of the Islington media elite” said his wife, who works in the media, had been ill in their house in Islington
8. But she was only a bit ill, so he popped home, got himself nice and infected, then went back to Downing Street for meetings with lots of vitally important people in the middle of a national crisis
9. But then he got ill too, so then it was suddenly important
10. Sadly he couldn’t get childcare in London, even though 3 immediate relatives live within 3 miles of his London home
11. So because he was carrying a virus that can cross a 2 metre distance and kill, he immediately locked himself in a car with his wife and child for 5 hours
12. He then drove 264 miles without stopping in a Land Rover that gets maybe 25 MPG
13. Then the scourge of the metropolitan elites made himself extra-relatable by describing his family’s sprawling country estate, multiple houses and idyllic woodlands
14. He explained that he’d warned about a coronavirus years ago in his blog
15. Then it was revealed he actually secretly amended old blogs after he’d returned from Durham
16. And anyway, if he’d warned years ago, why was he so massively unprepared and slow to react?
17. Then he said he was too ill to move for a week
18. But in the middle of that week, presumably with “wonky eyes”, he drove his child to hospital
19. Then he said that to test his “wonky eyes” he put his wife and child in a car and drove 30 miles on public roads
20. Then it was revealed his wife drives, so there was no reason for the “eye test”, cos she could have driven them back to London
21. Then it was revealed the “eye test” trip to a local tourist spot took place on his wife’s birthday
22. Then cameras filmed as he threw a cup onto the table, smirked and left
23. And then it emerged his wife had written an article during the time in Dunham, describing their experience of being in lockdown in London, which you’d definitely do if you weren’t hiding anything
24. A govt scientific advisor said “more people will die” as a result of what Cummings had done.
25. Boris Johnson said he “wouldn’t mark Cummings ” down for what he’d done.
26. The Attorney General said it was ok to break the law if you were acting on instinct
27. The Health Minister said it was OK to endanger public health if you meant well
28. Johnson said Cummings’ “story rings true” because his own eyesight was fine before coronavirus, but now he needs glasses
29. But in an interview with The Telegraph 5 years ago, Johnson said he needed glasses cos he was “blind as a bat”
30. Michael Gove went on TV and said it was “wise” to drive 30 miles on public roads with your family in the car to test your eyesight
31. The DVLA tweeted that you should never, ever do this
32. Then ministers started claiming Cummings had to go to Durham because he feared crowds attacking his home. The streets were empty because we were observing the lockdown.
33. And then a minister finally resigned
34. Steve Baker, Richard Littlejohn, Isabel Oakeshott, Tim Montgomerie, Jan Moir, Ian Dale, Julia Hartley Brewer, 30 Tory MPs, half a dozen bishops and the actual Daily Mail said Cummings should go
35. The govt suggested we can ignore them, because they’re all left-wingers
36. Then a vicar asked Matt Hancock if other people who had been fined for doing exactly what Cummings did would get their fine dropped. Matt Hancock said he’d suggest it to the govt
37. The govt said no within an hour. Cummings’ statement had lasted longer than that
38. And if the guidelines were so clear, why were people being stopped and fined for driving to find childcare in the first place?
39. Then a new poll found people who wanted Cummings sacked had risen from 52% to 57%
40. Cummings is considered the smartest man in the govt
41. And in the middle of all this, in case we take our eye off it: we reached 60,000 deaths. One of the highest per capita death rates worldwide.
42. We still face Brexit under this lot.
43. It’s 4 years until an election
44. And it’s still only Wednesday
The Hon David Clark MP is not a story in this context. Though the former opposition leader’s 1,000 km round trips are.
Finally, a podcast (or is it a blogcast, since it’s on my blog?) where I’m not “reacting” to something that Olivia St Redfern has put on her Leisure Lounge series. Here are some musings about where we’re at, now we are at Level 3.
Some of my friends, especially my Natcoll students from 1999ā2000, will tell you that I love doing impressions. They say Rory Bremner’s are shit hot and that mine are halfway there. It’s a regret that I haven’t been able to spring any of these on you. Don’t worry, I haven’t done any here. But one of these days ā¦
I know what youāre thinking. āDid he have six kids or only fiveā. Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement, I've kinda lost track myself.
A lot of the world’s population has come together in the fight against COVID-19. Except Facebook, of course, who is exploiting the virus for profit. Facebook has done well in the first quarter of 2020 with positive earnings. Freedom From Facebook & Google co-chairs Sarah Miller and David Segal note (the links are theirs): ‘Facebook has exploited a global pandemic to grow their monopoly and bottom line. Theyāve profited from ads boasting fake cures and harmful information, allowed ad targeting to āpseudoscienceā audiences, permitted anti-stay-at-home protests to organize on the platform, and are now launching a COVID āData for Goodā endeavour to harvest even more of our personal information.
āMake no mistake, Facebook having more of your data is never āgood”, nor will they just relinquish the collected data when the pandemicās curve has been flattened. Rather, theyāll bank it and continue to profit from hyper-targeted ads for years to come.’
It’s been a few weeks (April 19 was my last post on this subject) since I last crunched these numbers but it does appear that overall, COVID-19 infections as a percentage of tests done are dropping, several countries excepting. Here is the source.
France 167,178 of 724,574 = 23Ā·07%
UK 171,253 of 901,905 = 18Ā·99%
Sweden 21,092 of 119,500 = 17Ā·65%
USA 1,095,304 of 6,391,887 = 17Ā·14%
Spain 239,639 of 1,455,306 = 16Ā·47%
Singapore 17,101 of 143,919 = 11Ā·88%
KSA 22,753 of 200,000 = 11Ā·38%
Switzerland 29,586 of 266,200 = 11Ā·11%
Italy 205,463 of 1,979,217 = 10Ā·38%
Germany 163,009 of 2,547,052 = 6Ā·40%
South Korea 10,774 of 623,069 = 1Ā·73%
Australia 6,766 of 581,941 = 1Ā·16%
New Zealand 1,479 of 139,898 = 1Ā·06%
Taiwan 429 of 63,340 = 0Ā·68%
Hong Kong 1,038 of 154,989 = 0Ā·67%
Emmerdale fans will never forgive me. I’ve not been one to watch British soaps, finding them uninteresting. However, in this household, we have had Emmerdale on since it’s scheduled between TV1ās midday bulletin and the 1 p.m. government press conference on COVID-19, or, as some of us call it, The Ashley Bloomfield Show, named for our director-general of health who not only has to put up with all of this, but took a hit to one-fifth of his pay cheque. Naturally, one sings along to the Emmerdale theme, except I have no clue about its lyrics. Are there lyrics?
Never used to leave the TV on for #Emmerdale, but with #COVID19 I doāand like many, I sing along:
Who the hell cares what goes on at that farm? Donāt really know who has come to some harm. Whatever you see, thereās no cause for alarm, When we peer in the lives of Emmerdale.
Not a single like on Twitter or Mastodon. I’ve offended a heck of a lot of people.
We are supposedly at Level 3, which someone said was Level 4 (the full lockdown) with takeaways. However, we’ve gone from the 1960s-style near-empty motorways to this almost immediately.
Peter Lambrechtsen rightly pointed out that COVID-19 per capita infection statistics arenāt as good as knowing the infection rate based on tests done, so at 2 a.m. I decided to crunch some numbers based on the stats I had on hand. These are many hours old now but hopefully still indicative of where things stand. Here you want a low percentage, and we are very fortunate to be sitting on 2Ā·71 per cent. This site has tests per million as well, which I havenāt factored in. Taiwan and Hong Kong are looking even better on this measure; Australia isn’t looking too bad, either. The European and US numbers are sobering. Mainland China and the KSA havenāt released their testing numbers, only total infections.
I donāt really want to go into fatality rates.
France 98,010 of 224,254 = 43Ā·70%
Spain 140,510 of 355,000 = 39Ā·58%
UK 51,608 of 252,958 = 20Ā·40%
USA 369,179 of 1,941,052 = 19Ā·02%
Italy 132,547 of 721,732 = 18Ā·37%
Sweden 7,693 of 54,700 = 14Ā·06%
Switzerland 22,242 of 167,429 = 13Ā·28%
Germany 104,199 of 918,460 = 11Ā·34%
New Zealand 1,160 of 42,826 = 2Ā·71%
South Korea 10,331 of 461,233 = 2Ā·24%
Singapore 1,375 of 65,000 = 2Ā·12%
Australia 5,908 of 310,700 = 1Ā·90%
Hong Kong 936 of 96,709 = 0Ā·97%
Taiwan 376 of 39,011 = 0Ā·96%
Russell Brown linked this COVID-19 trend page by Aatish Bhatia on his Twitter recently, and itās another way to visualize the data. There are two axes: new confirmed cases (over the past week) on the y and total confirmed cases on the x. Itās very useful to see how countries are performing over time as itās animated, and to get a handle on what trajectory youāre on.
Iāve plotted us against some Asian countries and territories in the first graph and western countries in the second. South Korea is doing quite well and Taiwan is really bending its curve down. Try it yourself by clicking on either of the screenshot graphs below.
Iāve heard world leaders describe the fight against COVID-19 as a war, and there are some parallels.
As any student of history knows, there was such a thing as the Munich Agreement before World War II. Iāve managed to secure the summarized English translation below.
For those wondering why the UK initially thought herd immunity would be its official answer to COVID-19, placing millions of people in danger, Iāve located the following document, which was previously covered by the Official Secrets Act.
The British PM confirms heās been in contact with the virus in this video from the Murdoch Press, cited by The Guardianās Carole Cadwalladr:
āIām shaking hands continuously. I was at a hospital the other night where there were actually some Coronavirus patients & I shook hands with everybody. People can make up their own mind but I think itās very important to keep shaking hands.āpic.twitter.com/mvPEE13udm
Olivia St Redfern has featured yours truly in her lockdown day 2, part 1 podcast, so I decided to record another response.
It brings to mind something Steve McQueen once said. āIām not an actor. Iām a reactor.ā As in, he could react to a line from another actor.
Anyone who has seen McQueen in a film, certainly anything post-Blob, would dispute thatāthe king of cool was an excellent actor. But for now, as someone who had avoided doing a podcast for two decades, I āreactā to Oliviaās episodes, and recorded a response on Anchor:
At some point I might do an entry independently but considering the first has only had one listen (out of hundreds who might read a blog post of mine), then thereās not a huge incentive! (Update: that episode has doubled its audience to two.)
History tells us that it took a while for Melrose Place to be seen as more than a 90210 spin-off, for instance. And Joey never managed it post-Friends.
This second one does make one point about working from home. As mentioned before, Iāve been doing this since 1987, so the only difference with the lockdown (and the days leading up to it) is that I donāt feel as āspecialā. But I also know that not everyone is enjoying their work arrangements, such as this British QC:
Day 2 of isolation. Kids coping better than me. Very happy to email anyone who wants it a copy of the essential document I needed to draft this am pic.twitter.com/QptM2ouj6r
I posted my 12 tips for working from home, but when chatting to Amanda today, there might be a bit more to it than that. Maybe thereās something about oneās personality that makes working from home easier.
While I have things to do each day, I donāt make lists. Iām more substantive than procedural. In the daytime, I try to answer emails or see to urgent stuff. I almost never do accounts at night: thatās another daytime pursuit. I know to reserve time to do those but I donāt religiously set it to 2 p.m., for instance. The beauty of working from home is flexibility, so why re-create a regimented schedule?
At night I tend to do more creative things, e.g. design and art direction. My work day is extended because I enjoy my work.
My advice to those making the shift is to do away with the lists. Know the direction and get things done as the inspiration hits you. Itās meant to be calmer than the bustle of office life.
When I was 13, my father became self-employed after being made redundant at his work. By choice, my mother did the same when I was in my early 20s. They both loved the lifestyle and I imagine it was inevitable I would do the same in my career, beginning at a time when I was still studying.
As some who self-isolate because of the coronavirus pandemic say that their mental health is affected, I thought Iād share how Iāve been based at home for over three decades.
1. For those working, make sure itās not just one project. Thereās nothing more wearing that having just one thing to work on the entire day. I always have a few projects on the go, and make sure I switch between them. The second project should be a lighter one or be of less importance. Even if itās not work, make sure itās something that gives you a bit of variety.
2. Make sure you have a decent work set-up. I find it important to have a monitor where I can read things clearly. Also I set mine on a mode that restricts blue light. If youāre working at home, itās not a bad idea to have comfortable settings on a screen. If your monitor doesnāt have a native mode to restrict blue light, thereās always F.lux, which is an excellent tool to make screens more comfortable.
If you’re used to standard keyboards and mice, that’s great, but for me, I have to ensure my keyboard is either at around 400 mm in width or less, and my mouse has to be larger than the standard size since I have big hands. Ergonomics are important.
3. Find that spot. Find a comfortable space to base yourself with plenty of natural light and ventilation. At-home pet cats and dogs do it, take their lead.
4. Stretch. Again, the cats and dogs do it. Get out of that chair every now and then and make sure you don’t get too stiff working from your desk. Exercise if you wish to.
5. If you relax to white noise or find it comforting, there are places that can help. One friend of mine loves his podcasts, and others might like music, but I enjoy having the sound of web video. And if itās interesting, you can always stop to watch it. One site I recently recommended is Thought Maybe, which has plenty of useful documentaries, including Adam Curtisās ones. These give an insight into how parts of the world work, and you might even get some theories on just what landed us in this situation in 2020.
When Aotearoa had two network TV channels, I dreamed of a time when I could have overseas stations accessible at my fingertips. That reality is now here with plenty of news channels online. If thatās too much doom and gloom, Iām sure there are others that you can tune into to have running in the background. Radio.net has a lot of genres of music.
6. Find that hobby. No point waiting till you retire. Was there something you always wanted to learn about but thought youād never have time? I recommend Skillshare, which has lots of online courses on different subjects. You learn at your pace so you can delve into the course whenever you want, say once a day as a treat.
7. I do some social media but generally I limit myself. Because social media are antisocial, and theyāre designed to suck up your time to make their owners rich (they look at how much attention they capture and sell that to advertisers), thereās no point doing something draining if youāve got some good stuff to do in (1). However, they might be cathartic if you want to have some human contact or express your feelings. Personally, I prefer to blog, which was my catharsis in the mid-2000s, and which I find just as good today. It’s a pity the old Vox isn’t around these days as there’s much to be said for a long-form blogging network.
Sarb Johal started the #StayatHomeEnts hashtag on Twitter where Tweeters have been putting up some advice on what we each do to keep entertained. I just had a scroll down and they’re really good!
8. Many of us have this technology to chat to others, letās use it. Weāre luckier in 2020 that thereās Facetime, Skype, Google Hangouts, etc. I had thought that if we didnāt have social media, weād be finding this an ideal opportunity to connect with others around the planet and learning about other cultures. I remember in the early days of the web how fascinating it was to chat to people in chatrooms from places I had never visited. I realize these days there are some weirdos out there, who have spoiled the experience for the great majority. But Iām sure there are some safe places, and if theyāre not around, see what friends are in the same boat and form your own virtual networks. Importantly, donāt restrict yourselves to your own country.
9. Donāt veg: do something creative. For those of us with a creative bent, draw, write, photograph, play a musical instrumentāsomething to de-stress. I canāt get through a day without doing one creative thing.
10. Anything in the house that you said youād always do? Nowās your chance to do it, and hopefully youāve got your tools and equipment at home already.
11. If you’re in a relationship, don’t get on top of each otherāhave your own spaces. Having said that, seeing my partner helps as I used to go into town a few times a week for meetings; because I see her each day, that need to meet up with colleagues to get out of your own headspace isn’t as strong.
Normally I would have a small amount of meetings during the week but as I get older, they’re actually fewer in number, so I can cope with not having them.
Do you have any extra tips? Put them in the comments and letās see if we can build on this together.
