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Open mike 04/09/2021
79 comments on “Open mike 04/09/2021”
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Really not looking forward to the media frenzy of sanctimonious lecturing and 20/20 hindsight that will now ensue after yesterdays events in New Lynn. Probably just won't read any of it until about next Wednesday, like a lot of people I suspect I get my COVID news from watching the 1pm briefing and my other news from publications (LRB, TLS, The Atlantic, several reputable Youtube channels) other than most of the NZ MSM.
It's like sadness overload.
Few ppl are boycotting the sites that screened the video of the man being shot. I've not seen it, bloody ghoulish really.
Kim Hill dealt with the central scandal in the first ten minutes of her show this morning – the glacial pace of progress of anti-terror law changes under successive governments. That is a failure that must now be immediately rectified. The rest of the coverage will be either right wing partisan flacks frantically trying to pin it on the government or "how do you feel" ghouls.
Gosh Sanctuary, is it Wednesday already?
Rip Van Winkling. 🙂
Her chat with Law professor Andrew Geddes was interesting subsequently. Clips will be here eventually: https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/saturday/20210904
His point about the law change not necessarily preventing what happened yesterday was well made. For the earlier offending he may not have received any extra time. Yesterday appears to have been a completely opportunistic act.
Specific link inside tweet:
https://twitter.com/BMHayward/status/1433906979446018051
My sentiments too. The fact he presumably didn't come with a knife on him and grabbed one off a supermarket shelf suggests it was a spur of the moment act.
He may well have been incentifised to take some form of action by the ISIS terrorist attack on Kabul Airport a few days ago.
Nothing spur of the moment about it. He needed to be carrying a cutting tool like scissors to help remove the knife from its packaging. Had also been charged with planning exactly that sort of attack in exactly that sort of place.
Let's focus our kindness on the people affected by his actions.
He took advantage of a situation. That, in my book, constitutes a spur of the moment act. It doesn't mean he didn't intend to commit such an act, but rather took the opportunity when it presented itself.
If you are inferring… by my response to part of mickysavage's comment @ 2.2.1, that I am somehow not "focusing our kindness on the people affected by his actions" then I take that as a personal insult.
I am saying let's not find reasons to excuse this guy. I disagree with both you and Greg that there is any evidence this was opportunistic.
Who said mickey's comment or mine were in any way "finding reasons to excuse this guy."
Its a sad world if one cannot contemplate what may have (note: may have) gone through the perpetrator's mind at the precise moment he began to attack without it being interpreted as "making excuses".
Understanding how the minds of these types of people work is part of the prevention process the appropriate authorities have to take into account.
I tend to think of oppertunist crime being more like, I was driving home and I saw someone was moving house and had left their property unattended, so I nicked their coffee table (please excuse the trite example under these sad circumstances0.
I haven't read a lot of the details, but it seems the guy had been planning a terrorist attack and had homicial ideation over many years. He may have decided yesterday was the day, or he may have just reached a point where he acted on his thoughts.
I know very little about the legislation but surely planning a terrorist attact or planning to kill someone should land you in jail????
My sympathies to the victims and their families.
My thanks to the police, who would have had a very tedious job of tailing this guy over a long period of time and then acted promptlywhen they needed. to
I agree with you Anne
He may well have had homicidal urges and contemplated how he would execute such an attack as well as taken the opportunity there and then
I dont see how such a notion is excusing the guy
Thanks francesca. To contemplate the state of mind of the individual at the time is a valid point of discussion.
My apologies. Police now saying it could be considered that way. https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/126285369/prime-minister-jacinda-ardern-says-government-was-hurrying-new-terror-laws-after-supermarket-terrorist-was-released-into-the-community
"She also said the Government had sought to hurry changes to the terrorism laws in the months after the man was released into the community. The justice minister made a phone call to make this happen the day the attack happened.".
What bad luck that he carried out his mad action yesterday. In a couple of weeks the new law would have been in place. How sad that the urgency was just a bit late.
The complete let down here is that he was never assessed on his mental health status. If he would have, he might never have been in the supermarket in the first place but behind closed doors. This was a neglect of protocol and no amount of deflection will steer away from that. This does not excuse what he did but it would explain that he had the opportunity and it might well have been preventable. No fault to anybody but perhaps follow protocol if known on the outset that a fanatic is being held. I hope there is something to be learned here.
Nothing can be changed now but the families affected and the people who were traumatized by it all need our support and help.
Therapeutic. Best read out loud.
https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/oh-my-fucking-god-get-the-fucking-vaccine-already-you-fucking-fucks
if you edit your comment and add width="100%" to inside the end of the tag, the image will fit the screen instead of being oversized. I've edited it now.
Good, so 100% is working now?
I think it always was, I just could never remember how to do it. I have the code saved now.
The kids are alright:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/sep/02/texas-abortion-law-tiktok-reddit-whistleblower
Thanks for posting Arkie
That's hilarious, the kids are alright!
Many if not all organisations in NZ are starting to confront the issue of vaccination requirements for their staff and customers.
Lawyerly consensus seems to be that requiring vaccination for new hires is fairly straightforward. But imposing it as a new condition on existing employees is somewhat problematic.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/126254100/covid19-employers-seek-help-to-navigate-vaccination-minefield
Seems to me that here is where the government could help out by passing legislation specifically enabling the addition of a vaccination clause to existing employment contracts, as a health and safety measure for the workplace.
I find it interesting that in 'murica, land of freedumb and lawsuits, employers aren't the slightest bit shy about imposing vaccine mandates.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/vaccine-mandates-are-lawful-effective-and-based-on-rock-solid-science/
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/majority-us-companies-may-mandate-covid-19-vaccine-coming-months-survey-2021-09-01/
I'm just grateful that everyone I work with on even a semi-regular basis is already vaccinated. Mostly they're young immigrants that grew up seeing the devastation widespread disease causes and how vaccinations really do prevent that devastation.
Can we presume now that some of the most malicious propagandists in the world will now be shunned, instead of given a free platform, by Kim Hill?
RNZ National, Saturday 4 September 2021, 10:10 a.m.
In the course of an interesting discussion about the evolution of ethics, Kim Hill mentioned to her guest, the moral philosopher Tim Dean, that a certain "shock jock" in New Zealand regularly provokes outrage, and upsets people. Dr Dean counselled against wasting our time getting outraged about such provocateurs. It was better, he said, to not amplify them by retweeting their nonsense.
I hope Kim Hill took that advice to heart. I sent her the following email to encourage her in her resolve….
So no more free platforms for guests who use the media to destroy people?
Dear Kim,
Your guest Tim Dean this morning advised us to avoid giving publicity to people who seek to destroy others via Twitter and other media platforms. You seemed to agree with that. I take it that we can therefore presume that you will no longer give a free platform to the likes of Jonathan Freedland and Simon Schama, both of whom used your show in 2019 to spray evidence-free accusations against Jeremy Corbyn, and Alex Gibney, who in 2013 used your show to pour ridicule on the political dissident Julian Assange.
Yours sincerely,
Morrissey Breen
Northcote Point
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/saturday
The epidemiologist guy on Kim Hill, RNZ at 9am this morning, was clearly in favour of saliva testing, saying it is accurate. He is sitting on the panel advising the government and was (while being diplomatic) clearly surprised these tests were not yet in use in NZ.
It occurs to me that this might work well as a border control mechanism. Negative Covid test 72 hours before flying and an instant saliva test on arrival.
The saliva tests I have seen mentioned use the same PCR testing as current nasal swabs. Far from instant.
If there is indeed an 'instant' variety, how accurate is that compared with the PCR tests?
I thought the saliva tests were really fast…I may be wrong on this. Having said that I head a doctor say on RNZ a couple of weeks ago that they can turn round a nasal test in 90 minutes in a hospital.
Covid Yesterday just reported:
NSW 1533 cases (Pop 8.2m)
NZ 20 cases (Pop 5.1m)
90 minutes will be because they have labs onsite and probably push the covid test to top of the work queue. And maybe the hardware they're working with in that particular lab.
If you're doing, say, 200 people off a plane and need to courier the samples across town, then process those samples and use limited lab resources while prioritising other contracted tests, the time per test might be the same or less but the time between swab and notification could be considerably longer.
Why not run the tests on the plane and in-flight?
Because Jetstar would still manage to offload the passengers and tests at different airports? lol
There'd still be the courier and bulk processing problems, and we'd also be ceding control of test administration to someone else.
Frankly, airport testing isn't even something I'd support with 30sec turnaround. It's a level up from preflight tests, but still insufficient in time-sensitivity to do away with MIQ (i.e. Jimjane might be exposed in a transit lounge and still have a low enough load that they don't ping a test when they get off the plane). And we already do 2 tests in MIQ, so extra testing isn't really needed.
I meant, why not process the samples on board? A PCR instrument is just a small benchtop instrument and could easily fit in a plane. Airlines handle a lot of official paperwork already.
Could reliable sample preparation and PCR testing with +ve and -ve controls be performed in-flight? Is the process is more streamlined now?
Coronavirus testing – how does it work?
Or 'sample' the plane's cabin air filters – turn the flight around if positive?
Sure, why not? Many testing kits contain positive, negative, and other quality controls. Refrigeration is available, if necessary. Anything could be tested in theory: air (filters), saliva samples, and wastewater. Methodology and protocols will have to be developed, optimised, and validated, of course. Plenty of time too during intercontinental flights.
'Why not?' is the question. Air turbulence?
Maybe ASSURED PCR-based COVID-19 in-flight tests will be developed and used routinely at some stage, but I'm not holding my breath.
Antigen-based testing seems more likely, at least for the symptomatic, but who knows? It's an active market – time will tell.
https://www.finddx.org/covid-19/
https://www.nbcnews.com/shopping/wellness/best-home-covid-tests-n1275687
https://www.fiercebiotech.com/medtech/nih-study-suggests-rapid-antigen-and-pcr-tests-for-covid-19-are-equally-reliable-when-used
Development of a new field-deployable RT-qPCR workflow for COVID-19 detection [pdf]
Portable RT-PCR System: a Rapid and Scalable Diagnostic Tool for COVID-19 Testing
https://www.universalweather.com/products-and-services/aircraft-pcr-testing/
Some people have been tested 2 to 3 times with the PCR test and haven't shown a positive result yet after a 3 or 4 th test have tested positive.
Saliva testing is messy and creates risks for those testing spitting into spoon then transferring that to vial.
This information might help:
https://www.health.govt.nz/our-work/diseases-and-conditions/covid-19-novel-coronavirus/covid-19-health-advice-public/assessment-and-testing-covid-19/how-covid-19-testing-works#timing
https://www.health.govt.nz/our-work/diseases-and-conditions/covid-19-novel-coronavirus/covid-19-health-advice-public/assessment-and-testing-covid-19/covid-19-test-results-and-their-accuracy#accuracy
https://www.health.govt.nz/our-work/diseases-and-conditions/covid-19-novel-coronavirus/covid-19-health-advice-public/assessment-and-testing-covid-19/covid-19-test-results-and-their-accuracy#what
Google is your friend.
Useful addition, but obviously no substitute for pre-flight testing.
Mustn't jeopardize the 'mission'
More tools, diverse tools, complementary tools, smarter use of existing tools (e.g., two shots of different vaccines instead of the same), innovative thinking, so-called ‘out of the box’ thinking, for example, don’t need to deter from ‘the mission’, but they could help it. IMHO.
"onboard your own aircraft"
quite
Please don’t get sidetracked by the market segment to which they are pitching. It is about the principle and technical feasibility of in-flight PCR testing. It can be done, apparently 🙂
Anything can be done for enough money – that's where the segment comes in.
But clinical managers are not likely to rely on self-analysed tests unless solid pre-launch validation tells them otherwise. I would say even self-administration variability is one reason they require a handful of saliva tests to equate to one nasal swab test using the same PCR process, let alone if untrained airline staff are running the analysis process.
One word: accreditation.
How much money is NZ already spending on testing? The enormous queues at the beginning of the outbreak were unnecessary and avoidable, IMO. Testing willy-nilly just as jabbing willy-nilly is not smart use of precious resources and money.
Clinical managers should have no or very little say in this!
Keeping abreast of new approaches/tools – all good. NZ's lucky – for any relatively resource-hungry implementation phase, we can select from a (diverse) range of tools already tested by others.
Time will tell if the (technically feasible) in-flight PCR testing of passengers for COVID is implemented on bog-standard international flights. I'm guessing not, but have been well wrong before.
Routine pre/post-flight COVID testing of passengers and crew will continue for a while in our South Pacific bubble.
In other regions some countries have already relaxed pre-flight COVID test requirements, particularly for the fully-vaccinated.
Vive la diversité!
Personally, I don’t think we can afford the ‘luxury’ of being picky & choosy, but many good and not so good ideas end up in the bin without any due consideration because they are deemed: too hard, too costly, too threatening to fragile egos of control freaks running their little fiefdoms.
Relaxing pre-flight Covid testing is not a smart thing to do, IMO, and it will send a wrong message of false security from vaccination. What numpties!
Yes – hope Kiwis will be encouraged not to relax too soon. It’s prudent to keep our guard up for at least a few months more, imho.
The intricacies of it aren't my field. But it's a lot to put into a transtasman run between swabbing and testing the swabs, we'd need lab techs on the planes, and the obvious questions are around how the process and the machine itself will deal with turbulence.
But even then, we'd still have the "infected, but too early to detect" problem. So if we ramp up to even just 10k arrivals a week, how long before a positive [insert here the next variant that will make the sky fall if these trends continue] passenger starts wandering around the community? At 95% sensitivity and even 0.1% of passengers with an infection (lowballing the MIQ proportion of +tests to people going through), that's a hundred a week and 5 false negatives resulting in community exposure.
People taking their masks off to spit into a spoon to transfer to a vial or just spitting into a vial with dribble going every where. Not as good as a nasal swab going straight into a vial.
Saliva tests have many advantages over nasal swabs. For example, you can do it yourself without having to travel to a testing station where you might come into closer contact with many others.
You don’t actually “spit” into a spoon, you drool.
For your information and edification: https://www.health.govt.nz/system/files/documents/pages/saliva-testing-general-faqs-9aug21.pdf
Great factsheet, thank you. Also confirms the current saliva test is not fast:
Yes, the PCR assay is the same, once the sample has been pre-processed. Logistics & admin always add more time too. Downside of current saliva tests is that genomic testing is not possible, as mentioned in the fact sheet.
Google is our friend.
Which saliva test the quick test has a 60% efficay rate and to be accurate needs several tests to bring up its efficacy to the PCR nasal or saliva test .saliva being spat into spoons or vials is far more messy and risks the testers health.
Does anyone else think about this issue (and/or want to read about it)?
"The colonial project is the ongoing strategic occupation and exploitation of Indigenous lands for the purposes of the colonizers. 2 Africa, Australia, the Americas, Southeast Asia, and New Zealand are the Indigenous lands to which I refer. As part of the imperial project, these continents and countries were respatialized. 3 Entire landscapes were re-ordered to fragment, disorient, and ultimately destroy the social ecologies of the peoples who inhabited them. Now the question is unignorable: How, in the umbra of decolonization, should these landscapes be redesigned? How can environmental designers participate in the struggle of peoples who have lived through a brazen confiscation of their precolonial spatialities in order to reimagine the way they live together, within the vast re-ordering of planet earth that is the Anthropocene? And is this not itself, after all, the hugest of all hyperobjects? The most ambitious and most thorough colonization of the globe by a hegemonic mentalité to date? Demanding nothing less than the co-option of all peoples to a planetary master narrative that is by its very nature out of control?
I’m hardly the only landscape architect currently mobilizing concepts from theories and practices of decolonization (or decol). 4 But since I’ve recently relocated to my homeland Aotearoa New Zealand, in this essay I’m using Aotearoa as my example. Therefore Māori, the Indigenous people of Aotearoa, are central to my inquiry."
https://placesjournal.org/article/redesigning-colonial-landscapes/
Thanks Robert, sounds interesting
I have often thought our fisheries needed decolonizing – locals scarcely see any seafood these days unless they catch it themselves. The artisanal fishers that supported and enriched local families and communities have largely faded away like the eels above the elver-proof Waitaki dams.
Yep – and the ability to catch it yourself doesn't come cheap. With the denuding of inshore stocks you need a boat (or a decent kayak at a minimum) to catch fish reliably. This further limits its availability.
Colonisers had a system to disenfranchise indigenous people .De humanize dislocate etc.Keep indigenous people on the bottom of the heap impoverished and powerless.
The British Empire used Ireland as a template for its world wide imperial conquests.
Buying off leaders,making the indigenous language illegal ,starving the population,stealing their land.
And even after Ireland gained independence tariff's were imposed from 1922 till 1972 when Ireland became a member of the EU.Britain sided with the free market side in the civil war in Ireland .
Similar tactics to breakdown Maori by portraying them as inferior keeping Maori poor systematically imprisoning Maori continually making Maori look bad.All the while profiteering out stolen land and land they were conned and bullied off,insider trading and fraud it's called today .Then only compensating Maori 1%to3% not including the loss of income and economic status caused by the illegal dispossesion.
While others had 100% legal rights to illegal land transactions Maori were denied.
From the sidebar, Bryan Gould very briefly says the Herald has decided Judith's time has come: https://bryangould.com/a-grim-future-for-national/
Bring back Siomon ?
Yeah the gossip is swirling
https://twitter.com/David_Cormack/status/1434027727745474563?s=20
Several people whose sources have been good in past, yes.
Trev will be aswoon at the prospect of Ponyboy (or a clone thereof) resuming his rightful place on the throne.
Some good news only 20 community cases today Thanks my fellow 5 million.
Indeed wonderful & encouraging news. I'm sitting at the jab drive thru at the Edgar Centre & I'm so impressed with the people running this! Music, sun, professional. Very happy to be living in NZ right now.
Imagine what the number would be if National were in power.
None on paper and 2000 odd on or waiting for ventilators.
touché
They wouldn’t be counted because they’re no longer part of the community.
It would be like NSW and all the numbskulls out there (and there's plenty of them) would be expressing their sympathy for the Nat. government…convinced it was not their fault.
Given just about all conservative constituencies have uncontrollable outbreaks ,no mask wearing,slow or no lockdown ,much lower comparative vaccination rates,low tax poor public health funding.
With National in charge we would have hospitals over run a complete melt down especially given they can't even organize their own caucus.
Then look at the number of Cock ups in the Canterbury earthquake rebuild the South Canterbury Finance debacle National is a hands off govt.
Private contractors like in Australia's response to border control is the reason why they are in such a mess.
testing
Family in NSW are really worried. They already have two 18 year olds sick with Delta.
Their whole family is fully vaccinated, and the girls are through the worst, but were really sick.
The failure to contain Delta in NSW and the attitude of the leadership is really upsetting, with casual throw away lines of "living with the virus", 8 million having freedom to decide!!
My brother's family consisting of 17 people, are really at risk. They say the lock downs were late and light, and really useless.
Sorry about the "really"!! The edit feature vanished.
Patricia part of the Problem is that no one wanted to follow Gladys's orders because of her Morality she had been outed cheating on her husband for up to 10 yrs and implicated in corruption.
If you want people to follow you have to set an example.