The short answer is no.

Life is not going back to normal again. Not this summer and not ever.

Last summer was an anomaly, our country was spared covid and we were living carefree as if in some invisible bubble, a vacuum in space and time, completely unaffected by the dire microbiological reality that the rest of the pandemic ridden world was experiencing.

Time to wake up now

We need to do the opposite to this right now:

La la land is over. Covid is here and we have to learn to live with it. This means we still need to be vigilant and still need to wear masks and social distance where possible, wash our hands diligently and do all of the other necessary things to be cautious. Act as if everyone is infected. Vaccine mandates need to move from our pubs, to our jobs to our sports fields. In every scenario it should be a requirement to be vaccinated, or if not, to be able to show a recent (less than 24hr old) covid test. This should be the bare minimum.

Why? Because the bad news is that covid numbers are soaring all over the world again. Despite vaccine mandates, masks and social distancing. This is the nature of pandemics. Viruses do not make distinctions between borders, seasons or life styles. All they know how to do is replicate and infect, and they do this with nature’s utmost efficiency.

Especially this coronavirus.

As I have written in a previous article, this virus belongs to a class of microorganisms known as “emergent viruses” - what is dangerous about these types of viruses and makes them distinctly different to other viruses, is the fact that they have only recently jumped the species barrier to humans. And as such, we have no inherited immunity to them - to understand the difference between the innate and acquired immune system, please read the aforementioned article.

WTF is going on in Aotearoa?

Not only is New Zealand fully immersed in a very serious viral outbreak with the capacity to wreak havoc and fully overthrow our healthcare system, we also seem to be witnessing the coming of age of our very own, truly bizarre toxic masculinity emboldened Trump-esque mania. Yesterday saw protesters outside our parliament in Wellington throw tennis balls at the building, with “Hang Ardern” written on them in sharpie.

These self-entitled “freedom demonstrations” were replete with antisemtic, racist and homophobic slogans and banners being waved about by unassuming idiots comparing the NZ government to the Nazis, the unvaccinated experience to the plight of the Jewish people and Jacinda Ardern to Adolf Hitler.

Yeah, exactly, who would’ve thought? This is New Zealand and not Alabama in the 1960s.

It was a disgusting display, not of freedom, but of a spoiled western democracy’s emboldened idiot class coming out of the wood work. The epitome of cultural debauchery and intellectual misanthropy of the highest degree.

The people in attendance covered the full spectrum of the country, there were hippies with peace signs, aryan youth, antivaxxers and young National and ACT supporters, all gathered together to collectively voice their outrage at current government mandates and voice their feelings of being hard done by. Some even went so far to announce they were potentially going to “storm parliament and arrest Jacinda Ardern for treason.” Some of the threats went even further and echoed the sentiments as inscribed on those fuzzy yellow tennis balls.

For anyone who followed the capitol riots in the US earlier this year, this event in Wellington would have sent a chill down your spine as it did me. David Farrier even captured this radical cultural zeitgeist shift in a brilliant and sobering piece he prophetically penned a few days prior. Like he could sense what was about to happen.

Yeah, not good. As has always been the case, society hangs together by a very thin fabric, one that could easily untether and rip apart like it did on January 6th 2020 in the US.

Not only do we have to be vigilant about the virus, we also have to protect our country from the ignorantly intolerant. We must all exercise civil courage.

But isn’t Denmark back to normal again?

After going hard and fast against covid, with lockdown restrictions and social distancing laws, Denmark was one of the first European countries to ease restrictions this year and introduce a coronavirus passport.

My sister was on a train from Berlin to Copenhagen about 7 weeks ago with my two nieces. Once they had crossed the border from Germany into Denmark, customs officials went through the train and checked everyone’s covid vaccination status and/or current covid test as well as their passports. Over the speaker came the announcement in German and Danish:

“you have now entered Denmark the requirement to wear a mask is no longer mandatory.”

Following this announcement everyone on the train took their masks off except for my sister and her children and the customs officers. It was bizarre my sister had said, as if these people believed that the virus was somehow magically aware of national boundaries or something. She was concerned that they were becoming far too complacent.

She was right. Denmark is now registering over 2000 cases a day and rising.

28 Deaths

We are very lucky in New Zealand in some ways and unlucky in others. For one, we have a very high vaccination rate but on the downside our intensive care unit (ICU) capacity is very low compared to other ‘developed’ countries. The South Island in particular is at risk of getting overrun by this virus but more to that later.

Denmark has nearly the same population as New Zealand, it has a vaccination rate of 75% and has registered nearly 2800 deaths so far with nearly half a million total cases measured so far.

Compared to this, our 7000 cases and 28 deaths seem almost insignificant.

2800 vs 28 deaths. Same population size remember?

Just marinade on that and let it sink in before you start berating the NZ government about failed policies.

Why do you think the difference is so large? Because our government exercised caution and trusted the data. Plain and simple.

Reason and science versus commerce and folklore.

Yeah but the long term side effects?! (and other common myths)

Aren’t tenagers getting myocarditis after the vaccine? Yes, a very small percentage are but you know what else also causes myocarditis? Covid.

With a rate 4 times higher than the vaccine.

Pregnant woman can’t take the vaccine! It is completely safe for pregnant women to be vaccinated, both Pfizer and the FDA have said to "exercise caution". I have had two friends take it while pregnant and both have since given birth to healthy children.

Yes there is a risk in taking the vaccine. There is a risk in you getting into a car every day or eating an apple. But the risk of dying or getting symptoms of long covid far outweigh that.

The reason why I am certain that vaccines don't cause long term side effects is because of my background and my academic experience. As mentioned before, I am an immunologist by training and have worked in preclinical vaccine trials. The first thing we test for is the potential for how long the vaccine would stay in the body - that's the very first thing that is investigated! It's called pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics and without that information you won't even start trialling a vaccine in humans.

As for long term side effects? The vaccine doesn’t stay in the body long enough to cause long term side effects. These trillion or so lipid nanoparticles in each vaccine dose that encase the mRNA are completely eradicated within 14 days of administration. Hence why we can be 100% sure there are no long term side effects. This isn't homeopathy where the energy signature of the vaccine remains after the compounds disappear.

The only thing left behind is a primed set of B and T immune cells that will eliminate the virus once it enters the body, at a rate far higher than had one not been vaccinated, thus sparing hospitalisation, death or worse the nightmare of passing this virus on to someone who might die from the infection.

Truth never lies

Yes as a sceptic, you may think this sounds arrogant. But the truth rarely lies. I am getting my facts from the FDA, the CDC and the WHO. Check your sources people.

Why would health authorities all around the world lie about this? On top of this, why would a trillion dollar industry like the pharmaceutical industry risk killing its main source of income? It's insane to think that there is a nefarious intent behind this. The intent is to prevent catastrophe on a grand scale during a once in a lifetime pandemic. We simply don’t have the ICU capacity in NZ to deal with 1000 cases a day.

Once the healthcare system collapses, we’re screwed. In the area where I live in New Zealand, Golden Bay - a small town in the north of the South Island, this capacity is non-existent. We have the lowest vaccine uptake rates in the country because we have a large portion of “alternative thinkers" that call this place home.

We don’t even have a hospital and live two hours from the nearest city where we could access ventilators. In the worst case scenario, we have one helicopter that has the capacity to deliver one patient out of a potential 6000, to the 18 ICU beds in Nelson hospital that are catering up to 65 000 potential patients there.

Do the math people

And thank Jacinda and our government, for they have really done the best possible job they could with the task they have been given. Any other government, we could be adding a couple of zeros to that 28 number. Easily. Ask yourself what the right honourable John Key would have done in this situation, oh yeah that’s right, you don’t need to ask yourself that, because he already penned a particularly macabre, out of touch and insensitive op-ed piece himself for the whole world to read. It was a bit disgusting and truly showed how callous and calculating he can be.

And I can see many of my ex-colleagues and friends who run their own businesses up in Auckland lamenting Jacinda - maybe not going so far as to threatening her life, but saying some pretty terrible things. Don’t forget, under John Key it would have been business over human life - and we would likely have had more deaths than Denmark so far, perhaps 10 000 even, including potentially your parents and grandparents - take a minute and think about it. We locked down hard and fast, recorded one of the lowest death rates on the planet - all the while waiting for a viable vaccine to get developed and produced and then distributed this to our whole nation FOR FREE. If you cannot commend our government for this sage and reasoned response whilst the rest of the world was losing their heads, you need your head examined.

We are so lucky to have someone in a leadership position that values human life over dollar signs. So damn lucky. It could have been really very different.

Count your lucky stars Aotearoa. Take a moment to reflect on all the lives saved.

And please, for goodness sake, don’t drop the ball now - get vaccinated, wear a mask, wash your hands, social distance and don’t pretend like everything is going back to normal, because it isn’t and never will be.

Rosie Carnahan-Darby recently wrote a great piece for The Spinoff about her family’s experience of LA v versus NZ during covid times - a prescient reminder and subtle warning about kiwi complacency.

Don’t forget how blessed we are.

Mauri ora!

“It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.”

― Mark Twain

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The World According To von Roy

Is New Zealand dropping the ball on Covid?