"..if you imagine something, it can come into being. Imagine such a devil, and a devil might appear" -Cowboy Bebop: Knocking on Heaven's Door.

"There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” Albert Einstein

Victor Billot is a poet laurate and all round faithful follower of this Labour government Jacinda mania, despite it continuation of Rogernomic style privatisation and big business can do no wrong fanaticism, despite his seemingly contradictory worship of Norman Kirk and socialism (sorry but I am one of those heretics who thinks this Labour government actually not all that left wing).

Victor who seems to like bating the heathen pagan (those who don’t accept Jacinda is the Messiaha and her cabinet of dougalas groupies are not the disciples of jesus) stated on his Facebook page as he preached to the faithful of his flock “The winner of today’s “COVID Troll” award for the most impressive Facebook comment on the new lockdown goes to Kevin Piper of Auckland: the fact is 10 out of every ten people will die eventually. We don’t need to fear death if we know our creator”

Leave out the issue of worshipping a god whose into triggering Armageddon and unleashing plagues, or for that matter the idea of worshipping with blind faith any kind of imaginary friend or dogma blindly and unquestionably, Kevin has a point.

I am more concerned about other real monsters in the room who are perceive as far likely to impact my community negatively. To name one New Zealand meth epic that being ravaging our nation far longer than this pimply teenage excuse for a plague has being around. With standing no one actually talk about the Imperial College – who instigated this lock downs – math was so absolutely wrong: Thus making the ability to achieve the ‘minimal harm’ balance between economies and battling the epidemic flawed.

Why?

Well asides from the 15 billion (conservative figure) the drug sucks from the economy currently [10% of our GDP], the 125 suicides (account for 3 billion of the meth cost alone), the additional cost in terms of domestic violence, social trauma, is its impact on community disempowerment. On the later point social solidarity out side our own bubbles seems pretty thin these days regardless of cheap phase as ‘our “team” of five million. Sorry but I have more faith in the power of community believing in itself than I do in following branded messiahs and fear driven corporate manufactured invocations.

The policy of Lock let remember their to protect us down well cost the ‘team’ around $30 billion that is twice the amount of meth. The difference is no one will argue meth has negative impacts where as again the cost of covid lock down strategy is the price we pay for ‘protection’.

.Which asides from it meaning hospitals wont get built (case in point Dunedin Hospital rebuild is now doubtful and at best will be two floors not four), doctor wont get hired, ambulance drivers well get laid off (e.g. the 100 ambulance driver at St John getting fired as government spend 78 million on racing), its impact will fuel existing dysfunctional socioeconomic factor that feed the demand for drugs like meth and other form of social dsyfuntionalism. This is an undeniable fact as meth use alone during lock down tripled – despite slowed down port entry which in theory should have made custom job easier. And that is just the cost of meth and the cost of lock down tactics in New Zealand.

In fact globally the WHO is opposed to lock dow and Dr. David Nabarro, a Special Envoy on Covid-19 for the World Health Organization (WHO), warned against people having a blind faith in the concept of Lockdown as the preferred method of combating Covid. Nabarro said, “We in the World Health Organization do not advocate lockdowns as the primary means of control of this virus.” Nabarro continued by saying, “The only time we believe a lockdown is justified is to buy you time to reorganize, regroup, rebalance your resources, protect your health workers who are exhausted, but by and large, we’d rather not do it.” Note the words “rather not do it” as opposed to “should not do it” or “will not do it.”

I deliberately used the Forbes article on Nabarro to put the WHO warning against lockdown in context as I don’t want to be guilty of misreporting that message as corporate fact checkers (that control social media algorithms these days) try to say WHO is not against Lockdown as a tactic as they split hair over the WHO’s exact wording. Which is not don’t not use Lockdown but don’t use Lockdown alone as your standard go to response measure.

I would in fact (just to put my cards on the table too make clear my own inherent bias) to date name the one model that has being effective in making sure the response did not cause more damage than it trying to avert is the Taiwan model. Which yes to be used in New Zealand would require some adaption to met NZ legal constitutional requirements.

Taiwan is basically the goal the Swedish model aimed for but with better protections, for the more vulnerable members of society, other than prayer and the idea you must be pro vaccine or anti vaccine*1. Taiwan’s experience was learned from real life direct exposure to H1N1 and Sars and should have being the go to response the world used. However Taiwan was excluded from the WHO advisory panel due to the politics of China Taiwan stand off. And thus as a non globalist heathens they were not allowed to contribute to the debate whose ‘belief system’ would be dominated and shaped by those with different ideology and agendas.

1* but you cant be pro vaccine as long as the vaccine are manufactured and trialled with due process and used as tool of enhance protection of the most vulnerable with surgical precision as opposed to carpet bombing with vaccines made with papal bulls that exclude the big pharma alchemist from excommunication and damnation if they get it wrong.

In contrast globally the response to the lock down measures which to date have seen million people die (Imperial College forecast 2.5 million deaths for the USA in the first 12months) has being 270 million dying from starvation according to the UN’s World Food Programme CEO.

I repeat 1 million dead Covid 270 million died as a result of the lock down measures.

1 million vs 270 that bad economics in any one’s book be that book holy or not.

Rest assured that starvation will trigger further epidemics, wars and general regional stability and violence. In April 2020, UNDP projected that for every three months of lockdown, 15 million cases of gender-based violence occur. The fact is the current COVID-19 response is putting the more important issues of food security and humanitarian reeds in second place and the results are going look like they came straight from a post holocaust Mad Max Movie.

On the bright side as economies fail, rogue nations become the norm, and the four horse men of the apocalypse and all their associated food rioters, failing junta funded death squads, police brutality and privatised security (the real force driving the idea of defunding the police and seizing opportunity arising out of the fall out of increased police brutality resulting from global neoliberalism ideas on free trade) will have plenty of masks to hide their faces from being recognised and held accountable as earth becomes living hell.

At less for those living out side the garden paradise of billionaire bubbles owned by the demi gods of big tech and big pharma.

Welcome to the ‘new normal’ a world where your a no one and simply a masked up backdrop used to prop up the cult of personality driven politics and a William Gibson styled dystopia of haves and have nots. An area of corporate dominance as science become to mean what ever idea get subject to a mass marketing norms and tool of techno based necromancy witch doctoring.

Which is a good thing in the sense it means the mask will be doing something as opposed to just acting as a disease vector transmitter as current dogma dictates.

People are currently wear the same bloody mask day in day out and don’t actually use mask as they are meant to be used (when you take off one mask don’t reuse it but use a new one).

Thus opposed to being a tool of science. Mask have become a cargo cult superstitious fetish with a supposedly concerned government, stacked with corporate lobbyist, doing little to educate folk on what constitute effective mask wearing and ineffective mask wearing in terms of making sure mask don’t simply become a cross contaminating vector which assist the spread of disease.

Right now official guide lines on mask are about compliance. They are not about good science or good medicine and by the way when I form that viewpoint it becuase I am almost quoting the New Zealand Ministry of Health own words word for word when I say that.

You can get on a bus with any kind of mask (whether it one that actually works) be it a cloth bandana, a baked pavlova, or an n95 (the only mask worth using in my view point if your actually genuinely concerned bout covid and not just being a psychologically manipulated sheep).

As some one with about three decades experience in covering biowarfare and pathogens I am appalled at how the fear of this disease (pumped to the max by a media chock full of adverts by those driving the cluster fuck Imperial College lockdown response measures) has got people dangerously stupid. It has them following absurd practice based more in blind faith than good science. A state of being where in our fear of this over hyped flu were not responding ( observe think then act) where just reacting (observe and act) and just conforming. A triggered reaction is causing a tidal wave of problems that lock down measure not only can not counter but which the tactics of using lockdown (now rejected by WHO to repeat myself) as a go to one size fits all tool again and again will simply acerbate.

Notwithstanding that the short sighted selfish and self entitled white privileged middle class neoliberal based ‘its okay I have netflicks and a wage subsidy’ fear of covid, who go along with Lock down as the only tool in the tool box, has pushed so many issue, which are of equal if not greater importance to covid, beneath the headlines.

be it:

water privatisation, rising poverty, rampant food inflation, the rampant privatisation of our infrastructure, the neoliberal abduction of our political system, the emergence of stealth billionaires set up in NZ not just as resident but as corporate lobbyist, the over spending of defence at the expense of health and education, the militarisation of our sky by things like Rocket Lab and Elon musk Pentagon fund Starlink, the US intention to drive a new cold war which will fuel a new nuclear arms race (hmmm covid or nuclear annihilation that’s a toughie) on our back door,

We have lost sight of dangers far greater.

We are being taught to live in fear of potential demonic imps as we ignore the existing fire breathing whip cracking Balrogs in the room with us right now.

The virus is real I have no doubt of that.

Yet praying to Jesus, Lenin, or Pfezer, wont help more people from not dying any more than worshipping allah or blind wokeism wills stop the consequence of Lockdown being 270 times more lethal than Covid as it stand’s now.

For what is equally truth and important is that the virus is being used (its impact hyped or not) as a form of psychological warfare (and if you listen to the UNDP physical warfare) by those who excel at seizing opportunity from crisis to profiteer and push forward their own agenda be it the accumulation of wealth or power. And that is fact.

The Covid response needs to be less knee jerk and more focused on creating a minimal harm model based on the actual real figures of each country (their is no one size fits all model) not the projected Imperial College model which was and is wrong. Whose pseudo mathematics as a consequence triggered a reaction certainly in third world nations where the fear of the converted is doing more harm than good.

It is time to start using our higher brains to look at the bigger geopolitical picture of with calm and reasoned intellect than simply reacting to our fear of Covid with the reptilian part of our brain that is responsible for triggering flight or fright reactions. For the serpent part of our brain (the real devil of our own making if you will) turns reason into a factory of fear. Hell on earth which mass produces fanatical cargo cultist and breeds a climate of self destructive dogmatic narrow mindedness in which the far larger demons of food security, social cohesion and humanitarian needs are simply treated as minor demons that then permit the purgatory that is the Covid disaster to evolve and become a major demon of biblical proportions.

A damanation that is a self for filling pigmalion.