So in all this chaos, here is a great kiwiana story for youse all.

I'm in Day 2 of iso, and have a Countdown delivery order coming today. I tried to change the address online yesterday because we changed our accommodation after I placed the order, but couldn't do it. I spoke to the local store, and they said to call back this morning.

So I grab the phone this morning and hit the most recently called number. But I'd forgotten that we ordered fish'n'chip delivery for dinner last night, so Anna, the owner of the chippy picks up instead.

At 7am.

Oops

Anyway, I apologise, she asks who I was trying to call, we get chatting. Less than 45 minutes later she has dropped off eggs, bread, butter and
crackers to our driveway for brekkie.

What a fucking legend.

It's good to be home.

Mods, feel free to delete if innapropriate or unnecessary, but I wondered if it might be worthwhile having somewhere for our little community to ask for or offer help to each other.

People could post requests (advice, favours, whatever) or offer assistance in some way.

For example, it sounds like many people could be becoming unemployed in the near future. Maybe Ferners can assist with CV reviews, job market advice, financial modelling for home budgets etc.

Obviously physical movements are limited so don't any of youse hit me up to help weed your garden...

@Stargazer said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:

I don't see the problem with including this lady's death in the numbers. Even if COVID-19 was the primary cause of her death, it was likely a contributing/secundary factor. If she hadn't had COVID, she might have lived (a bit) longer, even at her age.

Oh come on! She recovered and tested negative twice! You might as well chalk her death up to the chicken pox she had as a 5yr old or the head cold she got when working in the seafood markets as a 30yr old.

I have a 74yr old mother with lung cancer and months to live. If she got Covid now, it would likely be lethal, and of course would be recorded as a Covid death. But even then, I still wouldn't say she died of Covid, she is dying of bloody lung cancer!!!

Its absurd to consider this recovered case as a Covid death if we want to use the figures for any useful analysis of the virus.

Well that was a glorious afternoon / evening.

The pub had a dodgy feed that kept freezing but given the games weren't close it kind of added to the fun - lots of "oohhhhhhh"'s and "yeeeaaaahhhh"'s as we froze then caught up.

There were about 15 kids there for the early game, most wearing Australian / Irish / English supporter kit, each of them glued to phones and iPad's. Most buggered off home after the Australia game.

My lad was decked out in his AB kit and sat at the corner of the bar for both games, watching every second of the footy - didn't ask for his ipad or phone once. He even had a few sips of my beer with the observation "that's quite nice".

Never been so proud.

@Snowy said in RWC: All Blacks vs Namibia Pool B:

@sparky said in RWC: All Blacks vs Namibia Pool B:

Stuff has a second-by-second Countdown clock therefore if you so choose you can watch the seconds until that glorious moment when the team is actually named.

Well that's ruined that then.

Another of the great mysteries in life is just common knowledge.

Completely off topic and absolutely doesn't belong in this thread, but the single greatest mystery in life remains how it can take so long to collect a hire car from the airport no matter how much info you've already provided when booking online.

@hydro11 said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:

@Kirwan said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:

@Godder said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:

Level 3 lets more people go to work, but it's hardly a huge improvement on level 4 in terms of the cage doors opening.

However, in good news, apparently, not only is our curve flattening, it's exponentially reducing - halving every 5 days. At this rate, we are probably looking at a total of 6-8 weeks at levels 3&4 (so another 2-4 weeks) and then back to level 2.

The rest of the world is rightly envious of that, because they're generally looking at months of the equivalent of level 3+. 4 weeks seems a bit early to be rolling out the civil liberties flag - human rights and civil liberties are critically important to the NZ democracy, but the most important right is the right to life because the rest are not much use to dead people.

And a cratered economy is a damn sight harder on people on the other side.

This is exactly the sort of scare mongering that drove that poll result.

The original justification for this lockdown was not to eliminate the disease but to prevent our health system from being overwhelmed. That has been achieved and over the last four weeks process and capacity has been added to help even more with that.

So let’s move down the levels fast, test appropriately, contain regional reoccurrence, and get back to normalise life.

Even today Cindy was downplaying the huge impact this is having on the economy. “Doing in tough” is not even close to what’s coming IMO.

I think when level 4 started we didn't think it would be as successful as it has been. Now we have a chance to actually eliminate this from New Zealand. The worst thing we could do would be to go down the levels quickly and have it spread. Then you go back to level 4 or have unfettered community transmission and what we have done so far will be for nothing. We have the chance to get back to "normal" in NZ and we should take that if possible.

What a giant leap you make to get from our current 10 cases per day to "unfettered community transmission". We are destroying our economy, and the livelihood of thousands of people, for something that has 18 people in hospital.

It's just absurd.

As it stands, we could return to some semblance of "normal life" in NZ right now. We should be at L3 immediately, where there is next to no extra risk given how tight it is.

L2 should be right around the corner if the data continues on this trajectory.

This BS about elimination and effective contact tracing does my head in. Why do we need to have the "gold standard" / 100% success rate for this? We have no drain on our hospitals. This disease doesn't have some 20% fatality rate on the otherwise-healthy. Do we know where every flu patient has been every year, do we get stressed that they may have visited a rest home or a workplace or a school? Are people asked to keep diaries in case they catch it?

We just dont need to eliminate this thing in NZ. Its a totally unnecessary goal, and it's doing significantly more harm than good right now.

I don't know how some of you guys manage to comment during the game, you must be better typists than me (not saying much), I'd miss half the action if I tried.

It's also pretty fun to wake up with a smile on my face, make a BLT and sit down with a coffee to scroll through the 1000+ posts here over brekkie.

Happy days!

Day 14 of self isolation is today, I'm free!!!

@akan004 said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:

@voodoo said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:

@canefan said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:

@taniwharugby send them back from whence they came. We need to draw a line

We can't do that though right. A kiwi comes home from working in the UK and commits murder on Day 3 doesn't get sent back to the Midlands. We have to prosecute citizens under our law.

If suggest we go waaaay harder than a $2.5k fine. This is a willing act of law breaking that knowingly puts our entire population and economy at risk. I'd suggest 30 days detention and at least $10k fine.

Pretty sure they can revoke his citizenship if he's a dual citizen and then deportation would be legal.

Edit: Taken from govt.nz

If you are a citizen by grant

The Minister can take away your citizenship if:

you got citizenship of another country and voluntarily acted against the interests of New Zealand

Yep, limited to dual citizens though obvs. Which is me actually so I'd better be careful!

@Kiwiwomble said in Coronavirus - Australia:

@voodoo yeah, sorry for that, when you said you messaged a mate in Vic who was now in a motel in NSW i thought you meant they were a Victorian who was hiding over the border

My bad mate!

@antipodean said in Alternative needed from the absolute crap of stuff.co.nz:

@Rembrandt said in Alternative needed from the absolute crap of stuff.co.nz:

We interrupt our non-stop coverage of "everything is racist!", to return to our previous coverage of "everything is sexist!"
Don't ever change Guardian, eventually you are just going to have to cancel yourself.

The comments are superb

@canefan said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:

@voodoo said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:

@canefan said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:

@taniwharugby send them back from whence they came. We need to draw a line

We can't do that though right. A kiwi comes home from working in the UK and commits murder on Day 3 doesn't get sent back to the Midlands. We have to prosecute citizens under our law.

If suggest we go waaaay harder than a $2.5k fine. This is a willing act of law breaking that knowingly puts our entire population and economy at risk. I'd suggest 30 days detention and at least $10k fine.

You're on the right track. Add in 20 lashes and 30 days hard labour

Oooh, lashes, I like that. What about giving up your 1st born, or for the unmarried, invoking jus primae noctis (yes, I had to google for the phrase)

@canefan said in Coronavirus - Australia:

@voodoo said in Coronavirus - Australia:

@Kiwiwomble said in Coronavirus - Australia:

@voodoo your mate to start with, the directive was to stay at your primary address, not go stay at a motel, and as you say, how many more have done similar

but on a broader sense several of the clusters have been traced to family groups congregating in large groups for parties etc

Well no, he is from NSW, he has all his family there, and a house to reside at. NSA - folk were given warning of the border closing at a particular time and the opportunity to return prior. If they truly intended to make everyone stay put, they'd have not given a deadline to cross the border

I think you failed to make that clear. I thought he was a Victorian too

Right, fair enough then

@canefan said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:

@taniwharugby send them back from whence they came. We need to draw a line

We can't do that though right. A kiwi comes home from working in the UK and commits murder on Day 3 doesn't get sent back to the Midlands. We have to prosecute citizens under our law.

If suggest we go waaaay harder than a $2.5k fine. This is a willing act of law breaking that knowingly puts our entire population and economy at risk. I'd suggest 30 days detention and at least $10k fine.

@Kiwiwomble said in Coronavirus - Australia:

@voodoo your mate to start with, the directive was to stay at your primary address, not go stay at a motel, and as you say, how many more have done similar

but on a broader sense several of the clusters have been traced to family groups congregating in large groups for parties etc

Well no, he is from NSW, he has all his family there, and a house to reside at. NSA - folk were given warning of the border closing at a particular time and the opportunity to return prior. If they truly intended to make everyone stay put, they'd have not given a deadline to cross the border

@Kiwiwomble said in Coronavirus - Australia:

@voodoo said in Coronavirus - Australia:

Messaged a mate in VIC yesterday asking how he was etc and he planned to get through this latest development.

He responded at 11.58pm last night with a pic of his motel room in Albury.

Made me wonder just how many will do the same? He has family in NSW so made sense for him, but there could be heaps in similar situations.

Are we about to see a spike in NSW as a result?

why cant people just do as there told, suck it up so we can all get past this

Not sure I understand, who isn't doing what they're told?

@Bones said in AB squad for the Bledisloe Cup?:

@voodoo said in AB squad for the Bledisloe Cup?:

@Frank said in AB squad for the Bledisloe Cup?:

@voodoo said in AB squad for the Bledisloe Cup?:

@nzzp sure, I'm not really talking about his Super form this year, more his body of work in black. Has it really been that impressive? Last RWC for example?

One of the few players who played well in our loss to England.
Same solid self. Unflustered.

A ringing endorsement

So what does he have to do then?

Like I've said a few times, I'm not advocating for anyone else at this point. He's a good 13 and deserves his spot. I just think he has become a bit overrated for simply being solid.

Messaged a mate in VIC yesterday asking how he was etc and he planned to get through this latest development.

He responded at 11.58pm last night with a pic of his motel room in Albury.

Made me wonder just how many will do the same? He has family in NSW so made sense for him, but there could be heaps in similar situations.

Are we about to see a spike in NSW as a result?