James Elliott's brain is close to short-circuiting with excruciating detail about picnics, transitioning and eliminating elimination as he (tries to) break down the news of the week
Like many of you I watched this week’s big news announcement with interest. So, hearty congratulations go to Professor David Julius and Neuroscientist Ardem Patapoutian for winning the 2021 Nobel Prize for medicine. Their efforts have apparently advanced our understanding of “somatosensation” which looks like the typo of a term describing amazing tomatoes. Only it isn’t a typo – somatosensation is in fact the process by which temperature and pressure are recognised by our sensory cells and converted into signals that can be interpreted by the brain as perceptions such as warmth, cold or texture.
Having topped the Nobel 2021 class, Messrs Julius and Patapoutian should be encouraged to switch their efforts to advancing our understanding of Jacindaprehension, the process by which the pronouncements of the Prime Minister are recognised by our sensory cells and converted into signals that can then be interpreted by the brain as perceptions of the Government’s Covid strategy.
I’m prepared to volunteer myself as a study subject based on my experience of watching Monday’s announcement by the PM about the Auckland lockdown. I could see that the PM was speaking because her lips were moving. And the words that she was saying were travelling in sound waves from the TV to my ear drums which then vibrated causing fluid inside my cochlea to ripple across the basilar membrane activating the stereocilia to send electrical signals via the auditory nerve to my brain. It was that point that the process broke down. My brain was not able to process those electrical signals into a coherent perception of what the Government’s Covid strategy now is.
Monday’s announcement was like watching the head prefect explaining the catering arrangements for the school ball in excruciating detail without telling us the basics like when the ball is, what the alcohol policy is, and whether there will be a DJ or a band.
This is the reconstructed transcript of my interior monologue during the PM’s Monday announcement. Are we still pursuing the elimination strategy? Don’t know. If we’re now transitioning what are we transitioning from to? Dr Bloomfield is going to address that. Is Dr Bloomfield transitioning? No, he’s not. Are we still using the alert level system? Sort of. What are these three steps between alert levels 3 and 2? They have something to do with picnics. Are there also going to be three steps between alert levels 2 and 1? Can’t say, we may have to eliminate alert Level 1. Is eliminating alert Level 1 a return to the elimination strategy that we eliminated a few minutes ago? No, we should have said that we’ll be transitioning from alert Level 1. Why has the Auckland boundary been expanded to include some of the Waikato? To elimina … err… stamp out the illegal trafficking of KFC.
Monday’s announcement was like watching the head prefect explaining the catering arrangements for the school ball in excruciating detail without telling us the basics like when the ball is, what the alcohol policy is, and whether there will be a DJ or a band. My summary understanding is that since midnight on Tuesday I’ve been able to have a picnic with another bubble provided our picnic rugs are socially distanced. That’s provided for under alert Level 3, Step 1. Under Alert Level 3, Step 1, Category A if I’m picnicking with another bubble and they are unvaxxed then they must be both socially distanced and downwind. And under alert Level 3, Step 1, Category A, Rule (iv), after I have picnicked upwind from an unvaxxed bubble I am required to send my picnic rug to Jet Park for 14 days followed by a deep clean.
Under alert Level 3, Step 1, Category A, Rule (iv), after I have picnicked upwind from an unvaxxed bubble I am required to send my picnic rug to Jet Park for 14 days followed by a deep clean.
In contrast to the increasing complexity of the Government’s pandemic pronouncements, the media are now simplifying their explanations of the key Covid facts and figures for us. The news cycle is so dominated by Covid that the media have been able to develop a type of shorthand, ditching superfluous words. The media no longer report alert levels, now they’re just levels. They’re no longer Covid or Delta cases, now they’re just cases. And they’re no longer the percentage of the population yet to receive a first dose of the Pfizer vaccine, now they’re just the unjabbed. Deaths are still being reported as deaths until such time as a yet-to-be-convened government-appointed think tank approves the use of “PPPs”, previous pandemic participants.
The next phase in news reportage will see the ditching of words altogether. Alert levels, tests, cases, deaths and vaccination rates will all just be reported as a single sequence of numbers. It will be like a Lotto draw that nobody wins.
The most important number in news reportage this week was 63, being the age of a self-annointed apostle who will appear in court next week in relation to last week’s mass gathering in the Auckland Domain. He likes to see his name in print so I won’t do that here but I do hope to see his name printed in due course in the report of a criminal conviction for breaching an alert Level 3 order. That would be under the Covid-19 Public Health Response Act 2020, section 26, subsection 2.
Have a peaceful weekend.
