A lot has happened since last week. Covid is back in New Zealand. That means our friends in Auckland are faced with Level 3 restrictions and the rest of us are contact tracing like never before. The resurgence also means that steadily rising business confidence has plummeted off the edge once again and the Jacinda and Ashley Show is dominating my 1pm lunch breaks again. But it kind of feels like we're on track to do this all over again. We know the challenge better than ever before and we know we can do this. We've come a long way in the past five days.
The only real difference this time is the sideshow antics coming from various sources. I don't quite get the conspiracy theorists, but I am trying my best to understand their point of view. Unfortunately, I have a science background so I tend to default to facts each time and that's maybe where I struggle to grasp some of the concepts. Like Jacinda belonging to a New World Order. Isn't that Star Wars? That actually sounds pretty cool. I'm okay with that – sounds like an exciting adventure, maybe even a chance to go to space.
And 5G towers spreading Coronavirus? Seems a little hit and miss to me. Would be heaps easier to just send it directly (and targeted) via text messages or through some kind of Tik Tok hypnotism dance.
One of my favourites is the celebrity Aussie chef who has a slew of followers and they're firmly of the belief that Covid-19 is made up as part of a grand plan to secretly microchip the population. That's seriously cool. As someone pointed out we all have an individual serial number already and carry at least one microchip in our wallets inside our bank cards, but, yeah, a secret one hidden inside our blood ... that is epic. Kind of like DNA, but metallic. Best of all that same chef tried to sell Covid-19 resonance machines to protect those Australian families prepared to shell out $15,000 for one. Install it in the lounge and the virus skips your address ... very, very cool. A capitalist's dream during a pandemic. But hang on, isn't Covid-19 a hoax? Some business alignment issues right there it seems.
It almost seems like all the real facts are getting distributed via what remains of mainstream media, but, and let's face it, the facts can be a little predictable and boring at times. So social media has developed a parallel mediaverse where actual facts and actual evidence no longer have to strangle the imagination out of reporting and story telling. It's a blank canvas. Everyone's an author and anything goes. The more twists and turns the better. The underdog is always the hero in these stories – fighting for the common good of humanity. Saving it from the power struggle of world leaders and giant corporates. Ahhhh, the beautiful, boundless world of make believe.
See you at the beach ... Derek
PS Our friends at Strictly Coffee have just rebranded and have included a very classy reference to Dunedin in their new design. You can check it out right here. If you get as panicky as we do when you run low on coffee beans, did you know you can subscribe to get them sent directly to your door? Perfect.
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