I have nothing interesting to tell you. In fact, I have nothing at all to tell you. Well, I think by closing schools too early when the country just had one case, the president erred and now millions of students countrywide are doing nothing with themselves but eating. Online classes is not possible for the majority. They just do not have the equipment to make it possible.
Our parliament is just a house for busy bodies. Our MPs are clueless. These two are not news. This pandemic has just made it more clear.
But the Americans for the first time in history have a president who knows everything. No wonder he is making America great again!
I hate this staying at home business! My couch will need new cushions because of the beating they have received in the last many days.
Happy Sunday everyone. Keep well. Eat well. And exercise a bit, if you can. And if you can help it, drink some.
Random thoughts 
He’s a real gem, isn’t he? Seriously, who wouldn’t like him as their leader?
After all, a great empire has an emperor, so it stands to reason if you want a great country your need a ….
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A stable genius and they got one.
Then he says at the end of it all he is a modest president
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Well … a person who knows everything will also know how modest he is. Stands to reason!
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Most definitely.
I don’t know how otherwise rational Americans explain their president.
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”rational Americans”
Both of them should be interviewed to find out how they feel.
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That’s touche!
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Ouch!
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How are things down south?
I see your president announced there will be easing on restrictions from May 1st
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Not too bad for our family …. so far …. but I feel for those who live hand to mouth.
It’s all very well crying ”Stay at home!”
If there is no income whatsoever to put food on the table what are people supposed to do?
And if social distancing is the thing it doesn’t help much that there are crowds of hundreds all jammed cheek to jowl waiting outside government buildings for unemployment relief funds.
There is an argument to be made for the way Sweden have handled the pandemic.
Difficult call all round I guess.
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I think Sweden is an example of how to do things differently. But as you say, it’s a hard call. I am trying to imagine what copying Sweden would mean for a country like ours that doesn’t have the means to test and isolate as many people as fast.
Asking people to stay home and not telling them how they will eat is to brew chaos. At some point something will have to give.
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Our infection/death rate is still climbing (86 dead as of this morning)- though Sweden’s death rate is already above 2000 last time I looked.
20 Muslims were arrested for attending Mosque! Now THAT made me laugh.
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Muslims here had asked for exemptions during Ramadan and were reminded Christians celebrated Easter at home.
It’s like the Swedes agreed as a nation for life to continue & let those who die die.
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Sweden’s death toll is nothing compared to UK or US, (so far) and yet the governments of both the US and the UK are being slammed for acting too slowly.
I am not qualified to offer any sort of medical opinion and only time will tell if the Swedes did the right thing. (Or the best of a bad situation)
Deaths from illness verses economic collapse and the resultant deaths.
Again, let those who have ask someone who has no money and no food what level of risk they are prepared to take?
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I did ask someone what risks he was prepared to take. He told he would rather take his chances with lack of food & not covid19. The US deaths represent almost a 1/4 of world fatalities.
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According to the official statistics, the elderly and those with underlying health problem account for >98% of fatalities reported — just like with the regular flu.
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We don’t have a flu season here. So I don’t even know why we took such drastic measures
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Corona Akbar!
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Sweden still hasn’t seen a “flattening of the curve” as yet: https://covid19.who.int/region/euro/country/se whereas its neighbours are seeing new cases per day falling, although not not as drastically as in NZ https://covid19.who.int/region/wpro/country/nz or Australia. Singapore is an example of what happens when restrictions are relaxed too soon.
We’re in our last day of Level Four lockdown, but we’ve got at least another two weeks at Level Three before life will start to become almost normal under Level Two. Mind you, I doubt that the new “normal” will be similar to the old one. This nation’s single biggest earner, tourism, I suspect has gone the way of the dodo and moa – extinct.
We do have an advantage of being rather isolated and our borders are closed for the foreseeable future. The evidence here is that there is no community spreading of the virus, so hopefully the decision to go to Level Three won’t backfire as relaxations in Japan and Singapore have.
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It will take a slightly longer time in Sweden to flatten their curve but they will not have to do so much to bring their economy back to life.
Tourism will pick up by end of year, maybe not in big numbers but it will be there.
Whatever the new normal, I want it yesterday.
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Time will tell. In this country we have no community transmission due to the lockdown being hard and early. As from midnight tonight we start a phased relaxing of restrictions. If Sweden takes a other 2 or three months before returning to something like normal, with the be in a better economic position than if they had a shorter more strict lockdown? I have my doubts,. And for what? Thousands of unnecessary deaths?
In NZ, the infection rate is 0.48 whereas the world average is 2.5. Anything above 1 means the number of infections is increasing. What if the number of infections in Sweden continues to climb for months? At present there’s no evidence that it won’t. It’s uncharted territory.
As for tourism, In all probability, our borders will still be closed, or at best require a 14 day mandatory isolation period. Keep in mind that any visitor to this country is then likely to face another 14 day period of isolation when returning home. Who has the resources, let alone the desire to spend 4 weeks in isolation simply to spend a week or two on the other side of the world? It’s not going to happen.
Tourism won’t even restart until after an effective vaccine has been developed and that could be 12 months away or more. If tourism returns to anything like it was within 5 years, I’ll be very surprised.
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In all this, time will tell whether as a specie we were collectively right about the lockdowns or it was a total mistake.
Mandatory 14 day quarantine in host countries would kill tourism, international conferencing and with it many airlines will be brought to their knees. I see a situation where countries would have to weigh between massive job losses/ bailouts and allowing some travel to go on.
The link you shared show the new cases and deaths for Sweden decreasing but they already have 2000 deaths which is quite high but it would be illuminating to compare that with the same time last year & flu deaths in the same period.
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Sweden had 13757 recorded cases of influenza in the 2018/2019 season and 505 deaths within 30 days of diagnosis. So considerably less than COVID-19.
As for infection rate, the infection rate is still increasing, albeit slowly in Sweden, whereas we’re down to around 3 – 5 new cases a day – down from around 80 per day at the peak. So down to around 5% of what it was only 3 weeks ago.
There has been no community spread here, and we only need to look at the 15 clusters here to realise a worse case scenario. One wedding reception of 100 people resulted in 80 infections all due to a single recent arrival in the country. 10 of our 18 deaths come from a single aged care facility due to a worker who was asymptomatic.
In NZ the ministry of transport estimates the cost to the nation of each road fatality as 4.7 million dollars. Other estimates value each Kiwi life at 7.8 million. If the government had not reacted, it was estimated that there could have been 60,000 COVID-19 deaths here. Multiplying 4,700,000 by 60,000 gives the potential cost of doing nothing. It makes the estimated cost of the lockdown and the recovery pale in significance.
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I don’t think GoK even has a figure for her citizens. I am.even surprised it has come down hard with restrictions though I know on the other hand it creates room for the friends of the president to make money off the pandemic.
It looks like the only thing Sweden didn’t do was enforce lockdowns but otherwise they observe all other protocols and have kept most businesses open albeit with lower densities. It also has a lower population density as compared to her neighbours. So maybe their approach cannot be replicated everywhere.
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I think most countries are “playing it by ear” based largely or wholly on scientific information available and as it pertains to their own situation.
And then there’s Trump and the US administration…
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Trump is a special case.
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45% of the population, according to polls.
😦 😦
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy
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If youâre short of material for future comment or criticism, you might like to consider one of my latest essays â see attached. All best wishes, John Faupel
Sent from Mail for Windows 10
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Aren’t you riding?
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This week has been quite wet & I have been kinda busy
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I feel SO lucky to have a gal like Donna Trump leading my country at a time like this! She only whines a little bit now and then about nonsensical things, but that’s to be expected! She has a lot on her plate right now with those evil democrats mocking her and the insidious media making up stories about all her failures and inadequacies! It’s a wonder the poor girl has held together as well as she has! I’m confident our Madam President will see us through this crisis and America will come out just fine! God bless America! And God bless our Madam President, Li’l Donna Trump, a gal any Russian daddy would be glad to have as a doting, loving committed girlfriend (I’m looking at you, Papa Putin).
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Hahahaha.
Madam president is the best you guys will ever get. He is the smartest!
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And the most feminine and dainty. 🙂
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And there is nothing where his knowledge is lacking
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Her wardrobe isn’t so good, though. She’d look better in a cute pink dress, patent leather black shoes, pig tails, and a skippy rope to leap over whilst she cries, whines, and moans about how many people are poking fun at her and calling her dumb. She really is a sweet little girl who’s been spoiled rotten by an over-bearing daddy. In that regards, can’t we all just give the sweet little gal a break now and then?
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I think the hairdresser hasn’t been up to the task too. That should help with the wardrobe.
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Well, on the bright side, we finally got that carbon footprint and air pollution problem under control. 🙂
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Oh yes. I am told the guys in Beijing can see the sky, for once in a long time.
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Since most of my family (kids/grandkids/great grandkid) live several hours away, most of my contact is via Facebook — although only 3 of them are active … and (unfortunately) those three lean Republican. Nevertheless, I posted this video. 🙄
I mean, how can anyone debate when something is … in his own words?!!?
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“He knows about ISIS more than the generals”. Which generals? The US generals or the ISIS general? I want to have a renaissance man- knowledgeable all round- as my president
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The one thing I took away from this post is… “what the hell are you doing on your couch Mak?” 😉
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hahahaha
sitting for 8 hours does that to couches 🙂
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