Day Whatever + 3
First thing in the morning before making that decision to walk out the door I attend to my Te Karere Ipurangi (Maori News Online) Twitter feed (@Karere). It’s been going for 11 years and amalgamates news about and for Maori. As at today there are 3,747 followers, mostly in New Zealand but with quite a few international TwitterFolk.
This morning I noticed a new follower; a new member of my TwitterVolk. Magenta Gutenberg (@SnapperQuota). She (I think) describes herself (I think again) as a “German Kiwi” who is learning Te Reo, ” Kei te ako tonu au i te reo Māori”. But the thing that really caught my attention was the hashtag, #LandOfTheLongWhiteKraut. That brought a broad smile to the dial, and set me up for the rest of my day.
47 cars in the New World carpark this morning, and no queue outside. Not so many people on the streets.
Some time back, around the time that COVID-19 first appeared in New Zealand, I noticed that the street sign on the corner of Waterloo Street and McPhee Street had been vandalised and pulled out of the ground. The next day it had been moved a couple of blocks and left on the footpath. A few days later it was replaced and then later sawn down. It was erected again. This morning one of the street signs had been partially wrenched off the post and left danglng.
Which set me to wondering. Being well aware of course (unlike many of the instant COVID-19 experts) that scientifically speaking, correlation is not causation, I nevertheless wondered whether street sign vandalism might be a yet to be identified symptom of coronavirus infection. After all, it is no more ridiculous than most of the fake stuff and conspiracy theories on social media.
If so, there is as yet no evidence of community transmission, given that all the other street signs on my daily quest for health and fitness are still intact.
So it must have arrived from beyond our borders at Dannevirke, from Woodville or Norsewood perhaps. Maybe even from overseas, like the United States of Amerika. Which is a reasonable assumption. Over the last 30 or 40 years the world has been infected by many dangerous and ridiculous viral-like ideas that germinated in the USA. Like neoliberal dogma and practice. Like the quest to democratise the Middle East by creating ISIS. Like the Tii Paati virus that mutated into a Cockwomble-in-Chief in the White House. The Virus-in-Chief as it were.
But this COVID-19 virus is more powerful than any of the stuff that has come out of the USA and just goes to show that Trump’s Amerika is never going to be as great as the viruses and bacteria that really rule the world.
And while we wait patiently for relief from the grip of the virus I carefully inspect all the street signs for any indication of community transmission.
You all think I’ve come down with cabin fever don’t you.