‘Simple truth’, can’t sugar-coat it any more

Craig Bauld

Opinion

From Uncle Craig’s Rocking Chair

People seem to think that my occasional contributions are overly sharp, on the edge, whatever. Actually what you see is generally about fourth draft. First draft is genuinely cutting and dangerously honest. Then I tone it down a bit so as not to offend the sensitive too much. Then I remove my most provocative bits and send to editor, who usually requires me to tone it down a bit more if I want it printed. To be fair, he is often right. If he printed my first draft I could really get in trouble!

And I don’t want to knock our editor. His job is bloody difficult and I believe he does it in good faith and with a great deal of tolerance; much better than I could. Of course he is of a different generation from mine, and much lefter and woker than I am, so we disagree on some things. That used to be allowed in NZ. Not so acceptable in Aotearoa New Zealand.

And I am grateful that he told us about the official figures for hospitalisation of Covid cases. I’m embarrassed. I knew the authorities were deliberately concealing the vaccination status of Covid deaths, obviously because they make our then-PM and our media look stupid, and I didn’t realise they had been foolish enough to release the hospital cases. Hell, I’m old, I don’t keep up like I used to.

So, according to official figures, 10.7 percent of hospitalisations were unvaxxed, in a population where 10 percent were unvaxxed. I know most people are not real clever where maths is concerned, so I’ll translate. That means our

$60 billion shutdown saved about 200 people from being hospitalised. And if those figures hold up into deaths, which is logical, then our shutdown saved about 20 lives. Except it didn’t really save them, they were frail-aged. It just delayed their deaths until the next cold or flu infection caught up with them.

Or we can take the extreme version, more unvaxxed hit ICU. Um, OK, that means our shutdown may have saved/delayed as many as 170 deaths.

Not thousands as they tell us and our maths-limited editor insists. What they say is not even misinformation, it is an outright dirty lie.

Facts do not change. Two plus two will always equal four. Vaccination had no effect, or (trying to be kind here) almost no effect on catching Covid, spreading Covid, getting bad Covid, or dying from Covid.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is the simple truth, revealed by official statistics, and I no longer feel that I have to sugar-coat it, just to get the truth printed.

It leads to a few questions. Is someone going to apologise for the troubles I have had since pointing out these obvious truths three years ago? Is someone going to apologise to the people who have suffered because they were right, not wrong? Whose livelihoods have been destroyed because politicians and media and fame/fortune seeking drama queens like Professor Michael Baker and Dr Siouxsie Wiles encouraged panic? Are the likes of Lara Meyer going to be allowed to continue to spread their message of hate and division and misinformation about mandates?

You know the horrible thing? It is quite possible that the new vaccines are effective, I don’t know. I just know that after being lied to so much, many people won’t trust them.

And that, folks, is totally down to Jacinda, her spin merchants, her desire to be an international star, our tame and naive media, and the fact that most editors are brilliant with words but can’t do simple arithmetic.

See today’s editorial