All of NZ except for Auckland to move to tougher 'Delta' version of Level 2 on Wednesday

Heard that one before

Even better.  When interest rates go up, it makes it harder for FHB's to buy.  Only those who can afford to buy houses will own one.  Prices will only continue to go up (maybe just not as rapidly as before).

same rule as when you take a regional flight, it is beyond stupid to give people drinks and a biscuit on a 1 and 1/2 hour flight so they have to take their mask off, im sure you are not going to starve in that time

Are there going to monitors timing the period between sips and telling you you must re-mask now because it has been x-seconds since the last sip.

Yes. They're going to be everyone else in the bar who are observing you, and silently judging whether you're a socially-minded person who takes COVID seriously, or a dick who uses an excuse like "I had a beer 30 minutes ago" so you don't have to put on a mask.

I'm happy to interpret the rule as "wear a mask when you are walking around the restaurant - arriving and leaving, heading to the bar or to the toilet"

No, it's really not 'positively dangerous'.

Worst case scenario is someone became faint / dizzy and fell over. But you're not going to exercise to such a limit that you become breathless.

People have run marathons with a gas mask on which is far harder to breath in than a light face covering.

really? if so didn’t take long for confusion and contradictions to start rolling out.

Stuff have a reasonably helpful article on what the new L2 entails - it seems like masks are just a requirement for gym employees. Attendees don't need a mask but must keep 2m distance.

not even a bit of Covid in South Island

Correction: we are not aware of any COVID spreading in the community in the south island.

Doesn't mean there isn't any. Also since there are active cases in CHCH MIQ, it could have started spreading last week and we may not know - although with L3 lockdown it shouldn't have gotten very far.

Just give them a whole lot of support, add it to the debt.

I am only being half sarc. If we accept lockdown, then we should all accept the handouts that need to go with it.

It's not fair to run companies into the ground with lockdowns. I suspect many who comment here, including myself, are lucky to be insulated. But if you support lockdowns, you must accept the handouts.

I'll be flushing my season pass down the toilet.

Normal masks were 9.3%

and a house mouse in the cheese?

I've been going since July last year on my disposable. The dude lives in my glove department. Sort of have an an attachment now. Kind of like a teddy bear

Germs you touch mask and spread covid when touching surfaces

Covid theatre.



Just like the "deep clean" and the hand washing.  The appearance of doing something.

In the banglidesh study. Masks lowered infection by 9%. The R value of delta is about 7. So wearing masks will lower the R value to 6.3. You are still faced with an exponential function so it is a pointless exercise. 

Why would you describe my emotional state as scared? To deflect from your shallow response?

That is the approaching reality afraid to say. One day inevitably Covid will present itself spread throughout our nation, our community, like it or lump it. For my part at an age and with more than suspect lung capacity I have no idea how much protection  Mr Pfizer has afforded me against Mr Delta, the hot one in town for the moment. There it is, complaining about it makes absolutely no remedy. Whatever my personal outcome might be I cannot exactly blame  government, even though their appalling failure to provide the protection of vaccine in good order and time, left far far too many New Zealanders unprotected . Because subjectively, for my status the timing makes no difference. I have had the two jabs, before any infection might take hold.   What I do blame though,  is the environment in China that spawned this pandemic, the outbound international jets  fully loaded even after Wuhan and surrounds had been isolated domestically. And I also blame the never will be disclosed clandestine elements in the USA and elsewhere, that supported and dibble and dabbled with research that cannot be explained as being actually necessary in the first place. There it is, again.

You make a good point with the R value. The data sets available are incomplete so making definitive predictions is precarious. However the implications of opening up, or not, are stark.

I accept that we are only are aware of a certain proportion of cases that actually exist, but as long as that proportion remains constant, when the population scales up it becomes irrelevant as the denominator has a constant error.

Could you reference the data you refer to? 

Not exactly. Israel whilst pretty much leading the world in rollout and population fully vaccinated have recently experienced a rather large resurgence of case numbers with delta. They have now begun a third shot booster rollout which is already starting to pare the infection rate in the initial demographics that have been given it. From a brief reading of latest scientific scrutiny the reason for the surge is that the vax they are using, the same as us, wanes in effectiveness at around 5-6 months post vaccination to somewhere in the region of 30-40%. If this is accurate, and if there were no further mutations then it looks like we will be facing, at best, a covid booster every 12 months although as what they are now doing in Israel is making it every 6 months dependent of course on availabilty of vax supply. Interesting because if this is where we are going then we are going to require heaps of it and be in competition with global demand. It is indeed going to be a long game.

Joe Rogan, that you?