Mainsdreaming

The number is astonishing to the mind: 70,686,229. As at 5pm 8 November 2020, that is the number of people who, presuming no fraud on the part of his campaign and supporters, cast their votes for Donald Trump in the US 2020 Presidential Election, very close to half of the votes cast. Although one could attribute it to "echo-chambers" (which we should be self aware enough to know that we are also in), partisan media and political tribalism, there can be little glossing over his belligerence, his contempt for others, his lack of consideration of the value of truth and facts. The 70 million have two eyes and two ears to appreciate the unveiled ugliness of this individual, yet they voted for him, rather than the other bloke. It boggles the mind that they collectively assented for the continuation of his quite obviously corrupt reign. But they did. In the 2016 campaign, Hillary Clinton was chastened when she called his supporters "deplorables", and so she should because, while there are many deplorable aspects to Trump the man, his supporters rationally have chosen him as their preferred leader.

If only as a post-mortem of an ugly chapter in global politics, it is interesting to think about how it happened that they chose him in such numbers this time round. 2016, his initial election, we can put to one side as it was clear he had a successful image and without a political track record. 2020, he was very well known by his words and actions in the political sphere. His voters would know some of these. It might not be a unique thought but I would say that what they were voting for was not him as a person, but his force to restrain the change towards pluralism in a country that was evolving towards recognising its own diversity and giving the required seats at the table to address it. 

It is an ugly thing that his side took the national symbols of flag, the name America, the anthem, and even the chant "USA" as a partisan weapons. But it is emblematic of a war to define what is American, and to exclude others from being so. If I were free to muse I'd say that like any entity or individual, that has had a good run of it, there is a feeling of Providence, of their own personal superiority that led to them being great. The United States has had quite the run, and as of today is still likely to be running for quite some time into the future. The America that was "Great" has been interpreted as that built by apparently capitalist, white protestants and their innate virtues (but without adding the introspection of the vices). This is embedded in the programming of the way they speak, make TV and movies and interpret events. That does not mean it is racially oriented, although it is easy to manifest itself or be perceived in that manner. There are plenty of people of all races that aspire for these values, and identify with Trump.

Previous presidents  tended to actively profess the need for inclusion, even if tacitly indicating that the minority voices needed to follow terms of inclusion. Trump verbalised this explicitly, though, often in racial terms: black people should be grateful to "America" and not protest; children of immigrants can go back to "their countries" if they are unhappy, as those countries aren't as "great" as America; judges of non-white ethnicities cannot be trusted to judge fairly (as if white judges have no prejudices). This could be heard by those 140 million ears but in a way where Trump was the one defending the founding principles of the "Great America" from adulteration. They might even agree with statements with racist premises, such as that black sportspeople owing the country, even though not seeing it as a double standard. Or that white people have the Second Amendment right to carry a gun, but a black person with a gun could be shot because they are a danger. Trump stood up to defend these principles that they have been told are the secret sauce of American strength.

He pressed the "socialism" button, too. Since its take on capitalism (forgetting all the socialistic aspects) is another thing that made "Great America", standing up for capitalism, or portraying those "coming in" as being socialists, or framing the opposition as controlled by socialists is another way to tap back to that threat to the mainstream. 

Nationalism as a response to pluralism isn't necessarily an evil thing, just a naive one: some without a scope of history might feel they were never consulted, or fully informed, about the changes that globalisation, modernisation and immigration would bring. When Trump talks about how China has "taken away" the jobs from people, it is a pain that is felt; they were sacrificed for a reward for the whole (of which Trump inherited). No-one wants to be sacrificed. There is no room for some utilitarian thought that for every American losing a job, ten Chinese were lifted out of poverty. Or the long term view that the prosperity of the nation was enhanced by turning those ten Chinese into consumers, or cheap technicians that allow them to have cheaper products that enhance their lives. Their nation gained prosperity in the 1800s collaborating with other empires to bring imperial China to its knees, driven by the same capitalist, white protestant values, causing untold suffering that is still remembered today.

The same core mainstream existed in New Zealand, too. Don Brash was the obvious one, where he very uncharismatically, and much more politely, did basically did the same as Trump. Maori people had to agree to the terms of inclusion, to something they should never have been excluded. But the mainstream still felt his call to the core of what they thought New Zealand was as a strong attraction. The vague analogy is that the mainstream was averse to Maori tino rangatiratanga, and no real compunction that they hobbled iwi from the time of the Treaty, in the same way that African Americans had been hobbled from slavery, to Reconstruction, to the Jim Crow era to even present times. (Any racists should be amazed that inferior people can get through all these and still be strong, smart and push for their betterment.) 

It's an understandable desire to hold that mainstream view, a stable worldview that apparently lead to something great. But the times have changed to the complexity of pluralism, local and global, and they need to know that the greatness is but a dream.

On the line

Back in my late China years, 2014-2016, I got a certified monkey off my back by completing a Post-Graduate Diploma in Teaching English to speakers of other languages (DipTESOL). Prior to that I just had a very much entry-level qualification, and of course an abundance of experience. One of my previous Directors of Studies had given me the good advice that if I ever want to be a Director of Studies, and manage and give teaching guidance to more highly qualified teachers, I would best have "a piece of paper" to allay any concerns that I have no basis for my thoughts; and I might learn something new in the process of getting a Diploma.

And I did learn something. It was an overall beneficial process and I'm thankful for it. It was also my first qualification with a significant portion distance and online: Every week we would have tasks to do, readings to complete and comment on. The main assignments were handled through correspondence with our teacher. The cherry on top was a practicum where all students came together, though, in Shanghai, where we our own classes to teach and also some very specific lessons that were taught in person.

At our school in China, our students were also learning online; they had to do enough online learning in order to get tokens to take live classes. This online learning was a lot about the English fundamentals, vocabulary and grammar practice, as well as reading and listening practice, but was not with a live teacher interacting with them. It was completely pre-set course work. The motto at the school was Learn, Try, Apply, Certify, where Learn is the online learning and then that means that classroom is a place for trying to use language actively rather than waste precious time with the teacher doing "what you could have done at home". Some students liked this. Others disliked it, perhaps only really focussed by having an instructor in front and classmates at their sides. 

Our school now has a course that will be formally online, delivered to students abroad from next wee. Due to our current tight staffing I'm one of the main content creators and it's rather amazing how much time it takes to make good content. (Actually, I cannot even comment that it's good content because barely anyone has seen what I've done.) It's been quite an enjoyable process though, but one of the hardest things about having others produce content, and my actual, much bigger job of having our whole organisation produce more online material is that it seems, even in 2020, very few of the teachers have learned online in a useful way to the potential that online learning can reach. One of the main reasons I've committed so much time to creating content is that I want to know what is required, and I want a model available for people to come and hopefully say: "Oh, that's what it can be!"

Unfortunately, it's not meant to be part of my job and I have been getting pressure because the things I should be working on are falling behind. I have argued that modelling the expectation is one of the best ways to trigger more initiative in creation. 

Anyway, Covid-19 has always been a convenient intellectual distraction for me. What a privilege that it is merely an intellectual distraction and not a practical threat to the well-being of the people around me! It is fascinating, although depressing, to see how the different countries have "gone". The interesting things to me have been whether there would be a fall "second wave" in the Northern Hemisphere. Scarily, it does seem to be picking up on cue, and it doesn't take much to really understand why with an aerosolised, airborne virus. 

In my own mind there had been the contradiction of what I understood of the Wuhan outbreak, that which caused the central government of China to pull a national circuit breaker to suffocate the outbreak there, and the situation of other countries from May to September. Even though China's "official" numbers from the time don't sound like much compared to other countries now, there were  horrendous scenes of people clogging hospitals and queuing outside in the cold, and being sent away due to an as yet negative test, hasn't quite been seen except perhaps in Lombardy, Italy. Although there was a steep track of people catching it and dying from it around the world in March-April, it hasn't really shown anything more than a "slow burn". 

My prediction has been that autumn winter would be a worse time isn't novel, but has made sense to me based on the aerosol nature of the virus. Aerosols are just like the fly spray you put into the air. Even an hour after you might still smell it because it's in a cloud that sometimes just hangs there. The particles are so light that gravity doesn't have as much sway as the air direction. For an infectious disease this is quite a useful trait. The infect person goes into a lift and coughs, leaves, another goes into the lift and into the cloud. But warmer, airier environments suit the dissipation of aerosols. Imagine a summer restaurant: there will be doors and windows open. People might prefer to eat outside, too. An aerosol cloud once produced is dispersed and people might breathe in a little but at least it's not much. Now shift that too any indoor space when it's cold. The doors and windows are shut and people stay for longer. Then there is a multiplier effect: as people are more infected, the number of people in any one space might have a higher chance of being infectious; and also a person might be get multiple infection events before their body reacts. There were young doctors in China who died mainly because of the constant exposure. Well, that's how Wuhan makes sense, as well as another wave of Northern Hemisphere epidemics.

One interesting them in this is also the difference in the geography. Though it was a good effort, China has had a much easier task than the UK and the States because their was only one significant outbreak: Wuhan. They could trace almost every case nationally back to Wuhan. Almost every country had outbreaks "seeded" throughout and if they chose to suppress it had to play "whack-a-mole" with contact tracing on multiple fronts. But, still most countries were also fortunate that it only seeded in a few places. Italy had their Lombardy. Spain had their Madrid. England had London. 

Probably the most negative aspect of this next wave for the northern hemisphere countries is that it is not just a few places - there are cases everywhere, and not just the places with strong health infrastructure. It could be, especially in the States, that there could be multiple cities or states Lombardymised, i.e., have overwhelmed medical services and have to triage. 

Perhaps the most depressing thing about it all is reading the commentary, especially with respect to people's ability to interpret and contextualise numbers and statistics, or the wilful misuse of numbers to make ideological points. But I might leave that to another day to write about.

 

 

Mahuru Māori

Dry July, Sober October, Movember, there seems to be more ways to theme your months to add a bit of texture to the years, ironically as time goes by. I've never partaken in the forementioned focussed moons, but I have made a move on the latest one I've become aware of, Mahuru Māori.

Māori here refers to te reo Māori, the Māori language, and September has Te Wiki o te Reo Māori, AKA Māori Language Week so it is close to a time that might be celebrated in a school like ours. Previous to working where I do, even though I had an interest in language and more than a modicum of respect for the native language of New Zealand, that week had usually passed me by without any sense of observation. Matariki, on the other hand, I had often had pause to celebrate because stars are STARS! Just like an eclipse, or a rainbow, the emergence of the Matariki (AKA the Pleiades, Subaru, the Seven Sisters) before the rising sun, after a new moon, in the depth of winter was something to look out for, to allow one's wonder to seek. And that is before introducing a antipodean dimension of our own turn towards the southern hemisphere Spring, or the cultural aspect of the Māori new year and rebirth. Te Wiki, in comparison, felt a little forced and even a bit hollow - why September, why an only temporally segmented treatment for a language? But perhaps there was always a reason why September was chosen.

Mahuru is the fourth lunar month, from Matariki, approximately equivalent to September. In the naivety that pākehā might have as colonisers, it might intrigue some that a calendar wasn't introduced to te tangata whenua; there was already a calendar here, in fact, calendars, as there were regional varieties. It shouldn't surprise that there was a calendar but it is easy to mistake a "stone age" culture for an uncivilised culture. As an agricultural society with some very clear seasonal rhythms, time keeping and awareness of the cycles that fish and other animals keep in relation to the moon meant the difference between prosperity and struggle for the Māori. Mahuru itself is a star, Alphard, which reappears in the dawning morning around now. I'm quite looking forward to acquainting myself with it as it's in Hydra, not one of those celebrity constellations, and I will need it to rise a bit further to have a better acquaintance with him.

Mahuru Māori is a month to commit to learn or use more te reo in one's daily life. Fortunately, one of the managers under me was brought up in kōhanga reo (immersion preschools) so I can try my hand to use te reo and our organisation is supportive of the use of te reo and is self-consciously trying to implement some elements of tikanga in our practices, such as mihi whakatau (official greetings for a new employee) and I have quite a few karakia up my sleeve to open and close meetings. 

While I'm not conversant in te reo, I have a few gifts that are useful for this kind of environment: I am a proficient language learner: I know how to learn pronunciation. I can learn a lot of vocabulary in a little time. I rote learned three karakia in a weekend (beginning a meeting, blessing the food, and ending the meeting). I have all the tricks and tools that other people might not even tap into. But that was before I learned about Mahuru Māori and was struck by some inspiration for my own commitment to te marama nei (the current month/moon). I intend to do an ambitious short circuiting to my mastery of a language: I'm going to read a novel. This might seem like the deep-end approach, but it is pitching for my strength to make an overwhelming support for the building of my speaking and listening. Reading has its virtues as a main strength: constant exposure to useful vocabulary; the requirement to grammatically rewire one's brain to understand the gist; the interest value that only a narrative arc can bring to motivate. Te pukapuka (book) that sparked the interest was Te Tohorā Kaieke, the translated version of Whale Rider by Witi Ihimaera, which was ironically a Māori story written in English. 

Corona-Chameleon

Saturday night, set the alarm for 6:30. Sunday morning, wake up naturally at 7:25am. Apparently a little care is needed with setting one's alarm: there is a setting that you need to watch out for if you are planning to be startled awake on a Sunday. Some pre-set alarms are set for weekdays, so setting my alarm for 6:30am wouldn't have woken me till Monday 6:30am. 

Sunday 6:30am was to be my wake up to slowly prepare and gear up for a 10km race at Waiatarua reserve. For things I care about I'm usually hours earlier. For running I'd like to eat at least 2 hours before. Get my gear sorted. Have as many trips to the bathroom. Get to the venue and have as many trips to the bathroom. Warm up for myself, then do the group warm-up with the other competitors and then run without a care. 

Fortunately everything else fell into place and I pretty much succeeded to do everything listed above and be ready for the benefit of 55 minutes extra sleep. Win! This was the second time I'd run Waiatarua out of my four entries. The first two were flooded cancellations. Last year was a relatively flooded non-cancellation. If you're planning to run around a wetland in winter you clearly need to be ready for the occasional inundation and a smattering of mud. It's a rare flat track, too; but that's a trap. Run flat tack on a flat track, you risk going too fast too early. It happened last year. And 2020 was a redux. The only solace was that I had a second wind in the last quarter that saw me through. It was still a disappointment after a pretty good cycle of preparation.

I'd put my poor performance to poor pacing, using my 2019 instincts to overestimate my 2020 fitness. But later in the day something stirred at the back of my throat that could give me an "out". I was coming down with cold symptoms by the afternoon. My wife had been unwell since Thursday evening so it wasn't a surprise. A couple of days on I didn't feel that bad - just more easily tired. I masked up for the few required work engagements on Monday and Tuesday and was generally "well" by Wednesday. It was this morning, Friday morning, that I thought I'd give running a go and didn't feel too bad. My wife had a Covid test on the Tuesday and we learned on Wednesday she definitely didn't have the virus. In the contrast of Auckland to Melbourne, you want to make sure you do your part to make sure that the viral genie stays in the bottle.

Melbourne is a fly in the ointment. To quote myself from a month ago: "Back in the early stages I remember being quite proud of the approach taken because it made sense and was clear. But there was immediate criticism of New Zealand's approach because of Australia's apparent success with a lighter lockdown. But no-one could tell which approach would work best. If there was one thing about the "strictest measures in the world" in NZ, it was a path to elimination. We still have a theoretical probability of another case, to be clear, but anything less that a stringent lockdown leaves a probability of further cases in the non-lockdown state both Australia and New Zealand are in." It didn't take an expert to spot that the less stringent the approach the more likely there was to be another outbreak and although other places in Australia had the odds on their side, Victoria rolled snake's eyes. With over 400 cases in one day, Melbourne with its four million population has quite a spike. For reference, New Zealand on its worst day had 146 cases. The only way to be safe is another lock-down. Any benefit in having a less than stringent lockdown has been lost when another 6 weeks of suppression is the best you can do.

The United States have raging outbreaks with most states not even thinking of lockdowns. The extent of the burn when it went this high in New York was only held back the tsunami was a lockdown. A few states have finally gone for masking up. It will be interesting to see if this almost laissez faire approach will somehow work. My intution would suggest that they've done well to hold the official death figures down but that it's not likely to stay that way. Even with the improved treatments that were learned since Italy and New York, if there aren't enough beds, ICUs, doctors and nurses, the health system will collapse and it will go from a seething pot to a boiled over oil fire.

One foot in the door

It is strange to make the purchase of a pair of running shoes as a landmark in 2020, but it context it is probably one of the two steps that would signify confidence in my recovery from injury. I had been very judicious with spending for the first half of the year. With the dread of this unshakeable niggle, I started to doubt whether I'd be training let alone racing.

It started in November and after some testing, and trying various exercises, scanning with x-rays and ultrasound, I decided to give it three months to recover. But it didn't. If constant quarantine did something though it gave me regular walking and the time to dabble with run/walk. With that came successes as well as frustrations and, at the end of the day, progress. My running picked up in April and May and then in early June I got an unexpected reminder: I had a race in two weeks.

Run Auckland events have been a very regular annual series for me, moreso than the Mizuno Half Marathon series which I wish I were doing more of. Run Auckland is cheap, local and social; an event every three weeks leading up to the Millwater Half (where I have done my second and third fastest halves). It should have started in April but the organisers took a punt in March to have re-organised to start in June. And the pitched it to perfection, as if they knew that Level 1 would start when it did.

The rejig put the punishing Sanders Reserve 10km first and yesterday I ran it. It was my second time on this particular course: I missed it due to travel one year, and deliberately chose not to do it another year. It is two laps over a mountain bike course with constant undulation. I'm no afraid of hills but in my very first year my lack of aversion cost me when I wiped out at the bottom of clay slope. Fortunately I lost skin, had some dramatic stigmata-esque palms but I still managed to keep going and finish. That year I didn't pace it right struggling toward the end: the first lap I did at 23:19, the second 24:03. I thought I'd learned this time and felt I took it more moderately and up the hills really slowly and my lack of fitness still bit at the end. Surprisingly I pretty much got the same times, just slower at the end: 23:21 and 24:42. I didn't really feel any niggles. So I bought some shoes.

The only other thing that can top this as a sign would be my entry into the Auckland Marathon in October. We'll see.

The monk, part 2

Did I say that Chuangtzu was a monk? I hope I didn't imply it with these titles. It's what happens when a random working title that came to mind when thinking about lockdown life had a cross-over meaning to someone in philosophical reflection.

Anyhow, in the first part I spoke how the title of my favourite chapter of Chuangtzu (Zhuangzi) was The Equality of Things in the version I read when in university but for the translation that I'm using for the purposes of this blog had it as The Adjustment of Controversies. The below is the immediate next text following the part from part 1 with nothing left out. I'd say that this particular section has it moving from controversies to the equality of things. Here it is (with small edits by me) with commentary below.

Were there no other, there could be no I. Were there no I, there could be nobody to do the apprehending.That is close to the truth, yet I do not know what runs this process. It seems that there is a true ruler, and yet there is a singular lack of actual evidence of its presence.

Given the body, with its hundred parts, its nine openings, and its six viscera, all complete in their places, which do you love the most? Do you love them all equally? Or do you love some more than others? Is it not the case that they all perform the part of your servants and waiting women? All of them being such, are they not incompetent to rule one another? Or do they take it in turns to be now ruler and now servants? There must be a true ruler among them whether by searching you can find out his character or not; there is neither advantage nor hurt, so far as the truth of his operation is concerned. When once we have received the bodily form complete, its parts do not fail to perform their functions till the end comes. In conflict with things or in harmony with them, they pursue their course to the end, with the speed of a galloping horse which cannot be stopped — is it not sad? To be constantly toiling all one's lifetime, without seeing the fruit of one's labour, and to be weary and worn out with his labour, without knowing where he is going to — Is it not a deplorable case? Men may say, 'But it is not death;' yet of what advantage is this? When the body is decomposed, the mind will be the same along with it — Must not the case be pronounced very deplorable? Is the life of man indeed enveloped in such darkness? Is it I alone to whom it appears so? And does it not appear to be so to other men?

If we were to follow the judgments of the predetermined mind, who would be left alone and without a teacher? Not only would it be so with those who know the sequences of knowledge and feeling and make their own selection among them, but it would be so as well with the stupid and unthinking. For one who has not this determined mind, to have his affirmations and negations is like the case described in the saying, 'He went to Yueh today, and arrived there yesterday.' It would be making what was not a fact to be a fact. But even the sage like Yu could not have known how to do this, and how should one like me be able to do it?

But speech is not like the blowing of the wind; the speaker has a meaning in his words. If, however, what he says, be indeterminate, as from a mind not made up, does he then really speak or not? He thinks that his words are different from the chirpings of fledgelings; but is there any distinction between them or not? But how can the Tao be so obscured, that there should be 'a True' and 'a False' in it? How can speech be so obscured that there should be 'the Right' and 'the Wrong' about them? Where shall the Tao go to that it will not be found? Where shall speech be found that it will be inappropriate? Tao becomes obscured through the small comprehension of the mind, and speech comes to be obscure through the vain-gloriousness of the speaker. So it is that we have the contentions between the Literati and the Mohists, the one side affirming what the other denies, and vice versa. If we would decide on their several affirmations and denials, no plan is like bringing the proper light of the mind to bear on them.

All subjects may be looked at from two points of view from that and from this. If I look at a thing from another's point of view, I do not see it; only as I know it myself, do I know it. Hence it is said, 'That view comes from this; and this view is a consequence of that' — which is the theory that that view and this opposite view — produce each the other. Although it be so, there is affirmed now life and now death; now death and now life; now the admissibility of a thing and now its inadmissibility; now its inadmissibility and now its admissibility. The disputants now affirm and now deny; now deny and now affirm. Therefore sagely man does not pursue this method, but views things in the light of his Heavenly nature, and hence forms his judgment of what is right.

This view is the same as that, and that view is the same as this. But that view involves both a right and a wrong; and this view involves also a right and a wrong — are there, indeed, or are there not the two views, that and this? They have not found their point of correspondency which is called the pivot of the Tao. As soon as one finds this pivot, he stands in the centre of the ring of thought, where he can respond without end to the changing views — without end to those affirming, and without end to those denying. Therefore I said, 'There is nothing like the proper light of the mind.'

By means of a finger of my own to illustrate that the finger of another is not a finger is not so good a plan as to illustrate that it is not so by means of what is acknowledged to be not a finger; and by means of what I call a horse to illustrate that what another calls a horse is not so, is not so good a plan as to illustrate that it is not a horse, by means of what is acknowledged to be not a horse. All things in heaven and earth may be dealt with as a finger; Each of their myriads may be dealt with as a horse. Does a thing seem so to me? I say that it is so. Does it seem not so to me? I say that it is not so. A path is formed by constant treading on the ground. A thing is called by its name through the constant application of the name to it. How is it so? It is so because it is so. How is it not so? It is not so, because it is not so. Everything has its inherent character and its proper capability. There is nothing which has not these. Therefore, this being so, if we take a stalk of grain and a large pillar, a loathsome leper and a beauty like Hsi Shih, things large and things insecure, things crafty and things strange —they may in the light of the Tao all be reduced to the same category of opinion about them.

It was separation that led to completion; from completion ensued dissolution. But all things, without regard to their completion and dissolution, may again be comprehended in their unity — it is only the far reaching in thought who know how to comprehend them in this unity. This being so, let us give up our devotion to our own views, and occupy ourselves with the ordinary views. These ordinary views are grounded on the use of things. The study of that use leads to the comprehensive judgment, and that judgment secures the success of the inquiry. That success gained, we are near to the object of our search, and there we stop. When we stop, and yet we do not know how it is so, we have what is called the Tao.

Zhuangzi builds from the duality of thoughts and perceptions, that if you are alone, or your ideas are in a vacuum, you cannot know what you are, or what your ideas are. Until someone else apprehends them, they are formless. Then onto plurality of elements within a system, but whether singularity, duality or plurality, that there is no "ruler" no supreme being or standard which can absolutely rule over them and define what is high and low, right or wrong. Of all the major organs in the body which do you love them most? Any love or preference is for nought because without any one there cannot be the other. And from the analogy of viscera, you can analogise back to people. Your organs might be your "servants" but servants in real life should be no less noble than their masters. And the pluralism of organs is like the plurality of society, where we all have different roles; or the plurality of ideas in contention, where ideas only gain their form through the challenge of others. Yet at the end of the day, there is a cloud of uncertainty over them - which is king and which is true. There is always a heart of relativity despite the veneer of absolutism. Every idea is equally not quite right.

While he might not delve into the rights or wrongs of ideas, he does see superior ways for which ideas and things can be perceived. The true light of mind must hold both something being true, yet possibly false. It must stand back to see the unity of the issue, and not just a part. It should not be swayed by "judgements" but rather what it actually is and does - "an ordinary view" as it is translated. It sounds like a dispassionate, objective approach. Just like pressure points, everything has its own pivot point, where you can go to best consistently view the reality of things, regardless of the changes about it. That's the place to occupy. That's the place to be.

Even though this section didn't have the same groovy characters as the first part, there will be more later in the chapter.

Some brief Level 1 thoughts

I'm going to do blogs on all parts of The Equality of Things, perhaps one blog per week. In the meantime, my mind hasn't left the pandemic. It had a period of fatigue but I can't help but look. It's the trainwreck that keeps on giving. Also, some of the voices in my virtual vicinity are still musing the rights and wrongs of the now very much concluded lockdown and re-opening of New Zealand's economy, usually with comparison to the effects of other countries, and also the suggestions of an earlier opening of the border. I haven't engaged any of the people in discussion but I really think people generally either engage in false equivalencies and/or don't think through probabilities.

The obvious point is that before any approaches used in different places are compared, you have to take into account the differences use there. Everyone likes to think the comparisons of, say, New Zealand and Australia, or NZ and the UK are fair, but there is no such thing. If I, as a complete non-epidemiologist, were to list the different factors that would affect how different states/countries experienced this outbreak:
- how many infected people were in the country before measures were taken
- how long before measures were taken
- the cultural and environmental background of each places (close living conditions, mask-wearing habits, outside vs. inside lifestyles and working environments)
- the adherence to measures
- the relative effect of seasons
All of these radically change how appropriate different measures would be and also what "success" and "failure" would look like.

New Zealand dodged bullets prior to the 3 February blocking of Chinese citizens (without NZ residency) into New Zealand, and the self-isolation of residents and citizens from there. If cases did arrive, they didn't spread it. There is evidence that infected people got to France, the United States and England well before the virus was even widely known in China. To my knowledge none of our cases or community spread originate back to an imported case from China. The UK and the US with their international hubs of London and New York were always odds-on to get cases or to have already gotten significant cases both before and after taking measures.

But Italy, Belgium and Iran were the famous early examples that were the first outbreaks outside of China. They were essentially ambushed by stealthy outbreaks that were already of scale well before testing was set up. I do not know if anyone can tell you the sequence of events or exactly why those two countries in particular felt the burn before other more likely countries to be epicentres. From a complete layperson, I'd say that it was all in the realms of "probabilities". Think about it: according to the presumed narrative of the virus, either by error or evolution, this novel coronavirus started spreading in Wuhan in late 2019. Not everyone had it. Nor would everyone have it. Only a relatively small proportion of the people infected would have had the plans on an international flight; but even if they weren't, they might be meeting other people who are or, more likely, travelling domestically and then giving it to others who might be travelling internationally. In the realms of the odds, all countries were rolling the dice with their open borders and international flights. Italy and Iran rolled snakes' eyes.  

Sweden was often raised as a counterpoint to the lockdowns implemented by most of the western world and initially had lower cases and deaths than some of the others above, but they were incidentally less exposed to imported infections. There were no land borders with hotspots. Stockholm, the largest city, is not a travel hub. Even though you'd think it was as likely as say, Iran, to get infectious Chinese cases. Their first case was well before New Zealand's arriving in Sweden on 24 January, but it was over a month before the second case came. Sweden is slowly having it burn through: its morality rate per million has eased passed France. Given another month, and presuming the continued trend, it may overhaul Italy and Spain.

Mortality is also probabilistic. New Zealand's mortality rate is pretty dismal but is overrepresented by two nursing homes. Basically, a western country's numerical success with controlling the virus is really just shown by your ability to keep it out of nursing homes. What was the realistic odds on two having substantial outbreaks? Maybe it was most likely one, but with chances of zero and two. Two countries with the same approach and background, through probability alone might have zero and two nursing homes hit and a huge disparity in their mortality. It would be ridiculous to make comparisons unless one was more blaise about regulations for those facilities.

Hindsight is still a source of conceit for many, forgetting that when the decisions were made, it was not done with supernatural foresight. It was done by leaders with skin-in-the-game. If they get it wrong, they would be pilloried. Experts out of government or leadership are liberated to choose the approach that suits their own analyses; and progressively change their prescriptions and critiques as more information comes to hand. Back in the early stages I remember being quite proud of the approach taken because it made sense and was clear. But there was immediate criticism of New Zealand's approach because of Australia's apparent success with a lighter lockdown. But no-one could tell which approach would work best. If there was one thing about the "strictest measures in the world" in NZ, it was a path to elimination. We still have a theoretical probability of another case, to Tbe clear, but anything less that a stringent lockdown leaves a probability of further cases in the non-lockdown state both Australia and New Zealand are in. Yesterday there were 12 more new cases, and today 18 new cases, including a GP who acquired it from the community. And if you want an analogous transtasman contrast this podcast talks about a Black Lives Matter demonstration in Melbourne who tested positive. 

A lot of the Plan B'ers had assumptions that a lighter approach would keep more economic activity, but it has always been a difficult prediction to make. If we, and the rest of the world, had an ongoing outbreak, would we have any tourists even with the border open? Would International students still come? In some ways, Covid or no Covid, our economy is going to be hammered. But perhaps the benefits of elimination were not accentuated: Whereas other countries are playing sport without crowds, New Zealand is having its games with packed stadiums, and the benefits for the economy that brings. As I have stated pre-lockdown, New Zealand could get a positive boost as a clean educational destination as we could scoop learners seeking a safe place to study once the border is open. Now all we need is some pragmatism with the border...

The monk, with commentary

Though there has been seclusion in all this lockdown periods I don't think I have nourished my mind much. In China I managed to read some books but nothing that really sparked wider thoughts. Now with my life really spinning only two tracks, work and running, I don't feel much more is pushing my ideas about the world. Running, while there is a sense of overcoming my recent injuries and the sense of picking myself back up, is a physical tempering but not a mental one. Work, while I am learning a lot and entering new domains, hasn't really changed my view of the world, of people, of things that matter. Even though the world has certainly had more than its fair share of flu and flux, most of the happenings have reinforced my ideas more than stirred stuff up.

Perhaps it's the 40 thing. In Chinese, there is a saying: 四十而不惑, which means that once you're forty, you are clear about the world. Maybe there comes a point where it's just so much harder to surprise you with an idea when you've seen so many things before.

I remember when I was almost twenty reading Chinese philosophy and really feeling some thought systems chimed well with me. There was one book that kept me intrigued and it's that which I want to return, to read and see if line by line it gives me any further pause or insight reading it from twice the number of years on Earth. That book was the eponymous 庄子, transliterated as Chuang Tzu or Zhuangzi, who was a representative "Taoist/Daoist" thinker. He is probably the "number 2" in the canon behind 老子 (Laotzu/Laozi). But whereas Laozi spoke in axioms, Zhuangzi liked to flesh things out in stories. The one section of his work that ruled them all, in my heart at least, was the second chapter 齐物论, a title which in its brevity could be translated as many things. I remember it translated as The Equality of Things and in my Uni days I wrote an A+ essay on it. Now I see in the text I've borrowed from the James Legge translation another title, The Adjustment of Controversies. (Such is the peril in translating a terse ideographic language!) The first title translation I think gets to the heart of what he talks about but certainly the idea certainly does come up of addressing controversy, the origination and nullification of disputes. Anyhow, may I introduce you Zhuangzi's second symphony/chapter as interpreted by James Legge (with small edits by me):

Dze-khi was seated, leaning forward on his stool. He was looking up to heaven and breathed gently, seeming to be in a trance, and to have lost all consciousness of any companion. His disciple, Dze-yu, who was in attendance and standing before him, said, 'What is this? Can the body be made to become thus like a withered tree, and the mind to become like slaked lime? His appearance as he leans forward on the stool today is such as I never saw him have before in the same position.' Dze-khi said, 'Dze-yu, you do well to ask such a question, I had just now lost myself; but how should you understand it? You have heard the musical notes of Man, but have not heard those of Earth; you may have heard the notes of Earth, but have not heard those of Heaven.' 
Dze-yu replied, 'I venture to ask from you a description of all these.' 
The reply was, 'When the breath of nature comes strongly, it is called Wind. Sometimes it does not come so; but when it does, then from a myriad apertures there issues its excited noise;—have you not heard it in a prolonged gale? Take the projecting bluff of a mountain forest;—in the great trees, a hundred spans round, the apertures and cavities are like the nostrils, or the mouth, or the ears; now square, now round like a cup or a mortar; here like a wet footprint, and there like a large puddle. The sounds issuing from them are like those of fretted water, of the whizz of an arrow, of the stern command, of the inhaling of the breath, of the shout, of the gruff note, of the deep wail, of the sad and piping note. The first notes are slight, and those that follow deeper, but in harmony with them. Gentle winds produce a small response; violent winds a great one. When the fierce gusts have passed away, all the apertures are empty and still;—have you not seen this in the bending and quivering of the branches and leaves?'
Dze-yu said, 'The notes of Earth then are simply those which come from its myriad apertures; and the notes of Man may just be compared to those which are brought from the tubes of bamboo;—allow me to ask about the notes of Heaven .' Dze-khi replied, 'When the wind blows, the sounds from the myriad apertures are different, and its cessation makes them stop of themselves. Both of these things arise from the wind and the apertures themselves:—should there be any other agency that excites them? Great knowledge is wide and comprehensive; small knowledge is partial and restricted. Great speech is exact and complete; small speech is merely so much talk . When we sleep, the soul communicates with what is external to us; when we awake, the body is set free. Our intercourse with others then leads to various activity, and daily there is the striving of mind with mind. There are hesitancies; deep difficulties; reservations; small apprehensions causing restless distress, and great apprehensions producing endless fears. Where their utterances are like arrows from a bow, we have those who feel it their charge to pronounce what is right and what is wrong.; where they are given out like the conditions of a covenant, we have those who maintain their views, determined to overcome. The weakness of their arguments, like the decay of things in autumn and winter, shows the failing of the minds of some from day to day; or it is like their water which, once voided, cannot be gathered up again. Then their ideas seem as if fast bound with cords, showing that the mind is become like an old and dry moat, and that it is nigh to death, and cannot be restored to vigour and brightness.
Joy and anger, sadness and pleasure, anticipation and regret, fickleness and fixedness, vehemence and indolence, eagerness and tardiness;—all these moods, like music from an empty tube, or mushrooms from the warm moisture, day and night succeed to one another and come before us, and we do not know whence they sprout. Let us stop! Let us stop! Can we expect to find out suddenly how they are produced?'

May I just say as writing from any era that the above stands as an awesomely sustained prose: The notes of Earth - wind and the sounds of natural air flow; the notes of man, music; but the notes of heaven is where we get our controversies. What is it that causes all the conflict, noise, highs and lows? Why when you get any set of people together "things happen"? Why do people choose to die intellectually on "that hill" while pissing in the breeze. All of our angular personalities clanging and howling to create the "notes of Heaven". The Big Bang might have been a bit of a blast, but the residual energy coalesced into stars, and mass pulled them together into orbits; till nuclear reactions caused them to become unstable and eventually collapse to form heavier elements and thus planets. Heavenly music. A peaceful stone age clan cleaves in two and occupy two sides of a mountain range, and through a dispute over seniority and tribalism initiate small conflicts that beget grudges that end in open warfare.

When I was young, I was full of confidence in my knowing and knowledge, and I would choose fact over tact; and was often inarticulately bumbling in social situations. Of course, reading those words above didn't slow me down. Knowing seem to be a sensual thing. I recall even in high school feeling like my mind could wrap around knowledge. Touch it. Smother it. Love it. Probably my love of chess and language came from the fact that there was a feeling that they were inexhaustible. Knowledge though seemed to be limited. Perhaps my mind still viewed knowledge like a finite series of encyclopaedias. It bred the feeling I could look down on others from what little pile of information I had acquired. And that little pile was often my hill to die on.

While the topic has been on the controversies, you can see below the equivalences beneath. There is no need for the full-throated disputes when there is nothing but the shapes, apertures and holes of ourselves as humans which is but an objective form and distinction inherent in all of us.

Burning questions

Tālofa lava! Last week was Vaiaso o le Gagana Sāmoa (Samoan Language Week). I hadn't had much interest in learning more gagana Sāmoa in the past. In previous years, I'd get the informative e-mails from our student support to recognise the week, but without much relevance to students, or real knowledge as staff, we haven't really recognised or observed another language besides English (whereas we do try hard, not surprisingly, during Te Wiki o te Reo Māori and the week of Waitangi Day). But this week I paid more attention: I was going to host a company event and it was appropriate that I get up with the programme! The event was our Zoom "Kai and Kōrero" whole company meeting, which flourished during the lockdown in an effort to get the whole Group together for some sharing or announcements. I was chosen in order to share what was happening in our school, its struggles with the closed border and its rapid downsizing, but with the main purpose being to try to get people to think how they'd share their love/aroha/alofa with those who are struggling and how to show their strength/finau in coming to terms with the changes. 

Gagana Sāmoa is significantly different from te Reo Māori but the outlines of their linguistic kinship are apparent with time, especially with the cognates like aroha and alofa but also some of the grammar. Samoan seems to have a clearer system of registers that reminds me a little of what little Tagalog I learned. In some ways, I'd say the distance is about the same as Mandarin and Cantonese.

Our Group has a policy for raising the performance of Māori and Polynesian students, as do most tertiary institutions, and inclusion is but one element. We have one Polynesian manager currently on the same tier as me, who has been quite outspoken in the need to differentiate. (I say Polynesian, because though she is a speaker of Samoan and English, I think she has Maori lineage, too.) And the needs are different. Why shouldn't they be? They have different history, cultures and relationships with other cultures.

"Māori" students for a start have a wide range of backgrounds, which as a non-sociologist, and non-Māori, I'll almost certainly misstate. Pretty much all Māori students in their family history have some history of colonisation. Some of them may have majority Māori whakapapa or with some mixing but still identify with that part of their heritage. Colonisation must set a weird internal contradiction: it stripped, invalidated and replaced one part of one's heritage; and yet there is another part of your heritage that has taken a superior place that sets the table very differently, even if you're seen as inferior.

Very few of these though would come from a traditional Māori culture that links to an unbroken line of values and traditions. While there is a Māori renaissance and increased cultural pride, mana whenua and strength, it may take generations to really show. Other Polynesians have had a strong cultural base and without basis I'd say this is a strong element in having better outcomes. Consistent, validated culture is a base for growth, dignity and positive decision making. Naturally, non-Maori Polynesians aren't exactly "uncolonised" and their traditional cultures also have aspects that may be maladaptive to modern learning (an emphasis on hierarchy and patriarchy, for example). But their academic performance, to my knowledge, shows that they do better overall. This comes to my mind more because my future work might be going much more into this sphere and my understanding of these things must inform my decisions. The above I hope isn't patronising - I have a lot to learn still.

Currently a lot of New Zealand still thinks in terms of "brown" people and "white" people, when actually neither block is monolithic. I think this realisation is increasingly internalised by people. But while we are getting better here, America doesn't seem like they could do much worse. Leaving aside the current burning, it's astonishing that the notions of "black" and "white" are still largely unchallenged. Again, which as a non-sociologist, and non-American of either colour, I'll almost certainly misstate: still basically the three largest racial blocks are "black" "white" and "latino", where "black" means looking darker skinned as a result of any genetic mixing with anyone from an African heritage; "white" means having a white appearance, and usually ascribing to being "white". (I'll put Latino to the side for brevity.) You can see this when Barack Obama is considered the first "Black" President when he was as "white" as he was "black". Even though the "Black" parent was not in his life significantly, his father wasn't an African-American, he was Kenyan. Since "Black" usually refers to "African-American" and the history of enslaved, forced immigration and servitude, with an erosion of culture and language. Not that that is any less or more of a comment on his worth, nor detract from African Americans. The dark humour of society is that when others apply the colour lens to someone, and that person buys into the tag attached to them, they start to identify differently to what their roots might indicate they should.

The United States has been messed up for some time in regards to its race relations. Pre-Trump, there was a latent, not-so-hidden belief that the true, successful America was "White" america (let me distinguish it as the small "a" America, a non-inclusive anachronism), just like my father would have said the true new zealand is the white, tax-paying majority and that the brown people are ruining it. But both NZ and US are covered by the superficial platitudes and norms, as well as the trend toward further mixing and acceptance of diversity, which without some systemic change might eventually capitulate the change. In the meantime, the "others" are partially disenfranchised from the systems, should feel grateful for their near equality and accept the rougher corners of being a profiled minority with grace. In the US, Trump and his proxies have ratcheted this up as he wants to make america great again at the expense of America.  

The current troubles there lie in the inability of the same platitudes that have worked in the past to smooth out the ripples of a single death in police hands. That's because it's not one death, and not one incident nor just official racism but the license given to non-official racism, in 2020, you could just search the ABC of names with their crimes: Ahmaud Arbery (running "while black"), Breona Taylor (sleeping "while black"), Christian Cooper (birdwatching "while black"). The rest of the alphabet won't stand idly on this topic either. 

The protests and the accompanying riots are horrendous. But there is no leadership or political solution to the burning question at the heart of the outrage that has brought the majority of protesters to the street. How are you going to address the profiling and violent excesses within the police and justice system? If there is no answer, even brute military suppression will leave the wounds unhealed. Ridiculously, the police and national guards have seemingly been licensed to control protest with the use of force, which is the reason the protesters are out there. The equation is even more wrong in that with a large number of people unemployed, often cut off from relief, they are even more likely to fuse their economic rage with their social rage. 

The media never seem to differentiate protesting from looting. I have no experience or real knowledge to tap into this, but from my remote standpoint, they shouldn't be mixed, although often exist together. Protests are a huge diversion of police force. If I were in organised crime, with no horse in the race, I'd prepare for harvest time. If I were an agent provocateur, for either left or right, I would be getting my explosives prepared. And if I were a hungry, economically disenfranchised person I wouldn't be able to tell the difference after the shop windows have been smashed and the goods are there for the taking. And the protesters are not usually criminals, agent provocateurs although they may be the disenfranchised. 

Being Civil

There are times in your life that you realise that you realise that other countries don't have something you thought were stock-standard; and also when you find that apparently you've gone through life without something that others find a fixture in their lives. New Zealand doesn't have a government issued identity card, we have options to confirm our identification with documents with other purposes (birth certificates, drivers licence or passport). Swiping bank and credit cards is rare in China so most shops do not have devices to receive payment. (Credit cards are mainly for online payments.) 

It might comes a surprise to many people that New Zealand has made its way in the 180 years since the Treaty without making a single constitution document. I remember only learning that in university when I had to do a paper of law in my first year of university. Although I'd gone through life without it, I had heard of the US Constitution often invoked on television, mostly by its Amendments, to know that it was an important bulwark to protect inalienable rights. My experience of New Zealand life was that we'd done pretty well without one, but I concede that it might have been just because of the lack of a malicious person or group coming to power who would take advantage of the fact that there is nothing providing a solid foundation to the case law or founding documents. All of the statutes could be amended. The Bill of Rights is a statute, and thus a slim majority could technically overturn it. If you've read C. K. Stead's Smith's Dream you get a taste of a vision of New Zealand under military rule. And some the privations of the Covid-lockdown here apparently evoked the feeling that rights were infringed or that there was some slippery slope in effect. 

On the topic of constitutions, if you look at countries with constitutions, it hasn't stopped rights being trampled. The constitutions might have given the citizenry a terminology for speaking about their rights and how to protest their infringement, and perhaps in the passing of one regime to another, it provides a way to convict their previous leaders, but I believe the same would be true in a country without a constitution. 

I have heard the word "tyranny" used to describe New Zealand's approach. It sounds rather overblown, and my first instinct was to write it off as politically-biased people wanting to sound off against the current government and its leader. (There are numerous people I know for whom she can do no right.) However it does pay to consider what curbs we have had on our normal freedoms in this extraordinary eight weeks. I'd list them as:

• Firstly requiring people to stay home and only stay in small bubbles 
• Police warning people who did activity in contravention of the rules set out by the Director General of Health
• Preventing people from attending the deaths of loved ones
• The impeding of travel by road with checkpoints and no domestic flights
• Closing businesses that opened against the rules for the particular alert levels
• Issuing warnings for breach of the rules.

To me, most of these things would feel like violations if you did not subscribe to the reasoning behind them, and so even though tyranny sounds like a stretch, you can understand the emotional reaction. No-one likes to be told they can't do what they take for granted and consider within their autonomy. This is still true for people doing patently illegal or unethical things, which they think are justified in doing.

I have mentioned JC a bit on this blog. Things came to a head last week. It was a week of apparent good news: We were going back to campus! He'd been teaching at home in the preceding weeks. I knew that he didn't approve of the lockdown but he also knew that there was no way around it. Last week all classes finally returned to campus for three days of campus study (with restrictions) and two days of online study for all classes. It wasn't my ideal way, but with only one of our two floors open, it was the only way to guarantee that 100 people or more weren't in the centre at the same time. There was also no access to the common room which had the water cooler, something I had wanted but was overruled by other members of the Executive. JC was forcefully inquisitive as to the exact rationale of these, whether it was a government mandate that we could only have three days a week on campus. I explained that the government sets the guidelines and the school seeks to meet them and ensure safety and avoid risk. He interpreted it as me deciding to allow only three days a week, and forcing students to get water from the toilets. He then went on to represent his students' concerns. I responded that I appreciated his desire to represent them, but many of them are cases in the process of resolution and we have staff and their agents to handle it. He wanted his protest to be noted. I noted it. I already knew he was sceptical of the thread of Covid-19 and was outspoken on Facebook about the "cure being worse than the illness" and he had a particularly, plausibly misogynistic though I'm sure he'd deny it, fixation on Jacinda Ardern.

The next day in the afternoon, a staff member arrived, poked his head in my door and said something like: "Oh, can you believe JC?" and tipped me off to check our teachers' Team page where he'd written at length (without @'ing everyone so there was no notification) and included an attachment of a one hour twenty minute video from his online class. The video was from the previous night where he decided to interview each of his students about their dissatisfaction with the school's decision to do only three days on campus, and some other gripes. He vented his frustration to them and said that he disagreed with the approach taken by our school (and incidentally by most schools and elected bodies). He included a political rant and a threat to go to the media. Apparently, the class then had a break and continued the class on the topic of Mood Food.

That was the last class he was to teach at our school - he had already been given notice due to the pandemic and student numbers so he will have his leisure while his notice ticks down. I taught the following two evenings (which went really well despite three of them previously not happy with me). My senior teacher stepped in to teach the class from Friday onward. JC is still active trying to stir something about his "firing", and he's spending his extra time being even more active on Facebook, although nothing too pointed at the company or me. He is stuck on the theme that everyone is supporting participatory fascism and wilfully having our rights taken away. He's big on freedoms.

Ironically, two days later, I could estimate that even after the Friday graduations, with all classes on site that our school would have fewer than 100 people on site at any one time starting this Monday. So I got approval to have classes five days on campus. And I bested resistance to access to the water cooler for students. If he had held himself together, his targets for outrage would have been addressed. But probably not the rage in his chest.

It has just been Memorial Weekend in the US, where going by the media a large number of people have headed to parties and the beach. Our equivalent, Anzac day, was sombre under lockdown. Both occasions are literally commemorating "those who gave their lives for our freedom." (To be clear, it's a bit of a stretch for Korean and Vietnam war vets but I'm sure the sacrifice is all the same; and the feeling of threat was the same, too.) But the odd thing is that if we keep it as a World War II scenario where the real fascists are amassing at your border or that of an ally, the potential sacrifice of one's life or the imperilling of the lives of others in the fight for preserving the freedom of your people seems realistic. The seizure of freedoms by those fascists would be the extermination of peoples; would be the loss of all democratic rights; would be the death of dissenters; would be the smothering of the freedom of the press. Flouting rules or guidelines a la Memorial Weekend is really a perversion of this, making people give up their lives en masse for mundane freedoms like having your hair cut.

Rant over. BUT even I raised an eyebrow that the Parliament recently passed laws which included the possibility under pandemic alert levels for police to enter private places without a warrant...

Downsizing

This evening, another teacher leaves. In three weeks after that, somewhere between two and four leave us. It's not a good feeling. We can only try to soften the blow. Students will complain. They'll be buffeted between class mergers and collapses. But at the end of the day the numbers in and the numbers out will decide the situation. The border won't be opening any time soon and things will continue to wind down. Next week we'll be partially back on site with classes on campus three days a week. It'll be a big thing for all to be back even if it's looking grim.

I'm still running lucky. I've managed to show enough value in my resourcefulness and common sense to have been redirected into a major project. There is a great likelihood that I might be into a major position of use in June. It's a perverse feeling to be getting an opportunity and a path to greater things amongst the carnage. It's often said that the word for crisis in Chinese ("weiji") is made of the characters for danger ("wei") and opportunity ("ji"), and I guess I'm doing well in a Chinese crisis.

But work-wise there is a horrendous overlap where the work is still heavy and all the supports are being pared back and diminished. I'm trying to pass on my duties to my senior teacher, who is effectively down to 25 hours a week from 40. Our awesome student support is now on 4 days a week. We let go of our receptionist the day before lockdown so once we get back, we'll be stretched. My line manager keeps telling me that I should focus on my project but the student issues haven't yet receded and the logistics of bringing people back to campus is not light, and I'm the one who'll be covering the task.

So it'll be a period of long days and not so idle weekends.

In the past, of Fridays, I would have had more of a thought or trend in the pandemic. I haven't had as much energy or time to wonder. In New Zealand, there is great hope that our chapter is over for the time being, and that there is no second wave. With over 7,000 tests processed in the last day, and only one residual case turning up I'm pretty confident. I certainly hope so, at least, because Friday night on Mt Eden did not show much in the way of social distancing. I guess we'll have to wait for June to really know if the sudden social exuberance has any epidemiological consequences.

The world under lockdown has flattened the curve in most countries, and only the countries that weren't doing it terribly well have been left with a terrible churn of cases and deaths. The United States deaths have dropped below 2000 a day and yo-yo between 1000 and about 1750 depending on the day of the week. If heat doesn't have much effect on covid, and the "re-opening" is as open as it sounds, I think the States could be in for what happened to the world in the first stage of the outbreak: deaths surged in a central are, Wuhan and Hubei Province, scattering out seeds to other provinces and a few to other countries. The world death rate slumped in late February after the burn in the early part of the month. But by 8 March, the rest of the world's combined daily deaths exceeded the highest day of deaths in China. I feel this could be like the US. New York is the Wuhan of America, and the populous lockdown states are like the neighbouring cities. All the iffily governed states that closed late or opened early are doing exactly what other badly affected countries did, and it takes some time to bite. From a timeline, it should be starting now. (Two weeks since the 1 May opening.) For their sakes, that's wrong. Two metrics to look at over the next week. If any day can exceed 30,000 cases in a day, or if any days can get back over 2,000 deaths, they might be heading into a world of tears...

The day after Friday part 2

Thank god, it's not Friday. Fridays are now the day where miracles are expected. It's a day of last minute missives, and unexpected logistical tasks. Fridays are now the day to talk about departures. Yesterday was the last day for one of our staff members. Last night we had a Zoom room party with my team, which pleasingly lasted for two hours. The previous Friday was also a farewell. 

God save the United States of America. I don't say that lightly. In fact, my tendencies of late are to hope that idiosyncrasies of countries, their special character, might have some exceptionalism in it. Besides the obvious catastrophe of New York, which is not Wuhan, a certain degree of blitheness and haphazardness in the States has not seen a second, third or fourth epicentre of magnitude yet to materialise. Yet. 

Yet, there is an inevitability of it all. Infectious or not, Covid-19 does seem to take its time to get settled before it gets critical mass. But in exponential fashion, soon as this mass is achieved, it is a juggernaut that only complete lockdowns can arrest. Many states whose numbers have not fallen, just plateaued for a period, have run out of patience and are starting to open up again. Last Friday, they had the most reported daily new cases since the beginning - 38,958 new cases. Today might be a Saturday but they've already reported over 35,000 new cases in a 24 hour period. These are huge numbers, and proof the virus is everywhere. There is no way for contact tracing can work with this many cases. In fact, in the states, there is an almost an incredulity that anyone would do this fandangled contract tracing.

With our 3 new cases a day in New Zealand, we still aren't allowed to do much. Even in Level 2, our school will need to be able to know the details of everyone on our sites with times of entry and exit. 

I'll leave it at that. I'm glad we're beating this thing. Although she is a politician, I'll just state that for Brand New Zealand, Jacinda has a lot of value in her manner alone. Whether it was the mosque attack last year or this, separating the enormity of each case and focussing on the positivity of view, the rest of the world is enjoying this representation and leadership of New Zealand. I selfishly hope this holds our nation in good stead too after this.

The day after Friday

Since I missed my usual Friday Covid-landmark blog, I thought I'd do a second blog. I think my streak of Friday blogs go all the way back to our self-isolation in February, so it is a shame to have broken it.

What has this seven day period brought? The world's daily increase in the numbers of cases and deaths seem to have stabilised, but it isn't dropping. It is rather incredible and it would be interesting to know how this is possible. The majority of the affected world being locked down shouldn't really allow it to keep going with 90,000 cases a day. With almost all social and commercial interactions suppressed, there shouldn't be a way for cases to sustain what is essentially the same rate as before the lock down, but yet there are very few countries on the path to elimination, and fortunately New Zealand, Australia and South Korea are all pretty close to it.

There are some articles recognising the patchwork inconsistent strategy of Australia, which looked messy at first, has reigned in the outbreak while preserving normality by a degree. Doing a "black and white" analysis, they might have stumbled on a better degree of social distancing than the strict lock-down in New Zealand. That is not to say the foolish pundits criticising the New Zealand approach have any merit to say that we have been too heavy-handed. When we went into lock-down, there were few successful suppressions of the outbreak to reference and it is a good thing that different countries try different things, even if there might be some failures. But there is room for individual characteristics in each experiment. Covid-19 might spread in any weather, but warmer, drier, more outdoors-inclined countries may have a greater advantage. There is every chance that the Australian strategy might have failed in New Zealand as the cooler, moister climate would keep people indoors earlier and windows shut. Australia might end with lower cases per capita and deaths per capita, but then our deaths are blighted by the failure in Rosewood Resthome, which makes up over half of our fatalities.

How the real satire that are the United States of America has not yet descended into chaos deserves some consideration. They are racking up the cases and the deaths. And even before cases have consistently gone down, they're loosening restrictions in some states. It would be too easy to say that this will permit the outbreak to continue and burn on - but it is still an experiment of sorts. If Australia could drag its numbers down with more moderate controls in a hot, dry climate, perhaps Texas might enjoy the same success. Either way, their hopes of keeping it under 60,000 deaths is out the window. Their cases increased a third and their deaths by 70% in the week. 2,000 to 3,000 deaths are reported each day. As New York's blaze runs out of wood, the other states are manning up the bodybags.

Fingers crossed for all concerned.

Corona killed the ESOL star

I've realised that I might have not mused in this blog about a trend I often speak to my colleagues about: the end of the ESOL teaching industry (ESOL = English for Speakers of Other Language). I shared it to encourage people to take broader training and professional development seriously. This predicted trend was, going back to 2009, one of the reasons that I made my decision to get into education management instead of teaching, which was the motivation for going to China where there are big organisations with lots of opportunities.

The main factor in the prediction was technology, which, even back then, before I even had a smartphone was already indicating the increasing substitution of the need to either learn a language, or facilitate the learning of language without the vagaries of brute human-to-human impartation of knowledge and skill. Some primordial translation software such as Babblefish was coming on the scene. I'd already learned language with podcasts and Youtube videos; Skype was king back then and it seemed that the cost-benefit for students would be to learn as remotely as possible. When the sharing economy started to disrupt long-standing industries, it seemed even more like the writing was on the wall. Even in 2013 when we visited China, the adult English teaching market had shrunk. If we had stayed in China, we would have been teaching a smaller number of students with a diminishing group of colleagues.

Of course, prediction is not a science. We returned to New Zealand in 2015 and although I did apply for non-ESOL related positions, both of us are in our fifth year of having our lives supported within the English teaching sphere. And our school hasn't been especially technological till recently. The way my teachers have been teaching is very similar to how I would have been teaching in 2001 when I began. It's been successful. Low cost yet personal, rapport-based teaching. But just like the asteroid strike that killed off the dinosaurs, Covid-19 will either force evolution upon you or render you extinct. 

Within a week, a former colleague at another school went from informing me that an ESOL school in Napier had closed becoming ESOL's first casualty in NZ due to Covid, to telling me on Thursday that his own school, a boutique premium provider, was closing. Our school is intent on evolution and there is a good chance that I'm going to have a heavy responsibility to get things moving. But we're going to be getting leaner and meaner. Staff have gone. Staff will go. 

Of course, this is far from just an ESOL situation. The whole world might be turned upside-down yet. Manning the process of preparation for a pandemic has felt like something that I have the skills to do. Manning the process of change for the post-pandemic world I think gives me a chance to get experience with whole-organisation change, broad technological mastery, methods of incorporating technology into pedagogy (teaching methods) to enhance learning. If I can do this well, pretty much I could make myself quite the commodity. It might be my main way to avoid extinction.

Anecdotes

"3% of Dutch blood donors have antibodies to Covid-19" was the headline. I picked it up from a pleasant vlogger by the name of Dr John Campbell. He is another vlogger, along with Dr Chris Martenson (Peak Prosperity), who has been following and interpreting reports about Covid-19 from a very early stage. He is overall very concerned about the pandemic but also does quite neutral interpretations, i.e., he qualifies comments well and raises not just depressing but also optimistic news that Covid-19 might not be as bad.

This particular result can cause many conclusions depending on the angle you're thinking about at any one time. The Netherlands who apparently have been fairly transparent and complete with their numbers has the eighth most deaths per million, not far behind the UK. Herd immunity, if it exists for this, is at the 80% mark for this kind of thing so it indicates that this crisis is a long way from finishing.

But it was interpreted for another key metric. The heart of a lot of the controversy is to know how many people have had Covid-19, whether confirmed or not, because if you only county confirmed cases, then the current fatality rate in that country, ignoring the lag between diagnosis and death, is an unlikely 11.4% (3601 death divided by 31,589 cases after testing 0.9% of the population). But if 3% of the population have already had it, actually deaths should be divided by 514,046 cases instead, and the case fatality rate drops to 0.7%, which would make it really bad, but not as bad as feared from the official numbers.

Should we breathe a sigh of relief? Well, perhaps it's my innate catastrophism but I'd say no. In any snapshot of any complex situation or phenomenon, you can see it one way from one angle that makes it all look black and white, when reality is prone to being grey. Where is the grey here?

1. Blood donors might be a cross section of the population. On the positive side, it would tend to be the healthier portion, too. (You are questioned before donations and rejected if you've had symptoms of an infectious disease or been to an affected country.) So it could be thought that the prevalence in the Netherlands could be higher.
2. If it was known that blood donors were to be tested for antibodies, it may have biased the group though for those who thought they may have been exposed.
3. There is some interesting fine print: "Preliminary results show that the presence of antibodies differs per age group. 3.6 percent of young blood donors between 18 and 20 years old (688 individuals) have Covid-19 antibodies. That percentage decreases as donors get older. No antibodies were found among donors between the ages of 71 and 80, though the number of donors in that age group is also much lower - only 10 individuals." This could mean quite a few things, from the older group not travelling as much and not being exposed, to the existed of a repository of vulnerable but safe unimmune groups, perhaps through the measures put in place.

4. Maybe more significant though is the accuracy of tests. Any test has two metrics, sensitivity (the ability to signal the existence of the antibody) and specificity (only signalling the exist of one antibody and not others, or other substances). It sounds good to have a test that is, say, 99% accurate, but if it comes up with false positives 1% of the time and false negatives 1% of the time, then it can lead to wrong conclusions at different levels of prevalence:
Note how at a low actual prevalence, 0.1%, the test might give a 1.1% prevalence. If this were the parameters of the 3% test, then it is possible that the actual prevalence could be more like 2% and then the case fatality rate becomes 1%.

For amusement, here is the case of a 98% reliable test, where a 3% test prevalence actually corresponds to a 1% actual prevalence. (And the corresponding case fatality rate would be 2%...):

It is unlikely that the sensitivity and specificity are the same percentage, and ideally for the purposes of a non-diagnostic test, specificity should be as high as possible at the cost of some sensitivity. (And a diagnostic test, for the purposes of isolation, not treatment, should be high in sensitivity at the cost of specificity.)

And you will find even 98% is not a realistic number: The government’s “game changer” antibody tests are inaccurate. What next?

So what does the Netherlands news mean? Well, it is just a data point. Neither a black or white, but a shade of grey that you need to accept till other anecdotes and cases bring more definition in. People who rely on a single case, article or anecdote and interpret it for their purpose, perspective or politics.

Another similar case, also picked up by the vloggers was: Pregnant women without symptoms are testing positive for coronavirus, study says. This article described some research described the situation for women who came to deliver their babies at one medical centre in New York, 4 of whom were symptomatic for Covid-19 which was confirmed by test. But 23 of the other 210 pregnant women were also tested as positive by the PCR test for Covid-19. The hopeful conclusion reached by some from this was that the vast majority of the infected were asymptomatic (or at worst, pre-symptomatic).

The latter point is a cry for optimism. If over 80% of the infected are asymptomatic or have very mild symptoms that would not cause them to be voluntarily tested, then the actual case counts in any country that tests only symptomatic cases would be underestimating by 80% the actual rate that the population has been infected.

There is well-documented asymptomatic cases and asymptomatic spread of this virus, which is not in doubt. The numbers seem quite powerful again in this case, but it is once again prone to the wrong extrapolations. But the virus is more dangerous, and presumably symptom-causing, as you get older, and the more male you are. Pregnant women tend to be younger, and some communities in New York might have even younger average ages of pregnancy too. They also tend not to be male. In this case it is not the cross section you'd use to base conclusions on the whole population. The other conclusion that should have been made from this article was that that, if they were representation of the current infection rate for the population of New York City at the time of the research, late March/early April, over 10% of the city population was positive with the virus and shedding virus particles. Disturbing.

In the so-called Plan B camp (the people who advocate letting the virus do its thing in the population), there is often the desire to find the true infection number, which they surmise is significantly higher than the confirmed case number. This is a way to minimise the case fatality rate and to demonstrate the scale of the overreaction from lockdowns. Anyone who is biased the other way will likely indicate that the confirmed death number isn't accurate either, as deaths at home, care homes and the pre-testing covid-related deaths are also not being taken into account.

People used to raise the Diamond Princess cruise ship as the perfect case study because everyone on board was tested. There were 712 cases and 14 deaths (almost 2% CFR), but again the meaning of this is qualified because the clientele of cruise ships are older and all the fatalities were over 60. (And even at this age, over half of cases were asymptomatic.) And even though this case seems an age ago, there are still many passengers still in hospital. It is possible that the CFR may grow pass 2.5%. There is also a possibility that though the quarantining at Yokohama might have reduced the impact. There was no further exposure to the previously exposed and many of the early symptomatic cases may have been discovered early.

Then South Korea was said to be a good case study as they were the reigning testing champions. Early on the Plan B people were optimistically crowing that there was a 0.6% CFR for a time forgetting the lag in deaths. Now, based on official numbers only from PCR testing, their PCR has slowly grown to almost 2.2%. But again the explosive outbreak that happened may have meant many people got it without knowing it.

Taiwan is also another case study who has managed to be scrupulous with screening and testing to the point that they were barely affected and are harder to judge because of their lower numbers, just six deaths out of 398 cases (1.5% CFR). But an undue number of those are young travellers and tourists. It has never really broken out in the population to get a better cross-section.

Each situation that you could singularly quote has its own parameters, history, idiosyncrasies and quirks. Using any single one is not enough to mean anything for the whole. They need to be all taken in to make any definitive calls.