New magic, old magic

I was listening to a podcast on "consciousness", as in the way that we all believe ourselves conscious, and how in different levels of complex animals that we would also assume that there is a degree of consciousness. But at some point of lower level organism you'd think that there would be a point where there is no light of consciousness, like a worm, perhaps which has senses but is automatic in its responses. We lack the ability to put ourselves in the mind of another organism so never really know, say, cat consciousness but for what we observe and intuit from the contemptuous or smug cat faces and expressions we see. To me it begs the question a little because while we may be able to put ourselves in another human's shoes, we can't really know their mind.  

In the brainspace of impossible hypotheticals, we have the thought experiment of contemplating what it's like to be in someone else's head. Why they react or cannot tame their feelings, while they are like the like the anthropomorphic scorpion on the anthropomorphic frog stinging away to their own demise or detriment.

But I digress, what I wanted to talk about was magical thinking. It is probably possible to think that you roughly know how another person thinks, or why another person think it without the fully experiencing their minds. Flicking our minds into the medieval minds we assume that the they were immersed in the magic potential latent in the world, of gods, spirits, miracles, blessings and curses. In magic there is a certainty, a black-and-whiteness: the wicked are cursed; sins stain; there is a divine order; and the pious will win in the end. Such thinking is a salve to the uncertainty and grey that plague the objective world. 

If I were to speculate, I would say as the Enlightenment drained this old magic from the world a new magic took its place, and for the exact same reason: without the old magic giving us certainty and confidence, we would have been left without that special something to make the uncertainties of life bearable. 

The magical mantra of the moment is, of course, "vaccine". Where in the Grimms tales there were witches and wizards with their spells, nowadays we have things like vaccines, which regardless of how they are explained to people, are always trapped by the common conception of  a magic protective charm that makes you able to walk through a viral storm unharmed. Because of the pervasiveness of the disease and also the fractiousness of the community vaccination effort, their weaknesses and side effects, waning immunity and "breakthrough infections" have become headline news. But the vaccines do not give you a force field aura: they're just a drug that stimulates the body in particular ways, how your body reacts is not guaranteed. 

The last phase of the trials for Pfizer's vaccine had the headlines showing over 90% effectiveness against symptomatic infection, an astonishing headline which remains largely true. But that huge news still has the inverse fact latent: For every 10 people unvaccinated who would develop symptomatic infection, there would still be one vaccinated for every similar ten vaccinated people who would get symptomatic infection, and probably one or more with asymptomatic infection. This is to say, a vaccine in a league of its own was still expected to have recipients who could become symptomatic and infectious. Even after waning, and for new variants, it is probably though as effective as many of the other vaccines that are given to us, if it were taken by the most of the community.

Which is where we come to the thorny topic of mandates, which I would presume most administrators and officials probably wouldn't want to use. The magical view of vaccines sometimes gets in the way of mandates, but only because of magical thinking. This video by JP Sears, for which he argues against restrictions on the unvaccinated is latent with the magic. The strawman is that vaccines are 100% effective so what do the vaccinated have to worry about the unvaccinated, if the vulnerable are all vaxxed, and why compel or exclude those who choose not to? 

Many of the vulnerable people who have done the right thing and got vaccinated also are the ones who the vaccine may have less protective power. In a relatively unvaccinated community, they might still die at a high rate (though lower than without the vaccine). All it might take is for them to have poorer sleep and a period of lower immunity. Vaccines are both for individual protection as well as community protection, yet most of the antivaxx calculations emphasise the individual risks and benefits, which is understandable, and dismiss or ignore that it is a public good to have wide protection for all of society, and depending on the needs of the society it might encourage it in different ways. 

There is a similar magic in natural immunity, which does bestow immunity to future infection and thus could be seen similarly to a vaccination, with the proviso that one is ultimately not permanently harmed by their infection (and hopefully nor others by their onward transmission of the virus). Again the magical thinking comes into it, the aura of protection and the need for nothing more. 

But the magical thinking about the vaccine and natural immunity, and similar thinking about "young", "healthy" and "vulnerable" are nice to simplify the world. It doesn't take much for the world to shatter that with young people hospitalised by the virus, reinfection and breakthrough infections. None of these phenomena should be remarkable except if one misapprehends how things happen with magical thinking. The fact of breakthrough infections were literally printed on the box when the phase three trials were run. Reinfection is no surprise - some viruses you only get once but others, especially respiratory viruses, like to visit again and again. Some people are "unluckier" with it, sometimes due to innate factors, sometimes circumstantial factors, sometimes with behavioral factors. Sometimes any one kind of factor (for example, an innate risk towards ACE2 receptor targeting viruses) might overcome all circumstantial factors (low inoculum of virus, generally healthy) and behavioral factors (wearing a mask, generally socially distancing). There is plenty of grey to cause a decent number of exceptional cases when something is happening across vast swaths of the population.

The failure of reason

t has been often said that the very intelligent are not immune to bad ideas, often because they underestimate the powers of their own biases and often cannot step back. The US Senate and Congress are full, both sides, with bad faith actors. They are tribal and toe party lines without without much reason, or if so, it's with forced reason. There are a few who forcefully show reason, often forcefully in opposite directions, and Rand Paul, the Republican Senator for Kentucky, is one of those.

For those that don't know, he is the son of another senator, Ron Paul, who as a maverick independent ran for President on several occasions, but as an outsider to the Republican establishment failed, a bit like a libertarian Bernie Sanders but not getting quite so close. The son thinks closer to Republican orthodoxy and ran, like his dad, for the Republican nomination in 2016, which was when Trump smudged out the opposition to be the contender and eventual president.

Anyway, he is one that can put a thought or more together and here I give you a smart man with wrong ideas. (1) Rand Paul Attacks Dr. Fauci (Again) Over Vaccines, Covid Mandates - YouTube

I like smart people who disagree with me because it is an interesting mental challenge which forces you to ask yourself how entrenched are your own biases are, or whether it is reason or truth that makes their words have power. He is a convincing speaker.

But I would still argue, despite his conviction, that his reason is more a product of his biases. Let's look:

The opening has him saying that the US vaccination situation is not perilously placed because "over 90% of people over 65% are vaccinated". To be clear, the United States has pretty much hit its ceiling for willing recipients and resorting to mandates and they're not that far along. For perspective as of today, 65% of the whole US population has at least partially vaccinated (compared with 72% for NZ) with 56% fully vaccinated (compared with 52% in NZ), but New Zealand is still steaming along! We'll probably pass them for double within the next week. 

But does he not have a point: Covid-19 is particularly harsh on those 65 and older, and it has long been a suggested strategy that we somehow shield the old and let the young go about their lives, and vaccination should be that shield. And this fits a very libertarian view of the world that has a lot of merit, that people should make the choices that suit them: Young people want to play. Old people should hunker down. And with a much vaunted highly effective vaccine the libertarians, even the circumspect ones, would want to return to their principles.

Except you can't and the representative for Kentucky should know that almost 25% of their death toll for the duration of the pandemic has been in the last two and half months, when the majority of the vaccinations in his low vaccination state have already had plenty of opportunities to vaccinate. 

The difference of course is in the herd immunity concept, and that is where the libertarian bias is exposed. Vaccination, even before Covid, was not just for individual protection but to have a community protection, because even if the elderly are vaccinated, they will still be vulnerable, albeit much less so. The probability of them meeting this virus when their immune system is low is a function of their environmental level of protection, the people around them. And while kids have the lowest risk, they are the grandchildren who spend time with their elders. And this is the aside because age is only one aspect of risk. 

Paul thus overstates the personal responsibility that in economic terms would be reasonably rational and applies it to pandemic public health. But community responsibility has little part in his consideration - it has a whiff of socialism and collectivism and the greater good. These would not be part of this speech.

The part about multiclonal antibodies has more than a trace of bad faith. The treatment costs about $2000 compared to over $20 for a Covid jab, and was in limited supply, bankrolled by the Federal Government which pre-ordered it, and best used in the early stages of the condition when the virus, rather than the body's response to it, can be curbed. Public health is caught in this dilemma that any treatment detracts from the push for vaccination, but Paul is also one for autonomy and choice of healthcare and resents people not having the choice. The central government control is something that chaffs a libertarian; in New Zealand we have a similar situation with regard to Pharmac which allows medicines to be purchased by the state and subsidised for use in public health services. 

His discussion about masks could be more relevant. There is no doubt that there are masks of differing effectiveness, and in the situation he specifies you would hope that the elderly positive case was in hospital for care, in the usual isolation practiced; and if not, that all the precautions and guidance for care made. But any mask, especially for the infected is better than no mask. And almost any mask in a poorly ventilated room over a long enough time will fail. In the end, it's a matter of probabilities. When we go walking, we generally wear cloth masks, but more as a consideration for others. But if I go to the supermarket, I'll wear a surgical mask. Now that the pandemic in Auckland is getting a bit worse, I think we'll upgrade to N95 if they are available. Really the argument is really just picking a fight with his nemesis "Dr Fauci".

His final argument seems a strawman. Or a couple of strawmen. The idea of targeting the vaccine in the US is not an issue unless he is suggesting what he would never suggest: the mandatory vaccination of the elderly. But that never would be more reasonable to him than the mandatory vaccination of children as part of a childhood vaccination. He is not suggesting forcing the unvaccinated elderly to get the jab. His argument about doing antibody tests prior to getting vaccination seems reasonable except for the fact that it again puts up more drag and resistance to the vaccination campaign, and thus the community protection. And how many pre-existing antibodies are enough? As was found early in the pandemic, asymptomatic infection is reasonably common, which might cause a very mild immune response but perhaps detectable antibodies. 

To be clear, I think if someone can prove their previous infection and antibodies to it, which is probably something becoming more commonly done and more feasible to do, I'd say let them have an immunity passport but it should also be understood as having an expiry. 

The final conclusion is where the bias, which is his pre-existing lens for which all of public health is understood comes out: individual responsibility; personal choice is king; dissension should be encouraged. In most contexts I agree, except for a time when we should be pulling together like now.

A final note: I'm not sure how I feel yet about the YouTube, Twitter and Facebook censorship of "misinformation". I think like all things it is something that is easier said than done, and almost any rule for it is likely to have unintended consequences, or require a byzantine system that will certainly seem unfair to some. Right now the by-catch of reasonable discussion is getting hit to the extent of exacerbating the sense of an authoritarian plot.

Anyway, I enjoy listening to Rand Paul even if he cannot get down from his a priori views.

Certitude, part 2

In my previous posts I have thought aloud about two phenomena: the over-emphasis of single or few data points; and then in the latter post talking about how certain data points (to me) have a certain invalidating power over the explanations often given by the data points gave birth to conspiracy theories. 

At the heart of it is, and this is the amateur non-well-read thinker understanding, are two engines to the variance in our understandings of how things are, and the departure from a common truth. These engines are attribution and the desire for narrative. 

Attribution is the explanation or cause you assign to something, for example, I might attribute my car crash to others cars parked too close together blocking my view of oncoming traffic on a difficult corner, rather than my approach to difficult corners that might inevitably lead to a crash. The problem with attribution is that it is prone to our cognitive biases. When we already have a generalisation about a category of things, we notice when things prove it and ignore those that don't fit the generalisation, even if the contrary examples are more plentiful (i.e. confirmation bias).

The desire for a narrative is that a stories that these explanations weave together to make the world understandable. The crash might be part of my narrative of being unlucky in everything; or a world-against-me, "people should learn to park" narrative. 

Conspiracy theories are the latent super-narratives linking all sorts of smaller narratives together. For example, in our current pandemic there is:

• Bill Gates wants to depopulate the world and inject microchips in people.  
• The virus was man-made and funded by the US government in the lab in China. Dr Fauci knows everything but can't reveal his complicity. The Chinese deliberately released the virus.
• The virus is not as bad as people mention and only kills those "on death's door", or have co-morbidities and would die anyway. Normal people have sufficient natural immunity to resist it.
• Big Pharma are suppressing simple cures to this virus and has bought out government and public health officials. The medical professionals are all in on in and profiting from it, claiming money for each "covid" death.
• The vaccine is ineffective and more dangerous than they want you to know but they are committed to it and using it to create a system to restrict freedom of speech and movement from their enemies.
• ...

Some people believe in none, one, some or all of these narratives, and when a new event or data point comes along it could be fit into any one of these, even if it contradicts another that may be simultaneously held. When a fully vaccinated person dies with or of Covid, which is fully expected to happen, especially in the older age group, it fits the narrative of vaccination being ineffective. When a recently vaccinated person dies, as they may when 9-10 people die each day in a given year and most of the population is getting two jabs this year. 

(Coincidentally NZ's excess deaths for 2021 might be the best evidence for whether vaccinating the whole country with Pfizer has a disproportionate death rate than the disease, which I would already say is unlikely. In many countries, doubters could say that vaccination deaths are covered up in the Covid numbers, or that excess deaths in 2021 not reported officially as Covid deaths are vaccination-related. 2021, while not over yet, in NZ would be expected to have an almost insignificant number of actual Covid deaths and there would be room to analyse whether a year where between 50%-90% of the population being fully vaccinated without widespread community transmission to confound the figures.)

There can be a lot of contradictions between the narratives we believe. Often we have a narrative of ourselves and one for the world and the data points are attributed in different ways if something happens to oneself versus if it is seen in others. An example given would be something like "I was speeding because I had something urgent to do and it won't hurt anyone" while others "are speeding because they are young/female/Polynesian/on drugs/have toxic masculinity and they'll crash and kill someone". The contradiction between the narrative for own choices and life and the narrative you understand for the world and for others do not necessarily have to correspond. There are funny examples of American politicians trying to refute accusations of sexism by saying that they couldn't possibly be sexist when they have a daughter, wife and mother. There are those that say they have no racist or homophobic inclinations by saying "some of my best friends are (fill in the gap)". Again, that's a matter of attribution. Not many people have a narrative that they themselves are a bad person, so when critical things are said, there is an immediate attribution for the criticism: the speaker doesn't like me; the speaker does has questionable judgement, etc. Of course, there are people who take criticism well - and their narrative might be as a humble learner in life, or a "growth mindset" individual. 

Some people are motivated enough to go in front of a building in London where Bill Gates was having a meeting and chant: "Arrest Bill Gates". It is rather extraordinary the dehumanising power of narrative when it comes to someone who does fit the mould of a philanthropist. He has views on climate change and poverty and had devoted a lot of time and money to try and make the world a better place. He does believe the global population is high and, for humanity's sake, should be restrained in some way as he said in a famous 2010 TED talk. There is a much quoted line about 4 minutes in: "First, we've got population. The world today has 6.8 billion people. That's headed up to about nine billion. Now, if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower that by, perhaps, 10 or 15 percent," which those with a conspiratorial narrative read as a reduction of the current population. The quote usually does not include what he said immediately after: "But there, we see an increase of about 1.3." (1.3, indicating it would be x1.3 its current size, 30% growth overall.) The point being that he would propose growth not to be to 9 billion but perhaps 8.3 billion, not as the selective quoting suggests of reducing the current population by 10 or 15 percent by vaccines. Raising vaccinations as a way to arrest population growth, though not spelled out, is because there is a correlation between infant mortality and having more children per person. Reducing the infant deaths increases the investment results in fewer children, greater investment in the smaller number and smaller families.  

The irony is that the funny not-so-secret plot to depopulate the world by vaccinations would work if you want a virulent virus run rampant, rather than fund the production of vaccines to blunt it, which Gates did, or if even the vaccines are meant to be some secret death sterilising "death chemicals" to depopulate, you'd charitably fund them to get to more than 2% of Africa and a still low rate in India and other countries. You wouldn't want India to be vaccinating with its own vaccine using very different technology. Or China to be using its own technology and not the Bill Gates sterilising death chemical. And you wouldn't want the wealthy elite to be the main recipients of vaccines, with targeted disinformation discouraging minorities and the poor from getting vaccinated. 

There is so much dissonance in this yet so much certitude in the narrative that force-fits the data point pieces as data points with questionable attribution. We are generally blind to our own cognitive biases, but narratives are easier to elicit. Ask anyone: "Why are successful/unsuccessful?" "Why are you healthy/unhealthy?" for one's own narratives. Generally, people will resolve this to their own attributes and habits and not the circumstances and environmental variables. Also ask them: "Why is the country going well/going to hell?" "Why is there so much conflict in the world/the world becoming more peaceful?" and you'll maybe get a narrative about the corruption of the elite; capitalism; the stimulation of technology; globalism; etc. but the world and the country are infinitely complicated systems. In many narratives there is some explanatory power over the cases and the data points, but nothing can really wrap things up in an explanation.

Power to the people

The current limbo phase of the Delta lockdown has had a lot of twists and turns, which for an Auckland population that is still largely housebound, the frustration is showing. One constellation of concerns is around "gangs": Pre-lockdown there was the controversy of a gang receiving government funding for drug rehabilitation services; more recently there have been cases within gangs, a gang funeral; rumours of large parties under lockdown; a stowaway gangster in the back of a freight lorry going over the Auckland boundary; Brian Tāmaki leading a lockdown protest in the Domain with bikers; and then the news that Destiny Church received lockdown support funding. It isn't a surprise that the repressed conservative parts of the population have a new fire in the belly, and the outrage machines are swinging back into action. The most recent pressure has been that Labour has not been forceful with the gangs.

Now perhaps I should give two caveats to what I'll say next: (1) I don't know anything about gangs; (2) I can assume that most of those who comment on gangs don't know anything about gangs. My thoughts are musings and you can feel free to ignore, but if you do, please also ignore the musings of most that go around musing.

Firstly, I'd like to make a plaintive call against the abuse of language that goes into the commentary on the topic. Gangs are usually said and even mentally apprehended as a monolith. This kind of sloppy language use I think leads to very black and white thinking which is unhelpful. There are many different gangs, many their own histories, organisational structures, degrees of criminal involvement and so forth. This is not to say that one needs to know these things to talk about gangs - just that it is important to view them as a diverse group.

Gangs in New Zealand, and probably, all around the world are products of exclusion and opposition, but also safety and being part of a group. Gang formation, I would hazard a guess, is a fairly natural social response that has been seen in a wide variety of cultural and demographic groups, from Japan, to South America, to Europe to Polynesia. I would further guess that there will always be gangs when there have been exclusionary forces, whether it be the historic or structural racism, policies that put more of them in jail, immigration policies against people from the Pacific islands, constant reinforcement of negative stereotyping in the media, or profiling by the police, as well as general deprivation, excluding some from a fair economic part of the pie. 

The choice that the authorities have is to either to continue to increase the exclusion, call for toughness to smash the gangs; or to find ways to increase the rapprochement between the two sides, reduce the exclusionary factors and stance of authorities, while still ensuring law and order. 

The former approach is basically either an "eternal war" approach. The exclusionary force can only lead to a greater resistance. Only a technological authoritarian society (think Mainland China) could stomp out these organisations, but it would still lead to a mass of disenfranchised, antisocial individuals. It would be a losing game for a society unless it is accompanied by a huge effort to re-incorporate them in with dignity (jobs and resources).

The latter approach is often the politically unpalatable one: rapprochement involves understanding and cooperation with those who are often public enemies. Even for the "enemy"-side of the equation this is a difficult political move internally. They have to collaborate with the authorities. That is not to say that the current government is far along this path, but it would seem to be the approach. 

The latter is also a tightrope and you can see similar kinds of attempting to pull together in history: Sinn Fein and the British Government (which can be considered successful), and the PLA and the Israeli government (which was not). In any case, there is an importance in recognising and respecting the other. Often political forces preclude it.

The humorous expectation that gangs, whatever patch they be, would follow lock-step with the democratically elected elite to deal with Covid-19 was not ever going to be a thing, despite the hope that we could be a team of five million. Firstly, without Covid support for the gangs directly (which I assume has not happened and would have been political suicide), the gangs would have no money to support themselves so forget about drugs not being sold, if not because they are hugely profitable, then because they would not be able to fund their organisation. Though not gang-related, the criticism of Brian Tāmaki's Destiny Church of taking government support in the weeks before having an anti-lockdown protest are also a bit facile for the same reason. 

One of the interesting underlying assumptions underneath a lot of the conservative reasoning is also the belief in a Leviathan state force and power to oversee the implementation of policy. Even though I do not like the man, Brian Tāmaki, and the presumably the gang-leaders, they are all people with unofficial constituencies. Judith Collins thoughts that she would have prevented Brian from having his day in the sun is interesting. I am interested what that would have looked like when he insisted on going, or if the Bishop were arrested in front of his mass. Destiny is pretty disciplined with its flock, but they were not the only ones at the protest.

Even in non-democratic societies, past and present, ruling groups have worked directly and indirectly with formal and informal power holders in society. For a society to thrive and be (more or less) unified is its ability to balance its different factions' views and needs.

But what about those other data points...

When it comes to the so-called conspiracy theories, they often focus on the conclusions drawn from some explanations of certain data points. The explanations for individual data points may be separately logical, or even collectively logical, or not logical at all. But being logical, after all, doesn't mean something is true: it just means with the propositions and assumptions given that something ought to be right or to have happened. For example, the idea that Covid-19 pandemic as a globalist, Agenda 21 depopulation plan, New World Order, Great Reset, fascist control grab while also a PsyOps ploy does have meaningful events and data points to support it: Agenda 21 is a real thing, after all. 

But the obsession with certain data points is often with ignorance and blindness of others. When I first heard about the idea of a "plandemic" my initial thought was that the usual "conspiracy theory" smell test was failed; that is, it would require too many people to be in on the "plan" for it to work and improbable that no-one would fall out of line. Some world leaders, especially the Trumpy kind, could do at a whim. But that was just a gut feeling. The data point for me that indicated that the virus was very real and there was no "plan" (as the conspiracy theory claims) was China, and to a degree also Iran. 

The "plan" would have presumed that China decided to be the sacrificial lamb taking all the risk for a global power play that it was not a master of; it would have it inflicting a savage economical bodyblow upon itself, not to mention the shame that it has accrued through this whole chapter by those who claim it was the China virus. Their government is venal and paranoid and neither of these make sense. Even though there are those who would claim that Western governments might use this pandemic as a further control on their own populations, China does not need to use any artifice to control things further. In its crackdowns, it doesn't expend much creative energy at all, because it doesn't need to. It knew more about the virus sooner than any other country and slammed its own economy shut scrambling to suppress what it knew to be a massive threat. I have heard some speculate that it was an elaborate ruse to get the virus to its economic rivals where it would certainly flourish uncontrolled and crush the US, but there was no certainty that it would successfully get out, or be allowed in. Iran is pretty much the same. It had no realistic reason to play ball but still acted as if the virus was real and that measures had to be taken - probably because it was and they had to be.

The same analysis works for the conspiratorial thinkings around Ivermectin and its predecessor hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) is similar. The line was that government and public health officials were in the pay of Pfizer and other vaccine companies, let's just call them Big Pharma even though it's sloppy shorthand, blocking the off-patent cheap drug in favour of the expensive vaccines. In a previous post, I mentioned that this was a logical, plausible thesis - but that doesn't mean that it is actually is true. The invalidating data point is again China, and Iran, and Russia and well any country that does not get its vaccines from Big Pharma of which there are many. 

Why do these invalidate the conspiracy theory and, by extension, the belief in these drugs' effectiveness? China's vaccine producer is government-owned and is producing and injecting its citizenry with the vaccine for free, and has expended a lot of resources in incentives for it. There is no profit in this venture. Similar to Oceania, they have very strict controls of people into and out of the country with quarantine facilities, and even recently spent hundreds of millions on bespoke quarantine facilities for international visitors. Which has been a huge capital cost and the system itself is an impediment to commerce and trade. Though domestic tourism is far bigger, the border control has crippled its international tourism industry. This is all significant because if there were an effective therapeutic drug that works as prophylaxis and a treatment, off-patent so could be mass produced in a single super-factory and be given to the masses, it would have saved the state a huge expense and economic disadvantage had there been drugs that worked. In fact, at a time when the United States and Europe are back economically functioning and other crises are on the horizon (fuel shortages, inflation) it would be foolish not to use them if they had tested them. HCQ was tested very early on in China and deemed not to have any significant effect. I am not sure about Ivermectin but chances are that it had been, too. It had no vested interests against what are simple trials to do. China might not have had regular outbreaks in the past but they do now and had plenty of returning Chinese travelers and MIQ staff to implement small scale tests to lead onto larger scale tests. Needless to say Iran and Russia would be no different, and both have had horrendous outbreaks to throw the kitchen sink with, including the "out there" speculative drugs and none of these countries are entangled with Big Pharma like the doubters would have us believe our own public health and government staff have been corrupted.

Anyway. Auckland has endured another tedious week and there is now a simmering dissatisfaction with how elements of society are seen as contributing to the very long tail of this outbreak. I would like to make a standalone blog on this later.

Running has some data points and they have been good of late for me. I ran 30km for the first time in two months today with no niggles or sensations from old injuries. I've run some really fast training sessions which put me on track with some of my 2019 times, and despite the hiccups, I will almost certainly make it to 3000km for the year, which was my goal in the beginning. Of course, I'm running for no real goal now because all the bets are off when there will be another event. Auckland Marathon has been postponed. I have only one registered event that I'm waiting for (Tāmaki Half Marathon) but with my fitness solid and my injuries and niggles silenced I'm probably going to run any one of the events that will be the first to be approved under whatever regime we are under after this Level 3. I'm so glad I got in the Ōrewa half and though it was a disaster, the Onehunga half, before the outbreak.