Time To Flush The Free-Dumpers

by Phil Ossifer

We are living in extraordinary times and never before has that word extraordinary been so appropriate.

Unusual compromises have to be made just to simply get through each day. For example, in order to enjoy a nearly normal life we have to get vaccinated against a nasty virus that has found its way into our world and in most enclosed public spaces we need to wear a mask. For a lot of the time recently we have had to avoid travel other than that which was truly necessary and some people have had to be put into quarantine.

Some people are claiming we have been illegally imprisoned by the Government when under lockdown and that we are being forced to get a vaccination to do what we consider normal things. But then, as I said before, these are truly extraordinary times and extraordinary times sometimes call for extraordinary measures. However I reject entirely that the lockdowns we have been in are a form of illegal imprisonment and I also contend that we are not being forcibly vaccinated.

We are being encouraged to vaccinate for the safety of ourselves and that of the majority of us. Furthermore in order to stop having further lockdowns the Government has made vaccination a requirement for taking part in recreational gatherings. But this is no different from what is being required across most of the world at this time.

Governments do not enter into these sorts of arrangements without good reason. The last time we had a virus that spread as widely and as quickly as this one, was over 100 years ago. That was the H1N1 Influenza Pandemic or to give it it's more poetic name whimsical, although inaccurate name, he Spanish Flu. It was so named because the King of Spain contracted it, but my research suggests that it actually originated in the USA (Kansas to be precise).

Nobody alive today has any first hand recollection of what it was like living alongside that virus. We only know of it through what was recorded in our histories or told to us many years ago by those who we were around in those times.

What we do know is that it was very infectious and easily spread from person to person. It was first seen in early 1918 and arrived in New Zealand in October 1918 when our armed forces returned from WWI. Troops were likely to have been infected due to their poor health after several years spent in poor conditions and with poor nutrition. Several weeks travelling on a boat in proximity to one another, provided an opportunity for those who were carrying the virus to unwittingly pass it on to their fellow passengers. It eventually killed 8573 New Zealanders and it is estimated that between 17 and 59 million died worldwide. Some say that due to poor record keeping that number might actually have been as many as 100 million worldwide. which makes it sound a lot more serious than Covid 19,which has so far only been responsible for less than 5.5 million deaths worldwide But a hundred years ago we were poorly equipped to deal with a pandemic.

The only mass communication tool we had was the newspapers. In New Zealand we didn't have radio until three years later and we had to wait another thirty years before television came to our shores, so getting the message out to people to stay indoors or wear masks when they went out would have been very "hit and miss". Consequently, in the early stages the virus was able to spread with impunity throughout the community and get a real head start on any attempts to confine it. However, attempts were made to rein the disease in and by the middle of November when it was at its worst and shops, offices and factories were having to close due to insufficient healthy staff to operate them, the Government of the day shut down all the schools, hotels and theatres for two or three weeks. Shipping came to a halt, and there were shortages of basic supplies, like flour and coal. Sound familiar?

But these measures must have had an effect because by December 1918, it was pretty much over.

Today we are fortunate to have radio, television and the Internet for communicating en masse and in New Zealand we have also been lucky to have a Government that has put people before dollars from the very beginning and erred on the side of caution for the most part. Thus, at the time of writing, and despite having had the virus in our country for almost two years, we have only had 48 deaths and around thirteen and a half thousand cases in all.

So those people who are continually carping about "lockdown woes" should stop whingeing and count their blessings. If they had been alive in 1918 they would have really had something to whinge about. They don't know how lucky they are (sorry Fred Dagg). They have been protected from the worst of this very nasty virus which, without quarantines and other restrictions, can spread like fire on a paddock of gorse. The fact that it has been so much less deadly over here is no accident. It is undoubtedly due to the approach our Government has taken at no small risk to itself, politically. Had the National Party (or God forbid, the ACT Party) been in control we would have had many thousands of deaths by now and certainly far more than we did in 1918. Make no mistake; this virus is much worse than the Spanish Flu because unlike that virus, this one has been spreading very rapidly and through populations that are far healthier than those of a hundred years ago. Our Opposition parties have been whining about an economic Armageddon which they have been predicting as a result of our lockdowns and which by the way, has not occurred) instead of being concerned about the lives of the voters. I hope the voters remember this when next they go to the polls. Just think; had either of those two parties been in power over this time, you might not have been alive to cast your vote at the next election. Why would you want to vote for a party that cares more about money than your well-being?

Their "concern" for the economy rings hollow when you consider how unhealthy the economy would be with a health system overburdened with tens of thousands of Covid cases and most workplaces having to close down due to a serious lack of staff to operate them.

However the attitude of the Opposition parties pales into insignificance when it is compared with that of the Anti Vax/tinfoil hat brigade. These people seem to think of themselves as freedom fighters. Many have dubbed them Freedumbers, which is probably apt due to their naive acceptance of the latest Conspiracy Theories doing the rounds. They really are thick to imagine that this entire virus could be a worldwide hoax perpetrated by a bunch of shadowy figures hiding behind the Democratic and the Despotic Governments of the world. The very idea that the likes of China, the USA, the UK, New Zealand, Australia, Russia and North Korea would all work together on ANYTHING AT ALL is ridiculous in itself. Then when you factor in the number of people that would have to be in on this jolly jape, you can see that it would be the world's worst kept secret and there would be absolutely no show of keeping it under wraps with so many people in on it. Then if you factor in all the millions of actors who would need to be pretending to get sick and die and who could not reappear again for fear of giving the game away, and you begin to grasp the scale of this stupidity.

However what is even more disturbing is that the Anti Vaxxers have among their numbers, some much more troubled people who don't actually seem to know or be able to express exactly what it is they are demonstrating about and who run around with nooses (to hang the PM, apparently) and claim to be a marginilised minority group. Some are attempting to draw parallels with the medical experiments of the Third Reich, which I find not only historically inaccurate, but also terribly offensive.

They ought to try being black, or gay, or disabled or Jewish in the 1930s or 40s before they start whining about THEIR situation. They also ought to try time-travelling back to 1918 and see how they would have coped there.

They say that they will not be forcibly vaccinated, and yet nobody is doing that to them. Sure, they are not permitted to do a lot of things that the rest of us (that tiny 90+% of us ) who have chosen to be vaccinated can do. But, hey, this democracy which they claim we no longer have works on the principle that all democracies do; namely that the majority carries the vote and the majority of us support the actions of the Government for the most part.

Having to be vaccinated before undertaking international travel is nothing new. When I went abroad as a young man in the early 1970s we all had to be vaccinated for cholera and smallpox even just to go to Europe and USA and that smallpox one was a right bastard. Most of us got very sick with that one, unlike the largely mild and in many cases non-existent reactions to the Pfizer vaccine. But we simply got on with it, because without proof of our vaccination on our passports we would not have been granted visas to enter those countries.

The anti vaxxers chose to avoid the vaccine and they knew what would happen if they did. They had a choice and they made it, and yet because they don't like the consequences of their choice they want to rein in our freedoms to suit them. That ain't democracy so perhaps they would be better living in a place that has no democracy. Oh, wait a minute, those places also have restrictions upon those who don't want to be a part of the solution, and would rather be a part of the problem.

Do they think they have the right to gather at large super spreader events and then bowl back into the enclosed spaces that the rest of us should be able to feel relatively safe in? Apparently .

I actually don't have no problem with someone making a choice to not be vaccinated, as long as they accept the limitations that might bring for them and acknowledge the rights of the rest of us. If they don't want to take measures to keep us safe, then that is their choice, but they need to stop claiming martyrdom because they chose their path fully cognisant of where it would lead.

Freedom fighters indeed! These people are the enemies of freedom. If you ask me, they should be called Free-Dumpers because most of them are full of shit.