Sir Peter is Te Muri Crossing cocktail party guest of honour

Becoming Wise Before the Event: Despite now experiencing 17 pandemics—and 6 of those since 2002—the world was found to be pitifully ill-prepared for when, with predictable unpredictability, this current pandemic manifested. Preparing for the potentially far-deadlier effects of anthropogenic global heating, as well as being an inescapable existential imperative, can, simultaneously, better equip humanity to respond to epidemics, and prevent more becoming pandemics. Here, the initially all-but-imperceptible case-infection rates displayed for India and Indonesia were grave indicators of governments in desperate denial of their countries’ now-destined roles in the raging pandemic—and early exemplar Singapore demonstrates the ruinous consequences of neglecting its most vulnerable workers. Nigeria, however, scams all 207 million of its citizens, by testing fewer than 1% of them, thus hiding the appalling impact of the pandemic there. Australia long-since lost her battle to keep within cooee of covid-19-test-kit-exporter extraordinaire South Korea’s standout response. Aotearoa, meantime, has flat-lined in a good way. All countries’ infection rates are under-reported, some because a few cases, particularly early in the pandemic, are misdiagnosed, but in other countries monstrously, due to dysfunction and/or lack of transparency. The diameter of each line on this graph is proportional to the country’s population. graph Mahurangi Magazine | data Our World in Data 16 November 2020

Salutary Lesson in Seasonal Influenza: Physical distancing has also paid dividends in reducing the annual toll extracted by flu that, despite its deadliness, is treated as an inconvenience rather than the killer it is, particularly of the very young, the elderly, and the pregnant—“On average, approximately 400 deaths are attributed to influenza and its complications annually.” covid-19 provided the opportunity to begin collecting flu-symptom data earlier than was done 2018–2019. graph Department of Health Australia | Ministry of Health Aotearoa | labels Mahurangi Magazine

New Zealand’s Altered Future: Moving nine days faster than Ireland, and more emphatically physically distancing, Aotearoa has avoided Ireland’s near vertical trajectory—until the middle of May—of reported covid-19 cases. Ireland’s prime minister then donning his sweats was perhaps great optics, but responding to, for example, fellow general practitioner Dr Marcus de Brun, or to nursing-home representatives more than seven weeks earlier, would have constituted a far more heroic course of action. Aotearoa, for its own survival, now needs to convince the world to alter its determinedly fossil-fuelled future. chart New Zealand Geographic | Te Pūnaha Matatini