Gisborne Herald
  • Gisborne Herald Home
  • Latest news
  • Business
  • Lifestyle
  • Sport

Subscriptions

  • Herald Premium
  • Viva Premium
  • The Listener
  • BusinessDesk

Sections

  • Latest news
  • On The Up
  • Business
  • Lifestyle
  • Sport

Locations

  • Gisborne
  • Bay of Plenty
  • Hawke's Bay

Media

  • Today's Paper - E-Editions
  • Photo sales
  • Classifieds

Weather

  • Gisborne

NZME Network

  • Advertise with NZME
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • BusinessDesk
  • Newstalk ZB
  • Sunlive
  • ZM
  • The Hits
  • Coast
  • Radio Hauraki
  • The Alternative Commentary Collective
  • Gold
  • Flava
  • iHeart Radio
  • Hokonui
  • Radio Wanaka
  • iHeartCountry New Zealand
  • Restaurant Hub
  • NZME Events

SubscribeSign In
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Home / Gisborne Herald / Opinion

From Uncle Craig’s rocking chair . . .

Gisborne Herald
22 Apr, 2023 12:42 PMQuick Read

Subscribe to listen

Access to Herald Premium articles require a Premium subscription. Subscribe now to listen.
Already a subscriber?  Sign in here

Listening to articles is free for open-access content—explore other articles or learn more about text-to-speech.
‌
Save

    Share this article

Craig Bauld

Craig Bauld

Opinion

by Craig Bauld

So, have we reached the stage yet where we can discuss Covid like grown-up people? Can we consider the official figures?

According to MoH statistics, 90.2 percent of NZers got vaxxed, 9.8 percent didn’t. Call it 90 percent/10 percent, close enough.

2700 have died so far, of Covid or with Covid as a prime underlying factor. Tens of thousands hospitalised, same qualifiers.

That’s over three years. Few in the first year or two because we were locked down, but that’s just a delaying action, death tends to catch up with us oldies in the end — it got the most frail-aged among us in a bit of a bump more recently.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Also according to official statistics, flu kills about 500 a year and always has. But that’s just the direct figures, if you add the “or as an underlying cause where flu among the elderly led to pneumonia, etc,” then over three years you get about — um — 2700 deaths.

(Please don’t take the mickey out of media and politicians who were almost hysterical in their insistence that “Covid is NOT just another flu”)

But hey, it doesn’t really matter if 2700 people died at least partly because of Covid, or that tens of thousands ended up in hospital, because they were all unvaxxed! It was their own stupid fault.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Well, they must have been unvaxxed. Our very own editor assured us, over and over, day after day, that Jacinda was the only source of truth, the vaccine was not only safe, it was “highly effective”. And if Craig Bauld questioned it, that’s OK, don’t print it, obvious “misinformation”.

Getting vaxxed protected us from severe illness, hospitalisation, and death.

Hell, of course it did! Why else would we shut down our economy, destroy businesses, sack unvaxxed people from their jobs, cancel them from their clubs and social outlets? We were saving our children! You know, children, the ones who were never affected by Covid in the first place. Of course getting vaxxed saved thousands of lives, why else would we spend $60 billion on it?

So, obviously, the 2700 dead, they were all unvaxxed. And the hospitalised, they were all unvaxxed. Because the vaccine protected us, right? It was “highly effective”.

OK, maybe not every single one. Can’t really expect the vaccine to be as effective as for polio, or measles, or mumps, or chicken pox. There could be a few exceptions, maybe it was just most of them. Yes, that makes sense, the vaccine protected most of us. So probably only 2500 of the dead were unvaxxed. Or maybe 2000. Or 1500. Or 1000. Crikey, if it was fewer than 1000, that would make the “highly effective” vaccine the joke of the century!

Never mind, easy to prove, we’ll just ask for the official figures. How many of the dead were unvaxxed? What percentage of the hospitalised were unvaxxed? Simple, absolute proof.

Big Surprise! They won’t tell you. They’ll tell you how many were Maori, Pasifika, Asian, Euro, old, young, male, female, transgender, fat, skinny, left wing, right wing, cross-eyed, hump-backed — but they won’t tell you how many are vaxxed/unvaxxed.

So I’ll tell you. They won’t release the figures because they make Jacinda, and our media, look like fools. The vaccine was mildly more effective than paracetamol and lemon drinks. Which is not a big surprise, takes about eight years to create a vaccine, all Big Pharma did was bounce up an ordinary coronavirus (flu) vaccine and rake in trillions of dollars from the stupid. That’s us.

And I have to ask, how do we ever trust our Government and our media again?

See today’s editorial

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Save

    Share this article

Latest from Gisborne Herald

Gisborne Herald

'We'll keep the fire burning': Ngāti Oneone remains committed to land reclamation protest

20 Jun 05:00 PM
Gisborne Herald

Tonnes of promise: Angus Bull Week set to make millions

20 Jun 12:00 AM
Gisborne Herald

Our top Premium stories this year: Special offer for Herald, Viva, Listener

19 Jun 08:11 PM

Jono and Ben brew up a tea-fuelled adventure in Sri Lanka

sponsored
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Latest from Gisborne Herald

'We'll keep the fire burning': Ngāti Oneone remains committed to land reclamation protest

'We'll keep the fire burning': Ngāti Oneone remains committed to land reclamation protest

20 Jun 05:00 PM

An online petition supporting the hapū has over 1950 signatures.

Tonnes of promise: Angus Bull Week set to make millions

Tonnes of promise: Angus Bull Week set to make millions

20 Jun 12:00 AM
Our top Premium stories this year: Special offer for Herald, Viva, Listener

Our top Premium stories this year: Special offer for Herald, Viva, Listener

19 Jun 08:11 PM
From top to bottom: Gisborne slumps to last on economic scoreboard, locals still optimistic

From top to bottom: Gisborne slumps to last on economic scoreboard, locals still optimistic

19 Jun 06:00 AM
Help for those helping hardest-hit
sponsored

Help for those helping hardest-hit

NZ Herald
  • About NZ Herald
  • Meet the journalists
  • Newsletters
  • Classifieds
  • Help & support
  • Contact us
  • House rules
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of use
  • Competition terms & conditions
  • Our use of AI
Subscriber Services
  • Manage your print subscription
  • Manage your digital subscription
  • Subscribe to Herald Premium
  • Subscribe to the Gisborne Herald
  • Gift a subscription
  • Subscriber FAQs
  • Subscription terms & conditions
  • Promotions and subscriber benefits
NZME Network
  • Gisborne Herald
  • The New Zealand Herald
  • The Northland Age
  • The Northern Advocate
  • Waikato Herald
  • Bay of Plenty Times
  • Rotorua Daily Post
  • Whanganui Chronicle
  • Viva
  • NZ Listener
  • Newstalk ZB
  • BusinessDesk
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • iHeart Radio
  • Restaurant Hub
NZME
  • NZME Events
  • About NZME
  • NZME careers
  • Advertise with NZME
  • Digital self-service advertising
  • Photo sales
  • © Copyright 2025 NZME Publishing Limited
TOP