Editor
I used to play club netball. Netball is a wonderful sport scrutiny. These groups are responsible for undermining the where you make life-long friends. You play strenuously and efforts of the majority who are trying to stay the course, do the competitively, until it’s time for the knee or hip replacement right thing, listen to the science, stay sane and stay safe. then you glide gently to the couch phase. Conspiracy theories have abounded, for Once a year, you stretch out with your closest This is not a example that the COVID virus is just an netball mates to watch a Silver Ferns test, and elaborate hoax or that dangerous elites are if there isn’t one, you rewatch the last one. Over reality we trying to kill off the elderly to create a new countless glasses of wine, you relive all those enjoy and we world order. air-hanging ball retrieval leaps, intercepts, Despite the World Health Organisation match winning goals, bullet and ‘Hail Mary’ look forward to the (WHO) roundly rejecting the theory that the passes – all of which you retrieved through virus originated from a laboratory in China, startlingly skilful agility – and laugh yourself uncertainties social media menaces augmented this idea hoarse. we currently endure into a theory that China deliberately released My career has reached the couch phase. This the virus from its laboratory so it could then year, every date set for our netball shindig has being conquered create a vaccine into which various controlling been scuttled by another COVID outbreak. We features would be injected. China would now have a slot booked, in the Manawatū, for by boosting gain ascendency, rule the world and control November, except one of our number lives in our rates of everyone in it. That would take some time, Whangarei . . . but China can wait. China has never been in a Our ‘normal’ has now become ‘abandonment vaccination. hurry. This mischievous theory spawned more of certainty’. Living with uncertainty tests our theories, such as the vaccine contains magnetic trust in systems, in society and in each other. We have been properties or will render males infertile. plunged into a state of on-going doubt. The next theory to emerge was that pharmaceutical companies The problem is, a global health crisis like COVID, cannot be have conspired to spread the virus so that the inevitable need for managed through rationality alone. It is impossible to make finite vaccinations will make them mega-millions. Another suggested predictions and plans from the scientific evidence, because we are that the rollout of the 5G mobile network caused the pandemic still gathering the scientific evidence. The COVID virus changes and a global cover-up ensued. There were physical attacks on shape frequently, and the contributing factors are numerous. engineers and mobile phone masts as this theory circulated. Our best medical experts across the globe are still grappling to Such deliberate misinformation grows legs, particularly fully understand this elusive intruder. It is a novel virus so we amongst the disenfranchised – those less educated, less can’t just look up the scientific literature on the last outbreak connected and less likely to have access to alternative sources and follow the blueprint for eradication. Consequently, advice of information. Fear and distrust of the establishment takes changes as understanding grows. For example, during the 2020 hold, followed by resistance to the instructions of our health outbreak, experts advised us masks were unhelpful. Now, with authorities and Government officials. The disenfranchised are the mutated Delta strain of the virus, we have been instructed then recruited to swell the numbers of the anti-vaccine lobby masks are mandatory inside any public space. and will ultimately fill the critical care beds in our hospital ICUs. The constantly changing rules and advice render us a tad COVID has unsettled all of us and the mischief makers have anxious. As a species, we like certainty and don’t naturally seized their chance to target and exploit the vulnerable, the welcome ongoing unpredictability. In this time of COVID, it is ignorant and the disconnected. therefore critical that we have as much consistency of credible Meanwhile, the rest of us do our best to counter the information as possible, to prevent us wobbling off course. misinformation, continue to comply with the COVID rules, If changing advice from the experts isn’t challenge enough, we support each other, and prepare ourselves for the possibility have another ‘virus’ to contend with called social media. Social of a further lockdown. This is not a reality we enjoy and we media has been one of the greatest impediments to alleviating the look forward to the uncertainties we currently endure being fear and distrust that the global pandemic naturally generates. It conquered by boosting our rates of vaccination. Only then can is unfortunately the playground to enable the mis-informants, I once again join my netball mates on the couch to celebrate our mischief makers and conspiracy theorists to thrive, often without stunning sporting accomplishments, over a few quiet wines.