Oct 112021
 


Paul Gauguin Bathing, Dieppe 1885

 

Hundreds of thousands of US Troops Remain Unvaccinated (DM)
Southwest Cancels 1,800 Flights In 2 Days, Rumours Of Employee ‘Sickout’ (RT)
More Info Surfaces On Southwest Airlines Flight Cancellations (CTH)
If This Is True…. (Denninger)
Judge Rules Against Natural Immunity Claim Challenging Vaccine Mandate (ET)
Natural Immunity and Covid-19: Twenty-Nine Scientific Studies (BI)
Amish: No Hospitalization, Isolation Or Vaccines = Herd Immunity (Attkisson)
China Prepares for Possible Large-Scale COVID-19 Outbreak (ET)
New Zealand Makes Covid-19 Vaccinations Mandatory For Health Workers (R.)
Getting Flu With Covid Doubles Risk Of Death, Says UK Health Chief (G.)
Shelves Stripped Bare As Brits Rush To Panic-buy Ahead Of Christmas (RT)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Molnupiravir
Cost in India: 40 capsules 0.13 USD
Cost in US: 10 capsules: 700 USD

 

 

This is a war

 

 

“Biden added that country is still on a wartime footing..”

So they can courtmarshal them?

Good luck trying to make the entire army woke.

Hundreds of thousands of US Troops Remain Unvaccinated (DM)

Hundreds of thousands of United States servicemembers remain unvaccinated or are only partially vaccinated against the coronavirus, as the deadline to have the shot draws closer. The vaccination rates vary between military branches, according to data obtained by the Washington Post, with 98 percent of the active duty Navy fully vaccinated. There are almost 340,000 such personnel, with the two per cent who haven’t been jabbed representing close to 7,000 people. Meanwhile, just 72 percent of the 181,000 active Marine Corps personnel have been vaccinated – meaning close to 51,000 have yet to have the jab. Both branches have to be fully vaccinated by November 28, under the Defense Department’s August mandate.

Figures show that 81 percent of Army members are fully vaccinated. That branch of the military has 485,000 members, with the 19 per cent who remain unvaccinated representing well over 95,000 personnel. And more than 60,000 people in the Air Force have just three weeks to meet their deadline to be fully vaccinated. The rate, though, is worse for members of the Army National Guard and Army Reserves – which have until June to meet the vaccination requirement. Military officials said the rates have varied due to the staggering deadlines, and have expressed hope that the vaccination rates will increase as the deadlines near. Since the pandemic began, about a quarter million service members have been infected with the virus, and more than 2,000 were killed, with a large outbreak last year aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt that showed how quickly the virus could spread in close quarters.

The outbreak served as a wake up call when the ship was sidelined for two months after about 1,100 crew members were infected and one soldier died. In August, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced that he was seeking President Joe Biden’s approval to mandate that all service members get vaccinated against the virus. which the president later approved. He said in a statement at the time that he strongly supports Austin’s decision, noting the plan would add the COVID vaccine ‘to the list of required vaccinations for our service members not later than mid-September,’ according to the Associated Press. Biden added that country is still on a wartime footing and ‘being vaccinated will enable our service members to stay healthy, to better protect their families, and to ensure that our force is ready to operate anywhere in the world.’

LA firefighters

Read more …

A strange denial game. It was the weather…

Southwest Cancels 1,800 Flights In 2 Days, Rumours Of Employee ‘Sickout’ (RT)

Thousands of passengers that booked Southwest Airlines flights for their weekend travel have been stranded in the US airports after the airline cancelled the flights amid reports of a protest against the vaccine mandate. SouthWest, known for its relatively low prices, cancelled at least 1,018 flights on Sunday, that is in addition to 808 flights that were cancelled on Saturday, US Today reported, citing flight tracking data. In a statement on Saturday, SouthWest blamed the abnormal rate of cancellations on air traffic control issues and “disruptive weather,” adding that they were working to “recover” the operation. However, the situation appeared to have only worsened on Sunday, with SouthWest account on Twitter being inundated by complaints from the disgruntled passengers claiming that flights had been cancelled out of the blue and that the airline’s employees were nowhere to be seen.

“Flight cancelled out of nowhere and now NO ONE is seen at the front desks to assist customers,” actor Kevin Michael Martin complained. Another passenger, who has been apparently stranded at a Dallas, Texas, airport, posted a photo of a long line of people, tweeting: “Ticket agent counter before security is a mess,” to which SouthWest responded by insisting that the chaos was merely a result of “ATC issue and disruptive weather.” “Thanks for hanging in there with us today,” SouthWest said. Southwest Airlines Pilots Association (SWAPA), which represents some 10,000 pilots, also poured cold water on the speculations of an ongoing strike, saying on Sunday that the group was “focused on the safety of our crews, passengers, and overcoming operational challenges, not unofficial job actions.”

However, media citing “airline sources” have reported that air traffic controllers were staging a mass “sickout” or walkout at the federal air traffic control center in Hilliard, Florida, over mandatory vaccinations. The reported protest caused “ripple effect” paralyzing SouthWest operations, Leland Vittert, national correspondent for NewsNation, reported on Twitter. Responding to the rumours of a mass walkout on Sunday afternoon, The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) dismissed the report, insisting that “no FAA air traffic staffing shortages have been reported since Friday.” “Flight delays and cancellations occurred for a few hours Friday afternoon due to widespread severe weather, military training and limited staffing in one area of the Jacksonville Air Route Traffic Control Center,” the agency said.

Psychiatrist

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“Essentially, the union cannot organize or even acknowledge the sickout, because doing so would make it an illegal job action.”

More Info Surfaces On Southwest Airlines Flight Cancellations (CTH)

People inside Southwest Airlines are speaking out carefully and pointing out why there are so many flight disruptions. Essentially, the background issues are what were discussed earlier. Pilots are pushing back against vaccine mandates; and if you think about the curriculum vitae of a typical pilot, it makes sense.A big percentage of commercial airline pilots are former military pilots. That group of people carry a strong disposition toward the principles of patriotism, service, liberty and freedom. It is a simple truism that upsets leftists, but it makes sense for this specifically skilled workforce group to be the tip of the push back spear. Alex Berenson provides some background details after being contacted by a Southwest pilot:

“The pilot emailed following the first Southwest post today (and provided his SWA ID to prove his identity). He asked that I paraphrase the email. Essentially, the union cannot organize or even acknowledge the sickout, because doing so would make it an illegal job action. Years ago, Southwest and its pilots had a rough negotiation, and the union would not even let the pilots internally discuss the possibility of working-to-rule (which would have slowed Southwest to a crawl). But at the moment the pilots don’t even have to talk to each other about what they’re doing. The anger internally – not just among pilots but other Southwest workers – is enormous. The tough prior negotiations notwithstanding, Southwest has a history of decent labor relations, and workers believe the company should stand up for them against the mandate. Telling pilots in particular to comply or face termination has backfired.”

[..] Factually I do not believe a federal mandate for a vaccine is even possible or legal. It appears to me that all of Biden’s threats in this regard are simply that, threats. The purpose of the threat is to push people to take the vaccine without actually attempting a legal federal mandate; and that approach so far has been successful. However, now they are going to encounter the more hard-core groups who will not concede liberty or freedom to a federal mandate. It is obvious Anthony Fauci also knows a federal mandate will lose in court when challenged. The fact that Fauci brings up state vaccination requirements for education, as examples of historically forced vaccinations is both a strawman argument and structurally false. There has never been a FEDERAL mandate for any vaccination. All the vaccinations Fauci discusses (ex. his kids) were state mandates. Each state also has a different set of standards and laws for children and vaccines. There is nothing federal.

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“I trust animal meds in this sort of context far more than human ones. Go kill someone’s tens-of-millions of dollar racehorse and see how long you live. Whack Fluffy and it will be all over the news for a week..”

If This Is True…. (Denninger)

“Fun fact: Between 100-200 United States Congress Members (plus many of their staffers & family members) with COVID.. were treated by a colleague over the past 15 months with ivermectin & the I-MASK+ protocol at http://flccc.net. None have gone to hospital. Just sayin’.” There are 535 members of Congress. On the lower boundary this is 19% of the members, plus staff and family or close to one in five. On the upper boundary it is more than a third. Remember folks that doctors have been threatened with loss of their medical licenses for writing prescriptions and chain pharmacies, which are most of them, have in many cases refused to fill said prescriptions. The entire reason people have gone out and bought “pony paste” is that they can’t go to the local doc-in-a-box and get a script for Ivermectin.

Incidentally I trust animal meds in this sort of context far more than human ones. Go kill someone’s tens-of-millions of dollar racehorse and see how long you live. Whack Fluffy and it will be all over the news for a week with the responsible vet run out of town. But killing Granny, if you’re a hospital and can come up with a positive PCR test you get a $33,000 bounty — and everyone, including the media, yawns. Do I believe Ivermectin is the entire answer? No. It wasn’t for me, and I used it when I got Covid in early August. But was it part of the answer? I believe it was. It certainly didn’t kill me and on the data it is about 100 times safer than Tylenol. We have 40 years of data on its safety and it has a risk of seriously harming you of about 1 in 600,000. With close to four billion human doses dispensed and consumed that data is pretty solid; I certainly trust it.

Can you OD on it or worse, find some product that has it and other things in it too and those other drugs are unsafe (or at least untested) in humans? Certainly. But remember folks: We had an out-and-out fraud, a actual medical practitioner, who stated their entire ER was full of people who poisoned themselves with the drug. The hospital, a day or two later when they realized they had been named, issued a formal statement that exactly zero persons had shown up in their Emergency Room having been poisoned by self-administration of Ivermectin. Did anyone go to prison for this lie? Nope. Did that person’s medical ticket get punched permanently for their false presentation? Nope. What sanction was placed on said person for their intentional fraud? None.

Is Covid serious? It certainly can be. While there are predictors of increased risk the fact is that just as with any drug who gets hammered and who does not is not certain. I used a prophylactic protocol for close to a year and a half and despite somewhere around two dozen known exposures I did not get the virus. I was still using that protocol when I finally did get the virus via an exposure that was close enough to get me, but was hardly as close as many of the others. I also was under a serious immune assault due to a yellowjacket swarm during the incubation period; without that I might well have once again avoided infection. There’s no way for me to know that with any degree of certainty.

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Jacobson 1905. Wasn’t that about eugenics?

Judge Rules Against Natural Immunity Claim Challenging Vaccine Mandate (ET)

A federal judge on Oct. 8 denied a request to block Michigan State University’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate on the basis of natural immunity. An employee at the school, Jeanna Norris, filed a lawsuit against the mandate and asked a judge to intervene on the basis that she had already contracted COVID-19 and recovered. She presented two antibody tests showing her previous infection, and her doctors told her that she didn’t need to get the vaccine at this time. Despite her natural immunity, Norris faces termination from the university for not complying with the school’s mandate that all students and staff get the shot unless they have a medical or religious exemption.

U.S. District Judge Paul Maloney, an appointee of former President George W. Bush, declined her lawsuit. The mandate, Maloney said, didn’t violate her fundamental rights and pointed to a 1905 Supreme Court ruling. “This Court must apply the law from the Supreme Court: Jacobson essentially applied rational basis review and found that the vaccine mandate was rational in ‘protect[ing] the public health and public safety,’” Maloney said in his order. “The Court cannot ignore this binding precedent.”

[..] “Ms. Norris courageously brought this lawsuit to vindicate the constitutional rights of individuals with naturally acquired immunity to COVID-19 who are subject to irrational vaccine mandates,” Jenin Younes, a lawyer who works for the New Civil Liberties Alliance, who represents Norris, told the paper. “While we are disappointed by today’s order, we are committed to fighting for the rights of COVID-recovered Americans to decline a medically unnecessary vaccine without having to sacrifice their livelihoods.” It comes just days after a federal judge in California ruled against a professor who argued that his previous infection should make him exempt from the University of California’s vaccine requirement.

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“..people who prefer an exposure risk to the virus in order to gain robust immunity deserve the freedom to make that choice.”

Natural Immunity and Covid-19: Twenty-Nine Scientific Studies (BI)

From the beginning of the March 2020 lockdowns for the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the subject of natural immunity (also called post-infection immunity) has been neglected. Once the vaccination became widely available, what began with near silence at the beginning turned nearly into a complete blackout of the topic. Even now, there is an absence of open discussion, presumably in the interests of promoting universal vaccination and required documentation of such vaccination as a condition of participating in public life and even the jobs marketplace. Still, the science exists. Many studies exist. Their authors deserve credit, recognition, and to have their voices heard.

These studies demonstrate what was and is already known: natural immunity for a SARS-type virus is robust, long-lasting, and broadly effective even in the case of mutations, generally more so than vaccines. In fact, a major contribution of 20th-century science has been to expand upon and further elucidate this principle that has been known since the ancient world. Every expert presumably knew this long before the current debates. The effort to pretend otherwise is a scientific scandal of the highest order, especially because the continued neglect of the topic is affecting the rights and freedoms of billions of people.

People who have contracted the virus and recovered deserve recognition. For that matter, people who prefer an exposure risk to the virus in order to gain robust immunity deserve the freedom to make that choice. The realization that natural immunity – which pertains now to perhaps half of the US population and billions around the world – is effective in providing protection should have a dramatic effect on vaccine mandates. Individuals whose livelihoods and liberties are being deprecated and deleted need access to the scientific literature as it pertains to this virus. They should send a link to this page far and wide. The scientists have not been silent; they just haven’t received the public attention they deserve.

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“You’re changing our culture completely to try to act like they wanted us to act the last year, and we’re not going to do it.”

Amish: No Hospitalization, Isolation Or Vaccines = Herd Immunity (Attkisson)

The Amish are a Christian group that emphasizes the virtuous over the superficial. They don’t usually drive, use electricity, or have TVs. And during the Covid-19 outbreak, they became subjects in a massive social and medical experiment. Sharyl: So, it’s safe to say there was a whole different approach here in this community when coronavirus broke out than many other places? Calvin Lapp: Absolutely. Calvin Lapp is Amish Mennonite. Lapp: There’s three things the Amish don’t like. And that’s government— they won’t get involved in the government, they don’t like the public education system— they won’t send their children to education, and they also don’t like the health system. They rip us off.

Those are three things that we feel like we’re fighting against all the time. Well, those three things are all part of what Covid is. After a short shutdown last year, the Amish chose a unique path that led to Covid-19 tearing through at warp speed. It began with an important religious holiday in May. Lapp: When they take communion, they dump their wine into a cup and they take turns to drink out of that cup. So, you go the whole way down the line, and everybody drinks out of that cup, if one person has coronavirus, the rest of church is going to get coronavirus. The first time they went back to church, everybody got coronavirus. Lapp says they weren’t denying coronavirus, they were facing it head on.

Lapp: It’s a worse thing to quit working than dying. Working is more important than dying. But to shut down and say that we can’t go to church, we can’t get together with family, we can’t see our old people in the hospital, we got to quit working? It’s going completely against everything that we believe. You’re changing our culture completely to try to act like they wanted us to act the last year, and we’re not going to do it.

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Recognize this?

“..you can be quarantined at any time and put in a quarantine site. And the quarantine sites can also be a place of political persecution,” Lin said.”

China Prepares for Possible Large-Scale COVID-19 Outbreak (ET)

The Chinese regime has notified local authorities to prepare for a large-scale outbreak of COVID-19, according to leaked internal documents obtained by the Chinese Epoch Times. One document, titled “Notice of Further Strengthening of Epidemic Prevention” was issued by the Chinese regime’s State Council, and forwarded by Fujian provincial government to local authorities on Sept. 30. The other is a “National Day Epidemic Prevention Notice” issued by the State Council on Oct. 1 and distributed by the Fujian provincial officials to local authorities. The documents are both marked “extra urgent.” Both notices request enhanced preparations for an emergency response to the outbreak, with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) putting forward at least two standards for local authorities.

One is to build central isolation sites, with local authorities required by the end of October to set up isolation centers and rooms of not less than 20 rooms per 10,000 people. The scale of each isolation site must be more than 100 rooms. According to public data, the population of Fujian Province in 2020 was 41.54 million. As of Sept. 19, the province has set up 35,691 quarantine rooms in 296 central sites. Based on the standard in the epidemic prevention notice, Fujian Province will need to build at least 83,000 quarantine rooms by the end of October, which is around 47,000 rooms in less than a month. According to one expert, the requirements for the COVID-19 quarantine sites reveal the real situation of the pandemic in China. Dr. Sean Lin, a former virology researcher at the U.S. Army Research Institute, told The Epoch Times: “This reflects the CCP’s concern about the rise of the epidemic. It must have been concealing the true epidemic in mainland China, otherwise it would not suddenly issue a national notice of emergency preparedness.”

“Notice of Further Strengthening of Epidemic Prevention” requires the establishment of a five-layered control system. It states: “Township and street CCP cadres, community grid staff, grassroots medical workers, police, and volunteers shall jointly implement community epidemic prevention,” such as “strictly implement[ing] community prevention and control,” or locking down residential communities. Lin said that the control system is actually to tighten social management in local areas, and “the CCP’s purpose is to tighten control.” “If there is no nucleic acid test, all the CCP’s epidemic prevention measures are the same as political campaigns. For example, you can be quarantined at any time and put in a quarantine site. And the quarantine sites can also be a place of political persecution,” Lin said.

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New Zealand is walking backwards.

New Zealand Makes Covid-19 Vaccinations Mandatory For Health Workers (R.)

New Zealand will require teachers and workers in the health and disability sectors to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on Monday, as she extended restrictions in Auckland, its largest city, for another week. New Zealand is fighting the highly infectious Delta outbreak that forced it to abandon its long-standing strategy of eliminating the new coronavirus amid persistent infections and is looking to live with the virus through higher vaccinations. “New Zealand is at one of the trickiest and most challenging moments in the COVID-19 pandemic so far,” Ardern told reporters in Wellington. Ardern, however, said “there is a clear path forward” in the next few months to live with fewer curbs and more freedoms once the country reaches a higher level of vaccinations.


About 2.38 million New Zealanders have so far been fully vaccinated, or about 57% of the eligible population, with officials promising to end lockdowns once 90% of the eligible population is vaccinated. Health and disability sector workers will have to be fully vaccinated by Dec. 1, while school and early learning staff must get their two doses by Jan. 1, COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said. The decision of mandatory vaccinations comes as New Zealand reported 35 new cases, all of them in Auckland, down from 60 on Sunday, taking the total cases in the current outbreak to 1,622. Having largely controlled the virus last year, New Zealand has recorded just over 4,600 cases and 28 deaths.

Psychologist

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Nothing the UK Health Security Agency chief executive says makes any sense to me.

Do people really believe there was no flu last year?

Getting Flu With Covid Doubles Risk Of Death, Says UK Health Chief (G.)

People who catch flu and Covid at the same time this winter are twice as likely to die than those who only have coronavirus, according to the UK Health Security Agency chief executive, Dr Jenny Harries. The former deputy chief medical officer for England warned that the UK faces an “uncertain” winter – with both flu and Covid-19 circulating for the first time – and urged people to take up both the coronavirus and flu jabs if eligible. Asked how worried the public should be about flu this winter, she told Sky’s Trevor Phillips On Sunday: “We should be worried about flu each winter. I think people still don’t realise it can be a fatal disease.

“But I think the important thing about this winter is, we are likely to see flu, for the first time in any real numbers, co-circulating with Covid. So the risks of catching both together still remain. And if you do that, then early evidence suggests that you are twice as likely to die from having two together than just having Covid alone. “So I think it’s an uncertain winter ahead – that’s not a prediction, it’s an uncertain feature – but we do know that flu cases have been lower in the previous year so immunity and the strain types are a little more uncertain,” she said. Harries also warned that the UK could have a multi-strain flu this year, with lowered immunity, as last year’s Covid restrictions meant that levels of the virus were extremely low.

She said that on average, about 11,000 people will die from flu each year. “The difference here is because we have, if you like, skipped a year almost with flu, it’s possible we might see multi-strain flu – we usually get one strain predominating,” she added. Harries said there are four strains of virus in this year’s flu vaccine, after taking advice from the World Health Organization (WHO), the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) and looking to countries in the southern hemisphere, where winter and therefore flu season arrives earlier.

“So we’ve got a pretty good array in our toolbox to try and hit whichever one becomes dominant but it could be more than one this year, and people’s immunity will be lower. So I think the real trick here is to get vaccinated in both Covid and flu, but obviously to continue to do those good hygiene behaviours that we’ve been practising all through Covid”, Harries added. Harries also said that making children wear masks in school would not be at the top of her list of Covid-safe measures.

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A can of spam for Christmas

Shelves Stripped Bare As Brits Rush To Panic-buy Ahead Of Christmas (RT)

The supply crisis in Britain has worsened as deep concerns over supply-chain woes, soaring energy bills, and staff shortages prompted millions of locals to stockpile festive essentials ahead of Christmas, leaving shelves empty. About eight million Britons were unable to purchase essential food for two weeks between September 22 and October 3, while one in six said they were struggling to find non-essential items, according to data tracked by the Office of National Statistics (ONS). Two-thirds of British shoppers polled by retail magazine The Grocer were worried or very worried at the prospect of food and drink shortages over Christmas.Hundreds of thousands of British consumers have reportedly booked their delivery slots for Christmas.


Nearly 22,000 slots had been reserved by lunchtime on the first day after supermarket chain Waitrose made dates available last week. Britain has been struggling with a series of severe crises due to supply shortages attributed to several factors, including the Covid-19 pandemic, soaring gas prices, and breaching of trade and labour relations with the European Union. Last week, London called in the army to help the authorities ease the fuel crisis by providing troops and transport to make deliveries to petrol stations after many of the outlets ran dry due to panic buying. Earlier, the UK government issued more than 10,000 three-month visas for drivers of fuel tankers and food lorries, as well as poultry workers. The step was taken to tackle a severe labour crisis that has had an enormous negative impact on food retailers, fast-food chains, and distributors of fuels.

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Ode to Joy
https://twitter.com/i/status/1447120940744253441

 

 

 

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Mar 222019
 


New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern leaves after the Friday prayers at Hagley Park outside Al-Noor mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand March 22, 2019. REUTERS/Jorge Silva

 

 

Dani Lebo is the wife of Nelson Lebo III, a regular contributor at the Automatic Earth. They are two Americans who have settled in Whanganui on the North Island of New Zealand. Whanganui is over 600 km (400 miles) from Christchurch on the South Island, but that is where Dani found herself last Friday, in the park next to the mosque where most of the victims fell. This is what she wrote about that.

Dani and Nelson named their son after a Neil Diamond song.

 


Dani Lebo with son Suleiman

 

Dani Lebo: A week after my son was born, I come across his name in an article in the New York Times. I catch my breath. He is a young man. He is describing the scene after a bomb tore through his village in Afghanistan. He is terrified, he says. He doesn’t know where to sleep. I don’t sleep that night either.

A year and a half later I see my son’s name in our local paper. He arrived six weeks ago from Syria. His brother and sister were killed by a bomb that woke him in the night. He is 5 years old and has already witnessed more tragedy than I will ever see in my lifetime.

Today I say my son’s full name as he giggles and throws himself into my arms. I sing the song that he was named for. He laughs. His shaggy golden hair covers his blue eyes.

“His name means ‘peace’,” I once justified to a Plunket nurse who didn’t even attempt to pronounce it. For some reason I felt the need to explain away her unwillingness to engage in something she saw as “different” or “too hard”. It is uncommon here, but common in the Muslim world. My son shares his name with millions of boys – millions of Muslim boys. Their mothers also named them “peace”.

 


People gathered to mourn at Hagley Park, Christchurch, last weekend. Photo Michael Craig

 

And then there I was sitting on the floor of a potting shed in Hagley Park on Friday, March 15, thinking about how relieved I was that my Suleiman, my laughing, smiling, joy of a boy was nowhere near me. Relieved that my Suleiman was safe at home – protected from this scene by 627km and the colour of his skin. And while I was sitting there feeling that relief I was so acutely aware that just a few hundred metres away sat a mother who was, in that very moment, watching her own son die.

In my head I know I was safe that day, but I’m having trouble telling my mind that.

Although I was very close to the shooting, I was never a target. I have run through a few hundred scenarios in my head where the day ends differently – the gunman’s car doesn’t start and he escapes on foot through the park – or he returns to the police cordon after the initial shooting – or his hatred is just slightly less predictable and he decides to spread his terror in a more random direction.

In each of these scenarios he comes to the shed where we were waiting. I try to dismiss these thoughts as quickly as they come, but they are wearing me down. They are wearing me down and I wasn’t even in any real danger. I heard no shots. I saw no blood. My Suleiman was far far away.

I almost didn’t write this column because people are feeling fatigued by this story, by this grief. I am feeling fatigued by my story, by my grief. But I want to let you know how I am feeling. Because you might be feeling this way too one day.

On Friday I spent four hours sitting in a shed in Hagley Park surrounded by uncertainty and fear. Like hundreds of others I waited tensely within blocks of the shooting not knowing exactly where and what was happening.

The fear and sadness and rage I am experiencing this week has given me a glimpse, the smallest tiniest of understanding, of what it would be like to exist in a world of uncertainty and fear.

The world where a man sits near the window when he prays because he is certain that one day he will need to use it as an escape route. And then he does. The world where children are trained in lockdown procedures. The world that our Muslim friends, our black friends, our Chinese friends walk in every day.

My experience that day wasn’t exceptional, and to me that’s an exceptional comment on the state of the world.

 

 

• Dani Lebo has a background in international relations and education. She runs The ECO School, an organisation dedicated to accessible sustainability education.