Beware false prophets peddling Covid nonsense

Thursday, 30 September 2021

(Audio in Fijian) There are 10 ingredients in the Covid-19 vaccine. A microchip isn’t one of them.

OPINION: Verily, verily (I know my Bible) the life of Brian grows stranger daily, and I accidently mistyped his name at first. There is a difference between Brian and Brain, and I apologise for that, because the latter is a useful asset and the other is a dubious one.

Brian Tamaki is veering into the zone of false prophets as he urges his congregation of mostly Māori and Pasifika people not to wear masks or be vaccinated against Covid when they’re the very people, with the lowest Covid vaccination rates, whose health and lives are most at risk from it. It’s one thing for Tamaki and his wife to boast that they willingly risk their lives, but why tell others to?

Tamaki publicly declared himself a fanboy of Donald Trump in 2017. No surprise. Trump preached the same message, and his followers in American politics still do. That’s why the southern, Trump-following states of America have far higher rates of Covid infections than Democrat-voting states who went with Joe Biden. As if being infected is proof of having a brain and dying of it is a worthwhile martyrdom.

On Wednesday, just as a shocking surge of 45 new infections was announced, and we despaired of ever leaving lockdowns, Tamaki planned a march in Auckland for the weekend – against vaccination and, it would seem logical, without masks or social distancing. He says Covid is not caused by a virus, but by “airborne demons and human cruelty toward animals”.

* Sir John Key: We need to break free of the hermit kingdom and stop ruling by fear on Covid-19

Destiny Church leader Brian Tamaki seldom talks sense, says Rosemary McLeod.

The “day of prayer” against Covid that he called for last year didn’t do the trick and eradicate it.

There’s a reason. “Satan has control over atmospheres unless you’re a born-again, Jesus-loving, Bible-believing, Holy Ghost-filled, tithe-paying believer,” he has explained. But enough of this. He so seldom talks sense that we’re wasting our time.

What worries me in the bigger picture is the echo of one of the worst of the effects of colonisation on Pasifika and Māori when Europeans arrived.

We didn’t know that we brought with us common diseases they had no immunity to, which proved fatal to thousands who died of measles, influenza, and other illnesses that had long circulated at the far end of the world.

We were slow learners. The NZ administration in Samoa, in the face of a worldwide epidemic of pneumonic influenza that had killed hundreds of thousands of people, allowed infected people to disembark there in 1918. A fifth of the population died.

John Key was one prime minister who got to choose the timing of his own exit.

My point is, we have good reason not to take risks.

Speaking of history, I woke to a blast from the past this week.

The ghost of John Key seemed to be accusing our wary treatment of Covid, and optimism about containing it, of making us “smug”.

There’s always another perspective, but I was startled at his accusation in the light of reality. Wearing a mask doesn’t make me feel smug. It’s annoying, and my glasses steam up unless I fiddle with the darn thing. Not being able to travel to see my kids doesn’t make me smug.

Knowing other people in this country are suffering from Covid could make me feel smug that I’m not, only it doesn’t, because I could catch it yet. These are not normal times.

But it was eerily familiar to hear Key talking over the interviewer and avoiding answering pertinent questions in the good old macho political way that makes a sport out of evasion. I don’t miss it.

“Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves” (Matthew 7:15). Tamaki isn’t the only one who can quote the Bible. Mercifully, Key never tried.