New Zealand plays ‘Macarena’ to disperse protestors

To quote from an AP report:

Some countries might send in a riot squad to disperse trespassing protesters. In New Zealand, authorities turned on the sprinklers and Barry Manilow.

Initial moves to try and flush out several hundred protesters who have been camped on Parliament’s grassy grounds since Tuesday had little effect.

The protesters, who have been voicing their opposition to coronavirus vaccine mandates, responded to the soaking from the sprinklers by digging trenches and installing makeshift drainpipes to divert the water.

When a downpour hit Saturday, their numbers only grew. Protesters brought in bales of straw, which they scattered on the increasingly sodden grounds at Parliament. Some shouted, others danced and one group performed an Indigenous Maori haka.

By evening, Parliament Speaker Trevor Mallard had come up with a new plan to make the protesters uncomfortable: using a sound system to blast out vaccine messages, decades-old Barry Manilow songs and the 1990s earworm hit “Macarena” on a repeat loop.

It seems the strategy didn’t work as expected because soon enough, the protestors started dancing to the music.

Locked down with a Blind Date

As reported by the BBC:

A woman, only identified as Ms Wang, posted on Chinese social media platform WeChat last week that she had got locked down with her date after visiting his house for a meal.

In the post, she said that she had recently returned to the city of Zhengzhou from Guangzhou ahead of the Lunar New Year.

“I'm getting quite old, so my parents arranged more than 10 blind dates for me,” she said in this post. She wrote that her fifth date had said “he was good at cooking, and invited me to his house so he could cook a meal”.

However, during the meal, she discovered that her date’s community had gone into swift lockdown due to cases of Covid-19, and ended up being unable to leave his house for several days.

Ms Wang told media on Sunday that she had been stuck for four days at her date’s house, and that the situation was “not ideal”.

The Guardian had this to add about her experience, quoting her from an interview to a Shanghai newspaper:

“Besides the fact he’s as mute as a wooden mannequin, everything else [about him] is pretty good. Despite his food being mediocre, he’s still willing to cook, which I think is great.”

Sheep Enlisted for Vaccine Campaign

From a Reuters report:

A German campaigner is hoping the emotional appeal of 700 sheep forming the shape of a giant syringe will reach the hearts and minds of people hesitating to take a COVID-19 injection.

Germany has lower vaccination rates most other Western European nations, although some are simply unsure if they should get a jab rather than vehemently opposed to vaccination.

“Sheep are popular with people and carry positive emotional connotations. So perhaps they can reach many people emotionally when logic and scientific reasoning don't do the job,” the organiser of the campaign, Hanspeter Etzold, told Reuters.

Etzold works with shepherds, companies and animals to run team-building events in the northern German town of Schneverdingen.

“I have noticed how enthusiastically the sheep are received and that it simply reaches people deep inside, which is perhaps not possible rationally, with rational arguments,” he said.

The animals, which belong to shepherd Steffen Schmidt and his wife, followed pieces of bread spread on the ground to form the 100 metre long syringe shape as they were filmed by drone.

Link to video

Beer Therapy

From France: specially-crafted beer for those who lost their sense of smell in the after-effects of COVID-19.

Link to campaign video

Phallic Reflections

A cheeky, pro-vax PSA that is ‘hard’-hitting in more ways than one might imagine.

Link to video

Men caught smuggling KFC into lockdown-hit Auckland

From a BBC report:

NZ police have made a bizarre arrest after a pair of alleged gang associates were caught trying to enter Auckland with a boot full of KFC chicken and tens of thousands of dollars.

The men were charged with breaching the country's tough Covid-19 rules.

Under Auckland's strict Level 4 lockdown, all restaurants, including take-away services, remain closed.

The men are not the first New Zealanders whose fast-food cravings have landed them in trouble with authorities. Last week a 20-year-old man was charged after he posted a video on Tiktok showing him leaving Auckland and purchasing a large amount of food from McDonalds.

COVID makes fugitive surrender… after 30 years

As reported by Sky News:

A fugitive who is alleged to have used a hacksaw blade and bolt cutters to escape from prison nearly 30 years ago has given himself up - because a city's COVID lockdown made him homeless.

Darko Desic walked into a police station in Sydney because his work as a handyman had been hit by the Australian city's coronavirus restrictions.

Now 64, he surrendered at Dee Why Police Station on Sunday and was denied bail when he appeared in court on Tuesday, charged with escaping from lawful custody in 1992, according to a police statement.

Sydney's lockdown, which started in June, had cost Desic his cash-in-hand work as a labourer and handyman, police sources told Sydney's Daily Telegraph and Australian Broadcasting Corp.

“He slept on the beach on Saturday night and said, ‘stuff it, I'll go back to prison where there’s a roof over my head’,” a source told the newspaper.

COVID Impersonation

From a Vietnamese news report:

Authorities in southern Vietnam’s Binh Duong Province on Wednesday fined a man being treated at a COVID-19 quarantine facility for impersonating a doctor and telling inpatients to go home.

Visit Australia

A brilliant and savagely funny take on what an ad for Tourism Australia would look like amidst the current arrival restrictions and rigorous lockdown rules.

Link to video

A-Z of things deadlier than AZ

From Australia: a PSA that mixes internet-sourced ‘facts’ with humour to make the case for taking the AstraZeneca jab. 

A short selection, from the Instagram page:

Fast music ban in Seoul gyms

Excerpts from a report in The Korea Herald:

South Korea’s virus authorities are asking those in the Greater Seoul area to give up high-speed running on treadmills and fast dance music for group exercises in fitness clubs, as they worry that intense workouts could exacerbate the spread of COVID-19 during its most challenging wave to date.

The running speed on treadmills is capped at 6 kilometers per hour. Music played at group exercise classes at fitness clubs cannot exceed 120 beats per minute.  That means some famous pop songs like “Gangnam Style,” 132 bpm, cannot be played.

Authorities have defended the restrictions on fitness clubs, saying fast music and strenuous cardio exercises could generate more respiratory droplets and cause the virus to spread further.

Home Gatherings

A light-hearted new spot from Heineken highlights some of the challenges in attending home parties in the present times.

Link to video

Mask Massacre

Sick and tired of wearing a mask?  A new campaign from Germany invites you to fantasise about “violence against masks”, with a reminder that it would be best to keep wearing them, until the pandemic is over. 

Link to campaign video

Bedtime Storybook to allay Pandemic Fears

It’s pitched as a book to bring hope and optimism to children struggling with fears around the pandemic.  In the words of the authors:

We – as adults – are so stressed out about home working and home-schooling and everything else right now that we forget how stressful this situation is to our kids, how much this weighs on their minds. So we wanted to create a safe space for the children – a place where there’s no pandemic that they can go to in their dreams.

Link to buy the book

 

Underwear Mask

From South Africa: a viral video of a shopper at a supermarket who, when asked by a store employee to put on a mask (as required under current rules), took off her underwear and pulled it over her face.  Notably, while the employee was deciding what to make of that, another shopper can be heard saying this:

It is a mask.  And, quite frankly, I think that the bacteria on your knickers is less than on a mask.

Lockdown Lovebaby Collection

From Kraft Heinz Canada, a limited-edition collection of onesies:

In the words of a company spokesperson:

Having a baby 9 months to the day of the lockdown may make some parents blush— everyone knows what went down in March 2020. But it’s only ‘natural’. And obviously ‘homemade’. Two things we care deeply about at Heinz by Nature. So we couldn’t resist celebrating the lockdown’s most special, natural and homemade miracles with The Lockdown Lovebaby Collection.

Billboards that disinfect mobile phones

From Finland: a 15 second solution to disinfect mobile phones while on the move.

Sound the Excuse

It’s pitched as “a genius way out of Zoom hell”:  a collection of sound clips that give you an excuse to break away from a video call.  You can pick from a range of sounds that include that of a doorbell ringing, a baby crying, a dodgy tummy, kids arguing, and a car alarm.  If you’re looking for something more offbeat, you could consider the sound of a stampede, a helicopter landing, or a wasp invasion.

It’s an initiative from the support network, The Book of Man, and the idea is to help fight the stress that comes with endless video conferencing: the so-called “Zoom burnout”.  As they put it, “no one should have to make excuses for their mental health”.

Here’s a link to the campaign video.

Face Masks for Foodies

No, you can’t eat with them on but you can smell the aroma of food, wherever you are.

Jack in the Box:  Chicken-scented face mask

Hormel Foods: Breathable Bacon Mask

COVID Immunity

From Colombia: this new commercial from Poker beer is a PSA with a difference.