“I had another of many friends have a horrible reaction to the vaccine just today. She thought she was dying and fears her quality of life has changed in the past few days for good."

The world’s greatest surfer, athlete, Kelly Slater, has enlivened an otherwise dreary news day by teeing off on COVID vaccines on a relatively obscure Instagram account. 

The almost fifty-year-old Slater lit up after the account @summer_ofsurf posted a message thanking ocean racing competitors for getting vaccinated against COVID-19, prompting ironman Matt Poole to write. 

“The next time I head down to surfers I’m going to jump in the rip because “freedom of choice”,” Poole wrote. “It’s no issue for me, but as soon as I start telling others there is no danger in the rip, they’ll jump in too, and tell their mates and before you know it, there is a 100 of us in there… Now some of the 100 get in trouble, and lifesavers come to save them… putting those lifesavers in danger as well. Now 50 are drowning and the lifesavers are overrun, and can’t save them all or themselves…. But that was our choice. It’s not freedom of choice if it impacts others — it’s about helping others.”

Here, Slater jumped in. 

“@matt_poole1 let me explain why your analogy makes no sense. If I know the risks (informed consent) and I judge the choice to be one that benefits/hurts me based on stats and info and my own ability (health), I can choose accordingly.

“If something happens to me it’s on me, not someone else. Your argument is a false equivalence. Apples and oranges. If 99.7% of all people would be fine with no lifeguard while in that rip and they’re given all the possibilities, most could swim the most dangerous part of that beach without risking drowning.

“And plenty of people drive without seatbelts. We can agree that’s statistically not a great thing at speed but it’s still your choice, not mine. And my seatbelt (like the gene therapy) doesn’t save you so that’s another fallacy. Now regarding covid…21 total deaths in OZ under the age of 30 and 6 below 20. This is clearly a disease of obese, unhealthy, and elderly if you study the official statistics.

“And for people saying listen to the doctors, I’m positive I know more about being healthy than 99% of doctors, but I wouldn’t trust me. But most of my covid info comes directly from doctor friends, many of them in disagreement with the official ‘science’.

“I had another of many friends have horrible reaction to the vaccine just today. She thought she was dying and fears her quality of life has changed in the past few days for good. My mom also is part of those underreported stats. Other friends have literally died from it. So anyone here shaming people who are affected or concerned does nothing but feed the ego.

“When you study and talk to health professionals that deal with actual health and find out about the immune system suppression from the vaccines one day, you’ll open your mind to it.

“Don’t worry, plenty of doctors also talk about this but your algorithm isn’t feeding it to you. It’s wild that people don’t believe we are born with the ability of our bodies to adjust and prepare for different health issues. Covid exposes the unhealthy underlying patterns and issues in people.”

Back in August, Slater leveraged his formidable social media platforms to create what he had hoped would be a non-politicised debate around the use of vaccines to fight COVID-19 and its sequels.

Slater posted an excerpt from an article by Michael Yeadon, a former VP of Pfizer who has become the poster-boy of anti-vaxxers for his belief that there’s gonna be a few side effects we don’t know about yet.

“There is absolutely no need for vaccines to extinguish the pandemic,” wrote Yeadon. “I’ve never heard such nonsense talked about vaccines. You do not vaccinate people who aren’t at risk from a disease. You also don’t set about planing to vaccinate millions of fit and healthy people with a vaccine that hasn’t been extensively tested on human subjects.” 

Adding an addendum Slater wrote,

“Something to ponder. But I’m no epidemiologist.” 

In a story from March, news agency Reuters tore hell out of Yeadon and his claims etc.

Read that here. 

“Fear on Cape Cod as sharks hunt again!”

Here’s a story eerily familiar to surfers and anyone who goes into the water beyond their shins in Australia. 

No Whites around, virtually no attacks in the past one hundred years… suddenly… boom…boom…boom… hits, fatals, surfers bleeding out on the sand.

Gorgeous Cape Cod, that geographical cape that swings its J-curved arm from the south-east corner of mainland Massachusetts, think rich cunts festooned in striped tees riding in yachts etc, has suddenly become “host to one of the densest seasonal concentrations of adult white sharks in the world.” 

The NYT magazine reports Great Whites are now aggregating around Cape Cod in numbers never before seen in living memory. 

“The animals trickle into the region during lengthening days in May, increase in abundance throughout summer, peak in October and mostly depart by the dimming light and plunging temperatures of Thanksgiving.” 

Here’s the numbers: during the entire twentieth century there were three shark attacks, one fatal, in 1936. 

Since 2012, there have been five hits by Great Whites.

Last year, a Great White killed a swimmer at Casco Bay, Maine, a couple of hundred miles south. 

“In Maine, we never knew we had Great White sharks,” the swimmer’s husband said. 

The story is a horror show of first-person accounts. 

Here, lifeguard Nina Lanctot arrives to find boogieboarder Arthur Medici, hit by a White, dragged out of the water onto the sand by his pal Issac Rocha. 

Medici was motionless and without expression. His pupils were fixed and blank. He was not breathing. She checked his pulse. There was none. Scanning, taking in information quickly, she examined his wounds. A chunk of flesh of one leg was missing, and the other leg was mangled. Worse, the wounds were not bleeding or noticeably seeping. Lanctot’s eyes followed drag marks leading from the water to Medici’s silent frame. There was not a drop of blood. His femoral or popliteal arteries had been severed, she figured, and his blood drained away. Without hemostatic clamps and immediate transfusions, he was past saving. The nearest hospital was more than 30 miles away. Lanctot knew this math. It was bad.

She heard a man in the crowd. “You’ve got to do something,” he said

Rocha had tied a boogie-board leash around one of Medici’s legs. Lanctot slipped the tourniquet around the other, just under his groin, and twisted it tight, clamping quadriceps and hamstring hard to bone. The lifeguards and doctors worked frantically, pumping Medici’s chest with the flat of their hands while one gave mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Lanctot felt pangs of empathy. Medici’s skin was turning ashen. Rocha was inconsolable. She wished his mother were there to comfort him. She held Medici’s hand, hoping he would feel companionship, knowing he could not acknowledge it.

Surfers are referenced later in the piece, which you can read in its entirety here. 

After Medici’s death, some surfers switched to stand-up paddle boards, which largely keep limbs out of the water and offer greater visibility. Others, like Lanctot, quit surfing on the Outer Cape. Some kept surfing, but with whistles, so if a shark appeared they could clear people fast.

Whistles!

Scientists have applauded the arrival of the Great White packs, 

“The annual returns are a success story, a welcome sign of ecosystem recovery at a time when many wildlife species are depleted.”

So there’s that, I suppose. 

Patagonia, meanwhile, scores “A+” in multiple categories and Rip Curl surprises with stunning grade!

The latest “Ethical Fashion Report” has come out swinging at some of the world’s most loved surf brands, including Quiksilver, Billabong and Roxy, while celebrating Patagonia and giving a well-done nod to Rip Curl. 

The report, which is prepared by Baptist World Aid Australia each year, gave Quiksilver, Billabong and Roxy, which are all headquartered under the Boardriders banner in Huntington Beach, California, an overall F grade each.

Each company was graded on five different categories.

For the three Boardriders companies, they got hit with a C for policies and governance, tracing and risk (D), supplier relationships and human rights monitoring (F), worker empowerment (F) and environmental sustainability (F). 

According to Baptist World Aid Australia, a Christian organisation founded in 1950 by missionaries determined to teach Chinese the joys of loving Jay-Z the Christo,

“While (the fashion industry) can be a source of opportunity, for too many indignity and abuse, and low-wages and modern slavery are rife. Consumerism, mass production, and the constant demand for more, has fuelled this injustice while the industry has turned a blind eye to the impact they’re having on the environment and carbon emissions.” 

Torquay-based Rip  Curl, which had its own ethical glitch six years ago when it was revealed one of its suppliers had been using North Korean sweatshops, was given an impressive B score, only a D for worker empowerment keeping ‘em away from a coveted A. 

Patagonia, as expected, topped the charts with stunning A+scores in most areas, although, like Rip  Curl, worker empowerment tempered their grade (C), leaving ’em with an overall A.

All of which is very exciting, but do you care who sews your trunks and prints your tees?

Or do you look at the pretty colours, first, then the price tag?

Personally, I feel good inside knowing I’ve given the nimble fingers of a Bangladeshi tween a little work.