Pay attention: breathing difficulties is NOT a medical emergency.

Arrogant swine, it is not all about you; stop clogging up New Zealand emergency services just because – through doing what you wanted to do rather than what you were told to do – the bought of COVID-19 that you have caught is causing your airways to restrict thus causing in you a state of mass panic.

What do you expect the hospital is going to do for you, anyway – put you on a ventilator?

What will that do – provide you with ten times the oxygen your body needs thus giving you a nice high?

Sure, the feeling of euphoria caused by excess oxygen will, in the short term, relax you; long term, given that our everyday air supply contains ample oxygen for a typical human to breathe and survive, the result of flooding airways with pure oxygen is likely to cause an asthma or, worse, a panic attack.

When I was at school, I suffered from asthma; I never had an inhaler like the cool kids, as an advocate of natural health my mother preferred an alternative approach…

Here is the thing, as humans, we breathe up to four times as much air as we require; generally, air carries more than enough oxygen to keep us healthy and ultimately, our bodies do not need all the air that most mouth-breathing idiots suck over their fat tongues, greedily, copiously, pointlessly, into their bodies.

…I learned how to breathe correctly; yeah, because it turns out, despite being the most rudimentary aspect of life next to the rhythmic beating of our hearts, many of us have forgotten how to properly do this.

Breathing difficulties, because this is a bodily malfunction over which we have no ostensible control, for most people, will result in moderate panic; this will undoubtedly result in increased (open-mouthed) breathing, presently followed by extreme (open-mouthed) panic along with the compulsion to breath twice as quickly (through your mouth) as one otherwise would breathe.

This might also make you wish you had taken that vaccine when it was offered.

The only reason COVID-19 is still a thing in New Zealand, despite most people who test positive for the virus presenting no severe symptoms and only being ‘carriers’ for this ‘deadly Delta strain’, is because most arrogant Kiwi hypochondriac idiots, upon discovering they are carrying this virus, rush off to the hospital to be pampered by hopelessly busy (also probably insanely frustrated) nurses.

Get the shots, get the virus; stay at home, breath calmly (you don’t need as much air as you think you do), stop being such a princess about it and stop being such a bloody burden on New Zealand’s healthcare system.

Have a happy Christmas.

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by Bree Zing

Photography by Wong Lee