Liam Dann: We did it - now comes the shock of ordinary life

People headed back to some sort of ordinary life with post-lockdown coffee as the country went into level 2. Photo / Bevan Conley

Now what New Zealand?

We did it.

We got through lockdown. We crushed the Covid-19 curve. We're open for business.

We didn't even run out of toilet paper.

If we take a deep breath and look back at what we were facing eight weeks ago, things have clearly gone well – especially by international standards.

But it is an odd finish line.

We've made it to the end of the beginning of this crisis.

There's cause for celebration but it's all a bit overwhelming.

Time warps around intense experiences – travel, illness…adventures in magical kingdoms on the other side of wardrobes.

As C.S. Lewis so wonderfully captured, when the intensity of big events suddenly lifts, the shock of ordinary life can be dislocating.

Reality looms - back through the wardrobe. A scene from The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Photo / Supplied.

They don't call it post-traumatic shock for nothing. Adrenaline and a sense of purpose can see humans through a lot for a while.

But there is always a price.

Psychologists are still measuring the mental health impacts of the Christchurch earthquakes on a generation of young people.

I've felt a sense of mild agoraphobia getting out into the world again, a return of the anxiety that was there going into lockdown but which had settled with the humdrum of the daily lockdown routine.

To call what I've been through traumatic would be an insult to, well, almost anyone I think of.

But even in a middle-class bubble of Netflix and Zoom catch-ups there is no hiding from the profound sadness of what has befallen the world.

For all the brave optimism about New Zealand's economic recovery, it is devastating to think of the opportunity that has been lost.

This week's Budget with its $50 billion of new spending just highlights what could have been done in a pre-Covid world.

New Zealand had nearly every economic indicator in the right place.
We were on the cusp of seriously addressing some social inequalities and some major shortfalls in infrastructure and housing.

After years of caution, it was finally time to cash in on a long period of economic stability.
Did we wait too long? Or is all that caution what leaves us with the fiscal firepower to survive?

That's a question for the economic historians now.
The rest of us have to stay focused on the future we've been given. We have to get out and live life.

What does ordinary life look like again?

We're venturing out into a world that looks almost the same as before but with mildly dystopian twists.

It is all too much like an episode of the grim and subtlety futuristic sci-fi series Black Mirror.

So much of the worst is still ahead of us. Unemployment and business failures are going to hit hard in the coming weeks and months.

The truth is we have no clear timeline for this event.

All the focus on our economic future really put the virus in the background last week.

It was sobering to wake up on Friday to the World Health Organisation warning that a vaccine may never come.

Coronavirus – like the common cold - has always been a tough nut for scientists to crack.

We can't base all our economic decisions on the prospect of a silver-bullet cure.

The world may just have to get on and learn to live with this thing – albeit, hopefully, with incremental advances in treatment and management which reduce transmission and mortality rates.

For now, that leaves several big holes in our economy.

The biggest – international tourism - is impossible for us to fix ourselves.

Perhaps we'll see antibody tests and other management techniques making travel possible in time. There's hope for a transtasman bubble.

The IATA, the aviation industry body, says it will be 2023 before global tourism gets back to where it was.

Borders closed: Air new Zealand Airbus A320 aeroplanes parked at Auckland Airport in March. Photo / Supplied

But other border issues might be solved with the kind of careful rules and planning we've seen in the various stages of domestic lockdown.

For those travelling to New Zealand for an extended stay as students and long-term migrants, quarantine periods are more realistic.

New Zealand's success in getting on top of the virus, if we can sustain it, is a huge asset.
The challenges then are logistical. They are more obviously in our control.

We can with some urgency make plans to rebuild the international education sector.

We can get the big international film and television productions under way.

We don't have to assume immigration has stalled and house prices must plunge.

Immigration policy will need to be revisited quickly. The international demand to settle in New Zealand remains. Let's harness it.

What skills does the country need now in a world of much higher unemployment?
Calls to allow special access to the world's super-rich didn't fly with the Prime Minister.

But tech-savvy immigrants with an entrepreneurial bent and capital to invest – why not?

The challenge of ordinary life in the Covid-19 world will be to sort out what we can control and what we can't.

We can't afford to let any opportunity go by.

And we should be thankful – as we look at the carnage still unfolding around the world – that we are in a country where there is now opportunity in front of us.

• Covid19.govt.nz: The Government's official Covid-19 advisory website