Personal responsibility has come into play in the US, says Sir Ian Taylor.
Personal responsibility has come into play in the US, says Sir Ian Taylor.
This is part 5 of a diary Sir Ian Taylor is providing to the Herald over the course of his travel trial.
Today I set out from my hotel for a meeting with Zac Fields, senior vice president graphic technology and integration at Fox Sports. Zac has been a huge supporter of "his Kiwis from down under" for many years. Two years ago, just before Covid hit, he introduced us to the technology team at Major League Baseball.
These are opportunities you can only dream of when you're a small company operating from the bottom of the world, and they only happen when you take the time to travel and meet face to face with people who would never have heard of a place called Dunedin in New Zealand.
They are certainly not opportunities that pop up on a Zoom call, and it highlights the importance for New Zealand businesses operating on the world stage to be able to travel with a high level of certainty that they won't be stranded overseas for months – as many currently are.
Because my meeting at Fox was the main reason for visiting LA, I chose a hotel within a half-hour walking distance of the Fox Studio Lot, which meant I could walk out in the open without the need for a mask, as I would regularly do back home.
Well, I soon discovered I was the only person taking that walk without a mask. Admittedly the streets aren't crowded but it was noticeable that every person I passed on my half hour walk wore a mask, children included, and almost all created social distancing as we passed each other. For anyone watching sport on television out of the US, and most countries around the world these days, this is obviously not universal, but there are lessons we can take from how the people here in LA are handling it.
It seems that having accepted that Covid is going to be something they have to live with, possibly forever, people are making their own choices about how best to protect themselves and their families.
The double vaccination rate in California is only just over 60 per cent, so they aren't relying solely on vaccination as being the answer. What they do seem to be doing is taking other measures extremely seriously. High on that list is testing.
This approach, taking personal responsibility, was highlighted for me not only as I put my mask back on as I continued my walk down to Fox Studios, but also on my arrival there.
Signs at the main gate made it clear that you could not enter the site if you were feeling unwell, that you had to wear masks indoors even if you were fully vaccinated and you had to observe social distancing.
Once making it past the first check-in point, you signed in with a nurse at the next gate to determine if you needed to be tested before entering. If you were unvaccinated, they required you to take a rapid antigen test on the spot. If you were fully vaccinated you could enter without the test but if you wished to take one you could do that, for free.
Interestingly, given the debate we are having at home around mandating, not being vaccinated did not prevent anyone from entering the site, as long as they tested negative. Given some of the debate around antigen testing, that may prove to be a step too far back home, but it does highlight a different, more inclusive approach, that may well find favour over time as rapid PCR testing, like the MicroGEM system, gains more traction with government.
Sir Ian Taylor's Government-approved self-isolation pilot begins this week as he flies from Dunedin to Auckland, on to Los Angeles and San Francisco. Photo / Dean Purcell
I had come to the studios fully prepared to conduct my meeting masked for the duration, but Zac called down to suggest we simply meet outside in the courtyard and have our meeting in the open, without the need for masks. Not a big deal but again a sign that living with Covid is something being taken seriously and, at least at this stage, requiring us to recognise that we need to do things a little differently.
Yes, we are doing a lot of this back home as well, but I came away from the meeting with further reinforcement of something I had begun to sense the day before. Here the Covid response no longer appears to be driven by fear. There is an acceptance that we have to find ways to live with it and there will be sacrifices we have to make. Locking people away, and telling them how to behave, is no longer one of the options. This does not mean we have to throw caution to the wind, because we have done so many things well.
But if we look at Covid, not simply as something that presents us with challenges, but also as something that offers us huge opportunities to provide unique Kiwi solutions, we can still show we are a world leader.
What I have seen here in LA, that we can learn from, is that sense of personal responsibility that has come into play. If you accept the science, then you get vaccinated. If you need to be tested, then there are countless options for you to do that.
Zac provided me with an antigen self-testing kit as I left today. It's the same kit they use at Fox, the same that Zac and his family uses regularly at home, and it is the same that they are now using in schools.
Zac gave me something else as well. Something that could not, would not, have happened had I not been sitting at that table with him this morning, in LA.
As I was about to leave, he said: "You know I should introduce you to the team at Unreal and Epic Games some time. They would love to see what you guys do." For anyone in our industry, an opportunity like that is simply priceless. Like the introduction to Major League Baseball, it is not something I could ever have imagined happening.
It took me half an hour to walk back to my hotel. I opened my email, and there was an invitation - to meet with the Epic team on Thursday afternoon.
Not bad for a little Māori fella from Raupunga, eh?
