The Whānau of 5 Million, including the Pua family - Adrienne, Nat, Alexander and Kiko - of Papatoetoe, are Our Heroes for 2020. Photo / Amu Alexander-Pua
Catherine Richards remembers the day Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern told the country we'd all be going into alert level 4 lockdown for at least a month, dramatically changing almost every aspect of New Zealanders lives almost overnight.
"I spoke to my team," says Richards, a checkout manager at Countdown The Valley in New Plymouth, of that surreal Monday afternoon almost nine months ago.
The mum-of-one has worked for Countdown almost 30 years, climbing the career ladder through "lots of different jobs". She's also a senior union delegate because "it's important to look after my work family".
That chat with her team was for them. And it was for us.
"I said to my team, 'We've never done anything like this in our lives. We don't know what's gonna happen, but if we stick together we'll get through'.
"And I also told them, 'Just remember that our customers coming in store, this might be their only social contact, because they might be home alone. So let's be extra nice to people, and let's just look after each other'."
Richards is our hero. And we're hers.
This year, the Herald has chosen the Whānau of 5 Million as winner of the 2020 Our Heroes Award.
Our heroes stayed home and stopped the spread of Covid-19. Our heroes stuck their necks out when they shared facts backed by science, even when some of us didn't want to hear it.
Our heroes helped those in need, and our heroes made us laugh at any inanities they could extract from our collective not-so-funny situation.
Our heroes sat at the bedsides of the sick and dying.
Some of our heroes are familiar. Many more are not.
When Zack Makoare looks back at 2020, he thinks of Dr Ashley Bloomfield.
The director general of health emerged from the usual shadows of public service to stand alongside Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and calmly deliver daily televised updates on the virus, earning a cult celebrity status that manifested itself in sometimes extraordinarily devoted ways, including a fan-penned love song and a hero-style tattoo of his likeness on a Waikato woman's leg.
Makoare watched the 1pm Covid-19 updates each day from his home in Flaxmere, and thinks Bloomfield was "amazing".
"We were really well-informed by people like him."
Then the 60-year-old went back to his own work supporting vulnerable young people in his Hawke's Bay community, as so many Kiwis around the country did - as best they could - during the level 4 lockdown, and beyond.
By October, the Supreme Sikh Society of New Zealand had provided more than 66,000 food parcels to families in need since the first lockdown.
And when community transmission returned in Auckland in August, Vahefonua Tonga Methodist Mission Trust supported more than 600 Pacific families with food parcels, masks and budgeting advice.
Throughout the year, the Mental Health Foundation of New Zealand kept spirits up with regular social media posts letting followers know whatever they were feeling - whether wanting more time in their bubble or just "feeling a bit all over the place" - was okay.
"We've done this before," the foundation posted on August 14, after the Prime Minister announced Auckland and the country would remain at levels 3 and 2 respectively for another 12 days.
"We've got the tools to get through."
For the 25 six- to 18-year-olds, and their families, that Makoare supports through the non-profit Māori trust he founded in memory of the 15-year-old son he lost to suicide 20 years ago, those tools included cooking, music, exercise, planting gardens and, most of all, doing so online together.
"Some of our kids are in mental distress," the 60-year-old says of those he helps through Te Taitimu Trust.
"So we did little workshops and competitions [online]. But the biggest part was keeping connected with them."
Makoare, who is Ngāti Kahungunu and Ngāti Porou, also helped deliver food donated by Brownrigg Agriculture during the lockdown and, with the kids involved in his trust after restrictions eased, collected firewood to give to the community
He loves the idea of "five million people all being champions", because that's what he saw during 2020's toughest days.
"I think everybody saw it, everybody knew it - we have a responsibility to each other. It wasn't just because the Government's saying that.
"You could feel that everybody was feeling that same emotion."
Makoare's praise of Bloomfield's calm communication was shared by many, but the health boss told the Herald he was equally heartened by the support and widespread participation of Kiwis to help keep the country Covid-free.
"[I] support completely an award recognising the role all people in New Zealand have played in our nation's Covid response," Bloomfield says.
"It's great to be part of this country where we tackle problems collectively and work together on solutions. As has been said many times - Covid is the problem and people, all five million of us, are the solution."
That message - Covid is the problem, people are the solution - is one Bloomfield's shared for months. Straightforward messaging to Kiwis about the virus, from the top down, has been recognised around the world.
In August, the Prime Minister's communication style during the level 4 lockdown was described in a Scottish universities' study of her March and April speeches and public statements as "clear and relatable" at a time when the pandemic required leaders to show not only effective planning but also an ability to communicate clear and consistent messages in an empathetic way.
From classifying the Easter Bunny as an essential worker to taking a 20 per cent pay cut in solidarity with workers made redundant, Ardern's relaxed, informal messaging helped build a collective shared experience of Covid-19 and contributed to one of the lowest death rates in the world, the study found.
There have been mistakes.
It emerged after the Auckland outbreak in August that border-facing workers weren't being tested for Covid-19 as Cabinet had expected, with then-Health Minister Chris Hipkins taking responsibility for the failure.
And a damning Auditor-General report in June found the Ministry of Health had no idea how much personal protective equipment (PPE) it had, how much it needed, what had expired and how it should be distributed during the lockdown.
The Auditor-General also slammed Bloomfield for giving "mixed messages" during a press conference relating to PPE.
But the Government's response, in particular the Prime Minister, has earned many more bouquets than brickbats, especially from those in the worst-affected countries overseas.
Barbra Streisand joined a swag of celebrities to praise Ardern, tweeting that "more women [should be] in charge of public health".
And this week the US' top infectious disease expert, and newly-appointed chief medical adviser for President-elect Joe Biden, Dr Anthony Fauci told Herald US correspondent Dick Brass Kiwis had "done very well" in listening to the kinds of public health messages that had come from the authorities.
"Kudos to New Zealand!"
It helps when, unlike Fauci's own leader, outgoing US president Donald Trump, those in charge make decisions based on public health science.
That happened here and, because New Zealand had to take a different path from other Western countries, it took courage, Professor Michael Baker says.
New Zealand usually looks to the World Health Organisation and American, British and European health agencies for guidance on pandemics, but early on they seemed dismissive of the threat.
"I certainly came to the conclusion we needed to be much more proactive. By the end of February the Asian countries were following more the containment approach and ... towards elimination. And it convinced me we should go down the same approach."
With "quite a bit of advocacy", the Government agreed, says Baker, who is an epidemiologist.
"The distinguishing feature was on March 23 we're going straight to the most intense lockdown when we only had 100 cases and no deaths. And that was pretty unheard of internationally ... even Australia wasn't doing that.
"We departed from the entire Western world at that moment."
New Zealand scientists deserve a lot of credit, for their efforts in building up our capacity for testing from zero to 25,000 a day and their "really world-class" work in genomic testing, which helps detect any unknown potential spread of new cases, Baker says.
Our scientists, a tiny community by global standards, also delivered some of the best science in the world, including the evidence-based responses so vital to Government decisions on how to stop the spread of Covid-19, he says.
While some Kiwis didn't join the team of 5 million, breaching lockdown rules or spreading misinformation online, most played their part - Google data showed most of us stayed home in the early days of the lockdown.
The public responded to the lockdown "extremely well", but it's the public service and politicians, supported by the work of scientists, who deserve the most credit, Baker says.
"[The politicians] made these hard judgements, and then rolled out these interventions, almost seamlessly it seemed to me ... and [we had] that very effective communication by the Prime Minister, that empathetic communication she's famously good at."
Ardern and her Government were rewarded by the public with a mandate to govern alone, after a landslide win in October's election.
It's been a hard year, but Kiwis got through because of the efforts of everyone - and everyone deserves the Our Heroes award, the Prime Minister says.
"As a result of our team's response New Zealand has the lowest Covid case and death rate out of any OECD country. And our economy is doing better than many others. It was a team effort, so thank you."
Studying New Zealand's Covid cases, plans and doing the daily press conferences, she "never once" felt like the burden was hers to carry alone, she told the Herald.
"It was a total team effort and it felt that way."
Our collective efforts taught her we should always have faith in one another, Ardern says.
"I know Kiwis are capable of incredible things, but Covid proved that. It's easy to be cynical and depressed about the state of the world sometimes, but if we needed an example that we can genuinely look out for one another, we have it right here."
We look out for each other.
We also know each other. When big loss of life occurs, most people in New Zealand can trace some connection to the dead.
Not this time, says an Auckland man whose mum was one of 25 Kiwis to lose their lives to Covid-19.
"We were incredibly lucky," the man, who prefers not to be identified, told the Herald.
"I remember thinking at one point, 'We won't be building memorials to the hundreds or the thousands of people who died in the pandemic, and that's a good thing.
"I imagine in the rest of the world people are now just blase and immune to how awful it is, and we've missed all that. That's fantastic."
The man wrote in the Herald on April 27, the day the level 4 lockdown ended, of the challenges of visiting his mum in hospital - the hot and heavy PPE, his gratitude at being able to visit when other families couldn't and realising, as the days passed, his mum was dying.
Lately, he's been thinking about the vaccine - the first doses started in the United Kingdom this week - and the "massively bad luck" that his mum lived at one of the five aged-care homes where Covid-19 spread, and that she was infected.
They'd shared a smile when he asked his mum, as they watched the Prime Minister and Bloomfield give the 1pm update two days before the 79-year-old's death, how it felt to be famous.
His mum wasn't a deep thinker, but she liked "being part of things", he says.
"She would've been aware of the team of 5 million. And she would've felt she was part of that."
Smiles despite hard times.
That's what Nat Pua was trying to win, too, turning life in a time of Covid-19 into a time when it's also okay to laugh at the fact we're all in the same boat, waiting to go ashore.
And the Papatoetoe dad-of-two isn't alone.
Many put teddies in windows for kids on bubble-safe teddy bear hunts, later followed by Easter egg drawing hunts and, to acknowledge those who served, Anzac Day poppy posters.
On the flipside, nzlockdownmemes built a dedicated following of almost 50,000 thanks to ruthless take downs of 2020's hardships, all with fair warning - the page's Instagram description reads: "It's satire, chill".
For Pua, whose day job is creating content for Safekids Aotearoa, his satirical TikToks on lighthearted aspects of the pandemic were both a chance to blow off steam and, in some cases, fight misinformation around the virus.
"I believe in the messages I'm trying to promote and at the same time I'm trying to poke a little fun. There's also always a little bit of truth in jest ... so if I can marry up something I believe in and make a joke at the same time, it's a win for me."
One of the 36-year-old's TikToks, the self-penned Lockdown Level 2.5 sung to the tune of Mambo No.5, is a sardonic slapdown of former Advance NZ co-leader Billy Te Kahika.
"Those who prey on the vulnerable on social media, it really grates me. I wanted to provide a different voice."
He's proud to give Kiwis comic relief in the toughest of years.
"It's so important to be able to keep our humanity and still be able to smile and laugh. Especially in times when things are so uncertain, it's important to have some normality and some hope."
So many have been working hard this year.
Not least our health workers.
Ana Aitcheson describes her lockdown as "24/7 work", and is thankful for the support of her husband who took on full-time care of their three kids as she managed social services for The Fono, the largest Pacific health non-Government organisation in New Zealand.
"It's been a wild year. When [Covid-19] first came we didn't know what we were in for, we were just gearing up for war with Covid."
As well as providing welfare support and food parcels for those struggling with poverty, addiction and isolation, The Fono also ran some of the Covid-19 testing stations, putting staff on the frontline for potential infection, although they took the necessary precautions.
"You were quite scared early on. [I thought] am I taking this home to my husband and children?"
But she and her colleagues also quickly realised why they went into health and social care - to help their community when it needed them the most, Aitcheson says.
"There was this sense of, 'I've gotta do this - if I can help, then this is exactly why I do what I do'."
During the August level 3 lockdown in Auckland, her team supported every close or casual contact of those infected with the virus, which mostly affected the Pacific community at that time.
"It was really hard for our community, that second lockdown, but man they're resilient.
"They really pulled through and supported each other and the end result is we're no longer in lockdown, and that's because of everybody's effort, from the health sector, social sector to the community itself."
Also pulling long hours was Lisa King.
The Eat My Lunch founder was among business leaders across the country who turned their nous and connections to help Kiwis, including the Mowbray siblings, of toy company Zuru, who leveraged contacts in China to supply the Ministry of Health with millions of items of PPE.
Eat My Lunch works by donating a lunch to a Kiwi kid for every lunch a consumer buys, but when lockdown slammed the door on demand King arranged instead to home deliver lunches to 2000 kids in need.
The logistical challenge was massive, she says.
"Over that four-week period we delivered 10,500 boxes across Auckland and Wellington. Normally we deliver to 77 schools. So that's 77 versus 2000."
Her good deed also sparked others to get involved, with partner Foodstuffs donating $100,000 and others, such as Sanford, Kelloggs and Fonterra, lending support.
Nanogirl Michelle Dickinson added to the buzz by creating science experiments the kids could do using their lunches' packaging.
The days were long - 12 to 14 hours, six days a week - and some in her team stayed away from their own families to keep Eat My Lunch's bubble small, but it helped knowing everyone around the country was doing their bit, King says.
"There was this heightened sense that everyone was playing their part, and it made our team make sure we were playing our part as well."
Back in New Plymouth, life has returned to normal for Richards, the Countdown checkout manager.
No longer does she have to tell customers to queue outside the supermarket so social distancing can be maintained.
Nor does she have to do "virtual hugs" for members of her team going through tough times.
And when she gets home from work she can sit down and have her cup of tea straightaway, instead of taking her clothes off at the back door, putting them in the hot wash and jumping in the shower.
She's "so thankful" to live in New Zealand, Richards says.
And she's "super proud" of her team - at Countdown The Valley, and beyond - for keeping everyone safe when a pandemic upended all our lives.
"At first, I'm proud of my team at work. But actually it's everybody else too. I say to people, 'You know, it could actually be a lot worse'.
"We should be thankful - we've got through this year all together."
The man is now in a critical but stable condition in hospital.