Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern arriving for her post-Cabinet media update at Parliament this week. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern arriving for her post-Cabinet media update at Parliament this week. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Opinion by Simon Wilson
Simon Wilson is an award-winning senior writer covering politics, the climate crisis, transport, housing, urban design and social issues. He joined the Herald in 2018.
The drums are beating, quietly for now but that won't last, for an early return to normal. And who doesn't feel for the drummers? It's no joke, when people's livelihoods are destroyed: it's really not what we elect Governments to do.
Michael Barnett from Auckland's Chamber of Commerce has providedsome context: in a survey of 1000 businesses, he says, "Over 30 per cent of those … companies are going to have shut themselves down. They will not survive." That's a terrible number.
National Party leader Simon Bridges has responded that businesses should be able to get "back in action if they don't pose a risk".
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern's response was to say, "A strategy that sacrifices people in favour of supposedly a better economic outcome is a false dichotomy."
National leader Simon Bridges speaks to media during a press conference at Parliament this week. Photo / Mark Mitchell
She's right. In the New York Times, economist Austan Goolsbee of the University of Chicago is reported saying: "Anything that slows the rate of the virus is the best thing you can do for the economy, even if by conventional measures it's bad for the economy."
His argument is that this isn't economy vs health. If we don't win the health battle the economy will be even more devastated than is happening now. It's essential that Bridges, Barnett and others understand this. They have a vital role in managing expectations.
The pressure to ease the restrictions also comes from households everywhere. There's only so much parents and kids can take of each other; a limit to what people on their own can cope with. Where poverty, disability or stress are a factor, things can quickly slide into awful.
Even if You Tube and Netflix are your happy place, at some point enough becomes absobloodylutely enough. Lockdown's a good test for couples, though, am I right?
The paradox is that the longer New Zealand remains in the "relatively untouched" phase, the more the feeling grows that we've overreacted. But it's not true.
Stories keep emerging of people not observing the rules. Sometimes flagrantly, sometimes because the rules, although clear, are actually not always clear. Infectious diseases specialist Dr Siouxsie Wiles has advised that the 2m rule is a guide to casual contact only, relevant to being in the supermarket or going for a walk.
It's not a big enough distance for neighbours chatting over the fence, she says, or settling in for an afternoon session in the backyards. Covid-19 can be carried on the air for many more metres than that. How far, and how active it remains for how long when breathed or sneezed, is still not clearly understood.
That uncertainty will be informing Government decisions on when and how to lift the lockdown. It also gives a clue to what life will be like after level 4: in the new normal, it won't be normal at all.
Lake Rd in Devonport is deserted now, but what will it be like after lockdown if everyone wants to drive to work? Photo / Brett Phibbs
Those who can may be asked to keep working from home. How will transport work? We might want to stay off buses and trains for a while, but imagine the roads if everyone drives to work, by car, on their own. The entertainment industry will not rush back to life, and nor will anything else that relies on crowds breathing all over each other.
For retail and other commerce, supply chains will need repair and even when they open their doors again, who'll have the money to go shopping?
Ducks fly over twice a day here, in a big V, heading north in the morning and back south at the end of the day. Some of them quack vigorously, which must use up energy, but it seems to make them happy.
Organised and free: the duck flyover. Photo / Simon Wilson
It's exciting when you hear them coming and they're lovely to look at. They fly like cyclists, drafting each other and taking turns in the apex of the V. When the lead duck peels off it loops back to the end of the line and on they go.
One side of the V is always longer than the other. Apparently there's no reason for it. A duck will simply choose the nearest other duck to draft behind. They don't care about symmetry. And yet they make something beautiful. They're organised and free.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern arriving for her post-Cabinet media update at Parliament this week. Photo / Mark Mitchell
As the PM said on Wednesday, we have to stay the course. We could stamp out this thing, she said, and we know it now. How remarkable would that be? Good testing and tracking regimes will be needed, but the critical factor will be public support, including business support. Organised and free. We have to believe.
And hold, in our mind's eye, a glimmer of a promise. I'm looking forward to returning to my local cafe, where all the servers know my name, except one, who asks it again, every single time. I do hope she'll be back, I'm looking forward to picking up where we left off.
