Editorial: Acting on the lessons of the pandemic, public and private

Surfers prepare to enter the water at Sumner Beach in Christchurch last Tuesday on the first day of alert level three. Photo / AP file

EDITORIAL

With each sign New Zealand is wrestling its Covid-19 outbreak into submission, the drumbeats for more focus to go on the economy become louder.

Case numbers are low, people are recovering, clusters are disappearing and few people are in hospital with the coronavirus.

It is about the best situation we could hope for - provided it remains on that positive trajectory during level three - before winter strikes.

The health threat and its economic fallout are not an either/or scenario. The coronavirus needs to be under control within our borders for our economy to get up to speed.

People's livelihoods and personal security depend on that happening with few hitches. Anxiety is rising. Critical voices are making themselves heard.

As it is, our financial engine will not hit top gear until the pandemic eases overseas and a vaccine becomes available, possibly early next year.

But the old normal should not just slot back into place unquestioned as we welcome back familiar habits. It would be a mistake for the country to reach blindly for the shelter of a past that could not protect us from this sudden mess.

With people able to get takeaways and flat whites again, more traffic on the roads and fewer kids on bikes riding the footpaths, late March and April already feels like a quiet, surreal interlude.

In the rush to return to "normality", is there a chance that some of the important lessons of the pandemic could get trampled underfoot?

The Government has been focused on the immediate emergency at hand. But now is the time, while we are still navigating disruptions and adapting to new ways of doing things, to start giving thought to longer-term issues.

Major upheaval can result in innovation and provide the impetus to fix what needs fixing. The outbreak and our response now needs to be studied from all angles.

Different countries have had varying results in dealing with the pandemic, but common issues will need to be addressed by all.

Can countries better protect those who have borne the brunt of the pandemic worldwide: medics, emergency responders, essential workers, the elderly in rest homes, people with poor health and ethnic minority groups?

How can countries improve in areas of securing medical supplies, use of technology and strategies to deal with a future pandemic in a less economically damaging way?

In New Zealand, can we learn from the experience and approaches of some of our near neighbours? Can better health practices be incorporated into everyday life, including in the way businesses operate? Can economic shock absorbers and new approaches be introduced to the way we work to allow people to more easily ride out financial eruptions?

On an individual level, people will have learned new things about themselves and their lives over the lockdown period such as what they did not want to be without and what they surprisingly did not miss. How much they were able to save or go without or do differently.

Many will have faced stark, difficult decisions.

Rather like receiving a bad medical diagnosis out of the blue, the pandemic has cast a harsh light on the basic essentials of life.