Editorial: Counting our blessings at Christmas in this difficult time

Hopefully there will be light at the end of the tunnel with the pandemic in 2022. Photo / AP

Christmas is the ideal time to both count your blessings and look back on unfortunate events and people missed while surrounded by the comfort of family.

People regularly die of many things other than the coronavirus - such as cancer, heart attacks, strokes, vehicle accidents, old age - and for many families around the country there will be a chair unoccupied where a loved one used to sit.

The tasks that person used to do at Christmas time will be performed by someone else, but their presence will still be in the room - drawn there through shared memories.

As a country, we've been fortunate to have been spared that extra heavy layer of grief Covid-19 has inflicted around the world.

In the United States, for instance, 810,000 people have died from the coronavirus - including 200,000 in just the last five months.

That's not to say that the families of the nearly 50 Kiwi victims of the pandemic won't be missing them just as much as people in similar circumstances elsewhere.

And there will be lots of families thinking of relatives and friends far away: People out of reach physically, and those unable to be welcomed back home.

For many Kiwis the impact of the pandemic has been both practical yet deeply stressful with reduced income for long periods. There was a huge spike in demand for food support in Auckland during the lockdown and in the lead-up to Christmas.

Despite the slog of lockdowns the country still has a broader unity than many nations. A Pew Research Centre poll on attitudes to pandemic health measures in June put us at the more positive and cohesive end of countries surveyed.

Of course, six months later, the public is more weary, uncertain of what's ahead, and a sense of purpose over the pandemic has eroded somewhat since early 2020. Loudly expressed frustrations at various aspects of the Covid response - from people wanting to speed up reopening to others worried about the impact of fast-shifting changes - have grown.

There's a desire among some just to be elsewhere, to achieve personal goals put on hold such as visiting places they've dreamed of, going on their OE, seeing relatives or seeking work opportunities. That hasn't been realistically possible for many in the past two years and at present, with Omicron still outside the community here, New Zealand is one of the best places to be.

While the vaccination rollout was slow to crank up, the majority of people did respond and with that experience officials hopefully should be able to run better programmes for boosters and child shots.

The Pew poll found a link between satisfaction over Covid response and fewer deaths in the pandemic. The Delta outbreak spurred vaccinations to high levels and Omicron will likely encourage people to get boosters.

Next year the virus will embed more widely in the country as it reopens, but the hope will be that most vaccinated and boosted people will avoid serious outcomes. The medical aid will have to be updated - Israel is the first country to announce a fourth dose - and people should keep up mask-wearing habits, distancing, and hybrid work.

The public can reflect this Christmas on the blessings of a general but uneasy sense of safety and a feeling of thankfulness at, so far, having avoided a calamitous death and infection toll compared with other countries.