A sunny Saturday down at the river traders' market makes the spectre of Omicron still feel distant. Whanganui has stayed largely unscathed by this global pandemic but it is looming.
Unfortunately, Horizons Regional Council has been hit early. One of the team in Palmerston North was confirmed with Covid last week so quite a few colleagues are close contacts and isolating, awaiting test results. That certainly brings it home.
Some people are saying it's best to get it over and done with – to get infected while your vaccinations are current. But it's likely there will be more variants yet and being infected once doesn't stop you from getting infected again.
What does help is getting a booster as soon as you qualify. I'm booked for mine as soon as the four-month period passes – just a week to wait now.
And while for most of us the illness will be like a bad flu for a week or so, no one wants to end up in ICU with complications, or worse. Every loss of life is an absolute tragedy. Then there's long Covid that affects some people – maybe even for years. I'm trying to avoid this.
But it's still been hard in my work life to be comfy with the decision to make our upcoming Thrive events online only – there are negatives in reducing that face-to-face contact. The Government's traffic light system means we could go ahead, and it's different for everyone, but if we can reduce our contact and still get our jobs done, then that's the right path for us for now. We are doing our bit to reduce the risk of contributing to unnecessary early transmission in our community.
