If You Think Your Covid-19 Lockdown is Bad…

[Special note: I know I said we were going to talks about things other than Covid-19, but Kate convinced me that this was worth an exception. Harry]

Pity our poor New Zealand friends. Here is the government advice:

Self-isolation means staying at home. The Government has asked all New Zealanders to stay at home to help stop the spread of COVID-19.

You can leave your house to:

   ·         access essential services, like buying groceries, or going to a bank or pharmacy

   ·         go to work if you work for an essential service

   ·         go for a walk, or exercise and enjoy nature.

If you do leave your house, you must keep a 2 metre distance from other people at all times. Police may be monitoring people and asking questions of people who are out and about during the Alert Level 4 lockdown to check what they are doing.

Sound reasonable? Maybe. But there is police-state-like creepage to these regulations. For example, liquor stores are not considered essential services, so they have to close. This means that anyone who drinks spirits is out of luck, because supermarkets don’t sell them. So if you’re stuck at home, thinking you might just get through it all with a fine whisky or a gin and tonic, too bad. The other problem is that all of the winos who used to roll into the liquor stores, grab their bottle of sherry and leave will now be cramming into the supermarkets, wandering around the aisles and spitting on the floor. Surely the idea was to spread people out?

Then there’s regular shopping. Only one nominated member of the family can go into the supermarket, they have to be out the door in 30 minutes, and some supermarkets are starting to insist on Visa payWave to avoid contact. The Government kept insisting there was no need for panic buying and the supermarkets would stay open no matter what, but now those people who did do panic buying will be patting themselves on the back. And good luck finding any decent meat. Butchers are not considered essential services. Butchers! Is this an anti-meat, left-wing bias of the Labour government?

Oh, and that “go for a walk, or exercise and enjoy nature” doesn’t mean you’re allowed to drive somewhere nice, where there might actually be a bit of nature. The police were very definite about that. The “advice” is to walk around the block. Around the block!  You have to be kidding! What is more self-isolating than being in a car, driving to a scenic spot and gazing at the ocean? Instead, you walk around the block, avoiding people, go back inside your flat, and start shouting at the bored kids who are home from their closed schools, and at your irritable spouse who, like you, has been sent home from work. And you can’t even look forward to taking the edge off it all with a G&T.

The Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, started off in a reasonable way, but closing the bottle stores was her “I know, I’ll be woke and wear a hijab” moment in this crisis. New Zealand has moved from Level 2, mild control, to Level 4, everything shut down. Plus a State of Emergency has been declared, which allows for road blocks, and police being able to enter properties to check that people aren’t fraternising.

And no-one has died! That’s right, no-one has died. As of today, 26 March:

•         283 people have tested positive
•          seven people are in hospital, none in ICU
•         27 people have recovered.

The whole economy has been shut down, the whole population has been shut in, all on the basis of modelled projections. According to the government’s own information site there are 500 deaths every year, on average, from influenza.

In establishing this police state there has been no weighing of the costs to personal freedom, mental health, and the economy. Freedom of movement has been protected, though, above all else. New Zealand was in a position where there was no covid-19 here, at all. We were a corona virus-free island nation exactly a month ago. As tourists entered the country and people came back from overseas they were asked to self-isolate for 14 days. Asked! Who is going to do that apart from the most overwhelmingly socially responsible people? And so the number of cases grew as more people came in. Why not inconvenience returning travellers and tourists rather than a whole country? Why not institute compulsory screening and/or quarantine for those who are dawdling back now?

In an odd coincidence, Brentan Tarrant confessed today to carrying out the mosque killings in Christchurch on 15 March last year. It’s interesting because since that date it has been very difficult for New Zealanders to comment on the major news sites (e.g. Stuff.co.nz). Comments were shut down after the killings and have only been reinstated on a minimal, case-by-case basis, avoiding anything controversial – such as our Prime Minister talking to the nation. The mosque massacre was terrible, but, unlike France and the UK, who insisted that terrorist attacks would not change their societies, New Zealand became much more heavily censored. Now with Covid-19 and the main TV news channels basically uncritical mouthpieces for the government, I fear things will get even worse.

The only bright spot on the horizon is that Sky NZ is broadcasting Sky News Australia for 3 months. I don’t agree with every angle they take, or believe everything they say, but at least they have strong, critical opinions and express them openly.

Kate Flinders