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One year on (a rabble-rousing post)
I've seen a lot of posts recently about the pandemic anniversary, and naively, I'm shocked. It's not like I don't know other countries have been struggling with Covid all this time, but hearing about what kind of year people have had is just awful. In Auckland we think we've had it hard because as well as the initial seven week lockdown, we've had three more smaller lockdowns, of two weeks, three days and a week. In between those, our lives have been normal other than not being able to travel internationally. The rest of the country has been living normally since last August. It may seem redundant to describe normal life, but it seems most people in the world can't even remember what that was, so to clarify: we go to concerts. We go to sports games. We go to restaurants. Our children go to school. We go on holiday. Unless the lockdown level is higher than 1, which most of the time it isn't, except on public transport we don't wear masks. I bought a box of ten disposable masks at the start of this, and I've used three. Clearly, New Zealanders don't have a clue how hard it's been for everyone else. I mean, we can see it, but we don't know what it's like to experience it.
What's frustrating when seeing what others have gone through and continue to go through is that it didn't have to be like this. For various reasons it would not necessarily have been easy for every country to have done what we, or Taiwan, or Vietnam, or Australia have done (not all of us did the same thing, and other countries like Taiwan have been more successful than NZ has been using a different approach), but there are plenty where had there been more decisive action at the beginning, most of the suffering could have been averted.
I'm particularly furious about the country of my birth, the UK. Thanks to the appalling leadership of Boris Johnson, the British people have been dragged through one ineffective measure after another, with the result that they've had to suffer the psychological effects of all of those measures plus suffer one of the world's worst illness and death rates per population. This isn't just an academic matter to me. One of my British extended family has died of Covid.
It's been good to see recently, however, a bit of a push in the UK for the zero Covid measures New Zealand has taken. And I'm here to say it can be done and it's not too late.
Many of the naysayers have said that the only reason our zero Covid approach has worked has been because we're a tiny isolated island. In fact, the tininess of our "island" (it's an archipelago) has been stressed so much as the year has worn on I'm surprised I can put both feet down.
Yeah, nah. We're really not that tiny. In fact New Zealand has a larger landmass than the UK.
Compared to Europe:
And compared to the US:
Aha! the naysayers say! But you have a low population density! Well, yeah, on average. But we're not all spread out across the country. In fact more than 78% of New Zealand is uninhabited:
In the rest of it we're all squashed up together. And we've still lived without Covid for most of the year.
Today I heard that European vaccine manufacturers are refusing to send the UK any more vaccine as it's needed for European countries that haven't even started their vaccination programmes. Things are going to continue to get worse if drastic action isn't taken. There's nothing stopping the UK from implementing the measures we have. It's an island, so it's easy to strictly monitor its borders. It can still continue to trade, as we have. It can introduce an effective quarantine system at its borders as we have (in fact, they're trying to do that, one year late, right now.) Either it's an achievable #zeroCovid approach, or it's more needless burnt-out medical staff, traumatised population, long Covid sufferers and deaths.
What's frustrating when seeing what others have gone through and continue to go through is that it didn't have to be like this. For various reasons it would not necessarily have been easy for every country to have done what we, or Taiwan, or Vietnam, or Australia have done (not all of us did the same thing, and other countries like Taiwan have been more successful than NZ has been using a different approach), but there are plenty where had there been more decisive action at the beginning, most of the suffering could have been averted.
I'm particularly furious about the country of my birth, the UK. Thanks to the appalling leadership of Boris Johnson, the British people have been dragged through one ineffective measure after another, with the result that they've had to suffer the psychological effects of all of those measures plus suffer one of the world's worst illness and death rates per population. This isn't just an academic matter to me. One of my British extended family has died of Covid.
It's been good to see recently, however, a bit of a push in the UK for the zero Covid measures New Zealand has taken. And I'm here to say it can be done and it's not too late.
Many of the naysayers have said that the only reason our zero Covid approach has worked has been because we're a tiny isolated island. In fact, the tininess of our "island" (it's an archipelago) has been stressed so much as the year has worn on I'm surprised I can put both feet down.
Yeah, nah. We're really not that tiny. In fact New Zealand has a larger landmass than the UK.
Compared to Europe:
And compared to the US:
Aha! the naysayers say! But you have a low population density! Well, yeah, on average. But we're not all spread out across the country. In fact more than 78% of New Zealand is uninhabited:
In the rest of it we're all squashed up together. And we've still lived without Covid for most of the year.
Today I heard that European vaccine manufacturers are refusing to send the UK any more vaccine as it's needed for European countries that haven't even started their vaccination programmes. Things are going to continue to get worse if drastic action isn't taken. There's nothing stopping the UK from implementing the measures we have. It's an island, so it's easy to strictly monitor its borders. It can still continue to trade, as we have. It can introduce an effective quarantine system at its borders as we have (in fact, they're trying to do that, one year late, right now.) Either it's an achievable #zeroCovid approach, or it's more needless burnt-out medical staff, traumatised population, long Covid sufferers and deaths.