Ed Said - We've got to keep on keeping on

After the usual pointed on-screen pre-movie instructions about keeping your phone ringer turned off, it’s a shock to be in a theatre when everyone’s Covid alert message goes off at once. It was a Saturday night, and the Covid alert blared a warning that at 6am the next morning Auckland was returning to alert level three, the rest of the country to alert level two.

Ironically, the start date of this latest alert level lockdown reveals a little known fact: Exactly 12 months ago the first case of Covid-19 in New Zealand was reported on February 28 2020, a person in their 60s who travelled to Auckland from Iran. Twenty-four hours later and supermarkets were swamped by people buying toilet paper, hand sanitiser, and tinned food. Remember?

Cases in New Zealand slowly escalated through March, and community transmission was becoming a reality. Our borders became more strictly patrolled. The virus was rampant overseas and many of the 100 countries with the disease went into lockdown. Financial markets went into freefall.

The second March issue of the Mangawhai Focus carried a front page headline ‘Community caution over coronavirus’. As a community it was unfamiliar territory, we were all trying to understand what was going on, but didn’t realise that a very new reality would soon be upon us.

Dated and delivered March 23, that edition is a reminder to me of the day the Prime Minister announced that in 48 hours the country will be moving to alert level four.

New Zealand reported its first Covid-related death on March 29, a women in her 70s from the West Coast. Total active cases: 514.

One year on and we are still dealing with the effects of Covid – physical, mental, financial – but we have enjoyed many freedoms compared to the rest of the world, who have looked at our situation with envy.

There are many who say that the government enforcing lockdowns and alert levels and border controls on a whim is a breach of our civil rights and liberties and social freedoms. It’s a chicken and egg scenario. Government is elected by the people, then creates rules, regulations, and laws to keep those same people in line.

We are free to self-isolate, self-regulate, and trusted to contact trace. The relationship between Government and the general population has been one of trust, but still Aucklanders flee the City when an alert level change is announced, and others go to the gym with symptoms after a Covid test.

Turning an ear to talkback radio on Sunday morning of last week’s alert level, it was fairly clear how much of the country felt about those who were to blame for the latest lockdown scare. Is it time the Government prosecuted those who deliberately flout Covid restrictions?

It doesn’t help that much of the country is divided on its opinions regarding lockdowns, though in a strange way Covid has helped show us the more absurd side of human nature, that we are just too stupid to do the right thing. We are like the toddler who covers themselves from head to toe in Nutella then wanders through every room in the house, even though we’ve been told to stay right where we are.

Back in April, at the very start of our full national lockdown, Radio New Zealand caught up with famed ‘lyrical legend’ Sam Hunt, who admitted to quite liking lockdown, being in his comfort zone, preferring isolation.

At the time, Hunt, who has been living on the Kaipara Harbour for 20 years, gathered together an ode for the times. Reading it almost 12 months later, the nightmare keeps on keeping on, but then again, so must we. Don’t you think?