Level 4 / 2.0
Well I suppose it was only a matter of time really. Delta is now among us it seems and the appearance of just one positive case was enough for the government to return New Zealand to a level 4 lockdown after more than six months without a single community case of Covid-19. On the face of it, and by this I mean to anyone living outside our borders, this may seem like an overreaction but in reality I think it was the only acceptable response. After all, the way in which this country has handled the pandemic up to this point has clearly, and justifiably, been the envy of the rest of the world. For most of the pandemic, we have managed to simply eliminate the virus, not merely contain it.
Obviously this is in part down to good government, clear communication and fast, decisive decision making, all of which have been sadly lacking in most countries. But the biggest success has arguably been the response of our so called ‘team of five million’. As a community the national population have come together and strictly adhered to every piece of advice and every set of guidelines that have been put into place to keep everyone safe and our economy, on the whole, secure. There have been no protests, no flagrant flouting of protocol, no real unkindness towards others, simply a willingness to respond in a socially responsible way with that typical Kiwi resilience and ‘keep calm and carry on’ manner for which this country is so revered on the global stage.
When I watch the news and see the mass unwillingness to comply in other countries, in particular the US, Europe and Australia, it’s as if I’m watching the events unfold from a different planet, so abstracted is it from our way of life here. Perhaps that’s in part because we’ve had it better than we should in comparison, indeed aside from the initial hard, early lockdown over a year ago, life has pretty much carried on as normal. For most of the past 18 months, the pandemic was only something the rest of the world is concerned with, which is why the discovery now of a second major outbreak comes as a bit of a wake up call to us.
In truth I think we had almost forgotten about it. It was essentially pushed to the back of our collective consciousness. Of course the major difference this time around is that we are faced with a new, improved aggressor in the form of Delta. Covid-19 2.0 if you will. And as much as this government has done well in responding to the pandemic as a whole, the arrival of Delta has made it glaringly obvious where the same government has fallen well short; vaccination.
At the time of writing, just 22% of New Zealanders are fully vaccinated. At first glance that maybe doesn’t seem too bad, after all that is nearly a quarter of the population (even if that’s still far behind other developed nations). However, when that 22% equates to a number less than half the population of most major western cities, you realise that we have fallen woefully short of where we should be in our bid to get to the so called ‘herd immunity’ benchmark of around 85%. Appallingly, even the Police force are only around 66% vaccinated, which in many respects I find even more shocking.
We are asking the very people that are designated to actively enforce lockdown protocol (and by the very nature of their job deal with a section of society that are statistically unlikely to be vaccinated anyway) to do so completely unprotected against an unseen, and potentially deadly attacker. I wonder how we managed to get so much right and yet the vaccination rollout is something we’ve clearly got so wrong. It’s a puzzling dichotomy. It’s also an unnerving one. Unnerving as it may be though, I still feel thankful to be here of all places during these uncertain times. For the moment at least, these beautiful islands are a haven from the madness that surrounds us. Long may we keep it at bay.
