The first day with the whole country at the Red Light setting – here we go again, well sort of. Here in Tamaki Makaurau we have the first rain in weeks, the temperature has dropped, the air feels different today with the moisture – like summer is waning and after the holiday period we’re back to the new reality.
Yesterday we saw the news come through, an unscheduled Press Conference with Jacinda and Ashley. Uh oh – we all knew what that meant, Omicron was in the community and we were going to the Red Light setting, it had been clearly messaged ahead of time that that would be the response.
And yet within minutes the horrible negative comments emerged on social media, on community pages, on news sites. People outraged at confirmation of something they knew darn well was about to happen. Comments out of all perspective that would suggest we were going into a level four lock-down, not a setting with mask use and gatherings limited to one hundred.
People saying – I’m over it, let it rip, we have to live our lives, the Omicron variant isn’t even all that serious, etc. In addition there were many very unpleasant things about our Prime Minister, but more on that in a bit.
Sure Omicron does not cause as high a proportion of people to get seriously ill as the Delta variant. But we are going to be dealing with a very large number of cases and even a smaller percentage of that much larger number is still a big number.
We only have to look across the Tasman where they are having 50-100 deaths every day right now. Each day they are having as many deaths as we have had from Covid in two years.
Based on population size if we end up with the same death rate as Australia we will be having 10-20 deaths every day. I find it very hard to be blasé about the idea of 10-20 families losing a family member to this virus every day. Let it rip? Yeah Nah.
So here we are back at the start of a new outbreak, this one feels different than the others. Whereas previously the approach was to eliminate, or at least contain, this time due to the rate of transmission it seems inevitable that we will have exponential growth over the next couple of weeks.
Slowing the spread so that it doesn’t overwhelm the health system, or cause other critical functions to grind to a halt due to the number isolating, does seem the best, and the very least, we can strive for.
Certainly we see in the update today with eight additional confirmed cases of Omicron that it is going to rise rapidly. Like many I would have preferred to have seen stronger measures taken, perhaps akin to level three, but realistically with what we know about Omicron it is hard to see that they would have worked.
I imagine many households will take stronger measures themselves where they are able.
Back to the announcement yesterday, in answer to a question Jacinda said her wedding would be postponed. She was stoic about it saying “such is life”, she is a part of the team of course, unlike leaders we see it some other countries.
I felt a bit sad about that, sure it is a small thing, but after everything she has been through while Prime Minister damn doesn’t she deserve that happy moment?
And then the online reaction to the postponement – from childish laughing emoticon reactions to the most appalling hate filled vitriol imaginable, message after message. I felt ashamed of my fellow New Zealanders – what the hell is wrong with you?
A leader doing her best to protect the country, our lives, our families, doing bloody well by any comparison. Someone who has no doubt given up huge parts of her personal life over the last few years has to postpone her wedding and you’re celebrating?
By all means disagree with her politically, maybe you wanted to see the sort of free-for-all proposed by the opposition, but these comments – and I’m neither going to repeat them nor encourage others to read them – are just sick.
As we enter this next phase, with I’m sure for many a certain amount of trepidation, some of us do in fact know just how lucky we are, and some quite frankly don’t bloody well deserve it.
Cheapshot Chris has the most sickening comments of them all.
Indeed what is wrong? Are these the people who hate Labour? Or is it just misogyny? Compared to the opposition?