Level 2 shows alert system’s weakness

So the country might go into ‘‘level 2’’ next week, or it might not. It might go all in immediately, or in phases. Bubbles are over, but keep away from strangers.

Faced with the Covid pandemic, it is easy to be a critic of the Government. Everyone, politicians included, is flying blind and the health advice seems to change with regularity.

So it might seem a bit rough to just bag the Government for not being perfect. That being said, this Government did induce a sharp recession and all but shut down the economy except for those stores or goods lucky enough to be deemed ‘‘essential’’, in order to head off Covid. So given that each of these decisions affects hundreds of thousands of lives and livelihoods, asking ‘‘why’’ or ‘‘why not’’ is mandatory.

The Government must be able to defend the incredible powers it has given itself.

So it was disappointing that yesterday’s announcement signalling what level 2 might mean was vague, unsatisfactory and underlined the obvious point: that the alert level system has become a bit of a nonsense.

Devised by the prime minister as a plain-English and straightforward way of describing what sort of measures would be taken, and what would trigger those measures, the idea was conceptually strong.

The problem has been that, unlike, say, a civil defence or terror alert level, there is no particular objective criteria by which this system operates.

The levels system was announced in late March. Yet what exactly we will be allowed to do and not do in level 2 is still being devised by officials. Clearly the Government has

been busy with its Covid response, but why weren’t at least some officials tasked with setting some clear rules around levels? Then the public would at least know what they could reasonably expect and when.

Instead, levels 1 through 4 have mostly just been a name for whatever set of new rules the Government has decided to impose.

And what guides that? The changeable health advice.

There isn’t necessarily anything wrong with the rules, but dressing it all up with a sciency-sounding name and wartime call-to-arms language is getting a bit tiresome.

This messy process now means that although, thankfully, it appears life will become much more liveable under the new rules, there are many confusions and contradictions. Nationwide domestic travel is allowed, but the PM says you shouldn’t fly.

You should not gather in large groups, yet restaurants of up to 100 are fine. Bars with table service and social distancing can open (but presumably the price of beer and wedges will shoot up given the necessary new high staff to customer ratio).

Bubbles are a thing of the past, sort of, just keep away from strangers. What about weddings? Can people go to Mass?

The move to level 2 underscores just how difficult the rest of the crisis will be. Level 4 was fairly easy to explain – banning almost everything is comparatively easy.

What’s difficult is allowing people to go back to an almost normal. Everything is back, but not as we’ve ever known it before. In most situations it makes intuitive sense, but you can’t help but pity the frontline services tasked with enforcing it

– New Zealand might actually have a real ‘‘fun police’’.

You might have thought with case numbers plummeting and the economy opening up that the Government had successfully broken the back of its Covid response. But getting people used to some sort of new normal – one that could last for years – will be the real trick.

As Ardern herself said yesterday, we’re ‘‘halfway down Everest’’. But as every mountaineer knows, most accidents occur not on the way up the mountain, but on the way down.