Scan, scan and scan some more
As the Covid-19 pandemic swirls the globe, menacing beleaguered populations with new, more contagious strains, New Zealand is still the envy of the world, but are we about to be undone by a fourletter word?
We seem, generally speaking, just a little too smug for our own good, though strictly speaking it would be the eight-letter noun form of that word, smugness, that pulls the rug from under our sense of level 1 security.
If you’re on Twitter, you’ll probably have come across the hashtag #NZHellhole. It was a response to someone in a worseaffected country months ago labelling New Zealand a ‘‘hellhole’’ due to our strict but hitherto successful anti-Covid measures. It has since become a showcase for pictures of Kiwis’ summer holidays, restaurant meals, and other slices of normal life that most of the world is currently denied.
Those posts could probably be defended as the reward for a disciplined and coordinated response to the coronavirus, but at a time when the virus is carving a rapacious path through global communities, they do feel smug. They also smack of jumping the gun.
Big drop-offs in the number of Kiwis scanning the Covid tracer app are one indication that many of us are giving the peril posed by Covid-19 the ‘‘she’ll be right’’ response. Peril that, in New Zealand’s biggest centres, might be just down the road in managed isolation.
Social media is awash with anecdotes about people not scanning when entering malls, supermarkets, or restaurants, or getting on to public transport. One
Twitter user wrote of scanning in at a supermarket when someone waiting to get into the store called out, ‘‘We’re in level 1.’’
Yes, we are, and have been for months, just as we were last year before the four cases that emerged in Auckland plunged our biggest city back into level 3. But there’s an obvious point the unidentified gentleman in the scenario above missed. Level 1 is still a Covid-19 alert level. It signifies the virus is contained, not gone. Normal life requires an absence of the coronavirus, and all the evidence suggests that is a long way off.
Viable vaccines being developed, and vaccination programmes launched, in several countries are great news, but there are worrying months ahead until such a programme is rolled out here.
New, more contagious variants of the virus continue to emerge. The latest, detected in Brazil, has seen the United Kingdom hastily ban flights from Portugal and numerous other countries, including all of South America.
Fears that these variants will inevitably find a way into the community have seen many Kiwis
Level 1 is still a Covid-19 alert level. It signifies the virus is contained, not gone.
calling for a complete border closure, and a bringing forward of our vaccination programme, due to be rolled out to the general population in the second half of the year. However, Ministry of Health director of public health Dr Caroline McElnay expressed confidence on Thursday that the ‘‘layered protections’’ in our managed isolation and quarantine facilities would ‘‘limit the risk of spread to the community’’.
There is something we can each do, though, and that is to scan, scan and scan again. Yes, we’re still in level 1, but we need to treat it as an alert level, rather than normality, and scan as though our lives depend on it. Because there’s a chance that, for some of us, that could be the case.