Craig Cooper: Cancelled festival jolt to Hawke's Bay's 'naive complacency'

Patrick Dingemans, 81, has become so frustrated at watching shoppers ignore QR codes, he has lobbied supermarkets and large retailers to locate the QR code at checkouts.

OPINION

If Hawke's Bay needed a jolt to remind us of the impact of Covid 19, we got it.

Here we were thinking ''poor old Auckland'' and relaxing in level 2 complacency.

The iconic Art Deco Festival has been cancelled for the first time since its inception.

In 2020, Art Deco week dodged Covid-19 by mere weeks. In 2021, sadly Covid has had its revenge.

The event's cancellation is an obvious blow to the local economy, but organisers had little choice. It is impossible to plan and execute an event of the festival's complexity and size, if you are trying to plan for what might happen.

You need certainty.

And since Covid 19 isn't in the business of signing contracts guaranteeing its behaviour, cancelling the event was the only option.

There may be a faint ray of positivity out of the loss of the event in 2021 - surely it must jolt a few out of us out from our complacency, that life in the regions is back to normal.

Next time you go to the supermarket, take note of who is scanning the QR (quick response) code using their Covid 19 tracer app.

We are supposed to be operating under level 2, but our QR scanning is operating under a special level of its own - Level Ignorant.

If an outbreak occurs in Hawke's Bay, we are not well placed to communicate with everyone we would need to, about times and locations that an infected person might have transmitted the virus.

How quickly we have forgotten the community anxiety, as the movements of sick passengers from the cruise ship Ruby Princess were tracked.

Which is why an 81-year-old Havelock Man's simple idea should be made compulsory.

Patrick Dingemans, 81, has become so frustrated at watching shoppers ignore QR codes, he has lobbied supermarkets and large retailers to locate the QR code at checkouts, instead of entrance/exit doors.

The logic is simple, while you wait for your purchased goods to be processed you have the time to scan the code.

A Hawke's Bay Today snap survey last month found just seven of 100 people at Countdown Hastings signed in, and 11 of 100 did the same at Pak'nSave Napier.

Dingemans idea has had promising buy-in from some retailers, but his idea should be compulsory. It may not pick up the few shoppers who enter premises and leave without making a purchase, but it surely has to lead to a rise in scans.

Level 2 sent tremors into the regions earlier this week - Tuesday's cancellation news is a sharp jolt.

Start scanning.

If Covid-19 spreads its tentacles beyond our economy and impacts our health again, we only have ourselves to blame for giving the virus momentum with our naive complacency.