New Zealand has its first death linked to coronavirus. The death was a woman in her 70s in Greymouth Hospital early this morning. She tested positive for the virus on Friday morning.
COMMENT
There's a meme doing the rounds on Facebook that really stings.
It does that ridiculous thing people like to do of comparing apples and oranges except apples are the war and oranges are a pandemic, as if those two things are one and the same.
The whole "your greatgreat grandfather fought in the war, you're only being asked to stay home on the sofa" is a deep fallacy but it continues to spread like… well, a really infectious virus.
While well intentioned, this meme puts down the magnitude of what we're doing.
I get the intention: you want to tell people that they should respect the lockdown because, in the grand scheme of things, they could have been asked for much worse - that's true and completely legitimate.
No one is saying this is worse than fighting in a war. But it is also unfair to downplay the magnitude of what we are doing and what is being asked of us.
Nearly 1000 people died in Italy in just one day, yesterday. This is the biggest challenge we've ever faced in our lifetime and to say every single person has a role to play in stopping the spread is not an exaggeration.
What we are doing is uniting the world, from a distance, against a virus that is killing us all by the thousands every day.
Downplaying it by saying staying home is no big deal does not feel like the way to convince anyone to respect the lockdown.
We're not "just" being asked to stay home, watching Netflix on the sofa and damn straight I take offence of anyone who suggests our personal sacrifices, at this time, equate to that.
For some people, this lockdown means they will never, ever, see some loved ones again. That's what we're asking of them.
Let's not downplay the magnitude of what we're doing by staying home: it's a big deal. Photo / Getty Images
We're asking some mums to give birth without their partners, especially if they have other children who cannot be left with anyone else outside their bubble.
We're asking dads to miss seeing the birth of their child.
We're asking grandparents to miss out on meeting their grandchildren.
We're asking grandchildren to risk never seeing their elderly grandparents again.
We're asking people to cancel weddings.
With hundreds of thousands of people at home "on the sofa" because they lost their jobs, we're asking people to spend their days stressing (even more than usual) about how they'll feed their children.
We're asking people to potentially die alone, rather than spending their final moments surrounded by loved ones.
We're asking people not to hold funerals for their mum or their dad.
We're asking parents in complex custody situations to not see their child for a long time.
We're asking grandparents to miss out on their grandchild's first birthday.
We're asking immune-compromised people such as cancer sufferers to worry even more about their health.
We're asking people to sit at home, away from people they love, who might not have long on Earth and we're asking them to come to terms with the fact that there's no date they can put in their diary for when they'll see that person again. We're asking them to live with that knot in their stomach every hour of their days for an undetermined period of time. "At least" four weeks.
The list of individual circumstances is endless but the bottom line is this: hardly any of us is settling in for a month of Netflix marathons on the sofa completely care and worry-free.
A lot will happen in the next few weeks, to our families, to our friends, to ourselves.
Let's not downplay the magnitude of what we're doing. Downplaying it is dangerous. It makes people care less about the task at hand.
We're not being asked to sit on the sofa all day.
We're being asked to save lives.
It's the biggest, most important job we've ever had — and for a lot of people, it'll come with heartbreak that a lifetime of fresh air walks won't cure.
For some people, lockdown will be a very traumatic experience. Before you share a meme or a status update that downplays the situation they are in, remember the Prime Minister's words as they apply to this as well: Be kind.
