Covid 19 coronavirus: How New Zealand got through Covid-19 alert levels 2, 3 and 4

Seventy-six days.

For the first 34, we stayed home.

Then we expanded our bubbles, just a little, for 16 more.

Finally, over 26 days, we saw wider family, friends and colleagues, but not too close, and not too many.

Imagine if, during one of the toughest collective experiences of many of our lives, and until all restrictions - bar border closures - to eliminate Covid-19 were lifted this week, that was all we did?

"It would've led to a very dark and bleak time, and had long-term mental health effects," expert in social connection Carol Mutch said.

"We had to find other outlets and we're the kind of people who are able to do that, whether consciously or not. We found ways to connect."

Mutch, a University of Auckland professor of education whose research focuses on schools' responses to crisis, did so through Bear.

The large, stuffed teddy became an online star as the Christchurch-based academic shared her lockdown experiences, including a death in the family, through her grown son's once-loved cuddly toy.

University of Auckland professor Carol Mutch. Photo / Supplied

It helped her, and it helped Bear's fans - both young and old. When Bear eventually went into "hibernation", some cried.

"Somebody had brought this joy into their lives, and it's all about that social connection."

Bear was far from the only soft toy put to work during New Zealand's response to the pandemic.

Across the country thousands of teddies were propped inside windows to bring smiles to our youngest lockdowners, after mum and part-time school administrator Debby Hoffman created a bear hunt page on Facebook.

"You never know what a difference your bear will make," Hoffman told the Herald, when asked why she went to the trouble.

It wasn't just about the kids.

Memes such as this one, noting Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern's directive that non-essential businesses must close during the lockdown, brought levity to the situation. Photo / Supplied

Adults - with job losses, health fears and homeschooling pressures - needed a boost too.

In the early days, Covid-19 and lockdown takedown memes - the sometimes savage pictorial jokes shared online - helped, along with weepy TikTok videos outside much-loved and, under lockdown, closed takeaway outlets.

Social media, our sometimes frenemy, and online video-call tools lifted spirits too, and we found ourselves connecting not just with those we loved outside our bubbles, but long-lost friends.

Others attended socially distanced street parties with neighbours they'd previously acknowledged with little more than a wave and a smile.

And broadcaster Hilary Barry led Formal Fridays, where strangers - virtually - shared the experience of dressing up to stay home.

The disruption to our usual social ties and networks prompted us, as social beings, to build new connections, and that also took us outside our regular circle, Mutch said.

"Nobody consciously sat down and thought, 'I'm going to reconnect with all my old school friends'. It just happened."

Other connections came through music, with the New Zealand Army Band among the first to step up, posting bubble-friendly collaborations online to the delight of fans.

By week three of the lockdown we had our own anthem, Stay, created by more than 20 artists, including Stan Walker and Tiki Taane, and aimed at encouraging people to stay home.

It was important to express solidarity, which the artists did through their music, said singer-songwriter Anna Coddington, who co-wrote the song with several others.

Singer Anna Coddington helped write New Zealand's lockdown anthem, Stay. Photo / File

She described Stay as being "like a giant support network".

"I think everyone [in New Zealand] was probably a little bit scared and, like anything, you feel a definite kind of comfort when other people are experiencing the same thing.

"And the timing, it was a few weeks in and people were getting frustrated and wanting to bend the rules. It was good to say, 'Yeah, it's hard, but stick with it'."

Herald editorial cartoonist Rod Emmerson also led efforts to help Kiwis feel entertained, informed and connected, creating a series of popular cartooning and drawing templates, as well as colouring in templates which were published in the Herald and its sister newspapers.

Then there was the artwork for Anzac Day, creating something which could, as with Kiwi kids' Easter egg hunt drawings two week earlier, be fixed inside windows as part of a national effort to remember those who gave up much more than a few weeks of their freedom.

"A fabulous idea that people took to their hearts," Emmerson said of the commemorative poster, in which he drew a large poppy over a scene showing a soldier walking across a battlefield.

NZ Herald editorial cartoonist Rod Emmerson's poppy drawing was used on a poster, which Kiwis fixed to their homes during a locked-down Anzac Day this year. Image / File

The contents of his inbox showed his efforts connected.

"I made a point of answering every email on all of these subjects, and I mean we're talking several hundred exchanges, ranging from children, mums and dads, students and even folks in nursing homes who were corresponding via their nursing staff."

The poppy poster was only one part of marking an Anzac Day unlike no other, but which Kiwis again responded to collectively.

Asked to #StandAtDawn at their letterboxes, front doors and living rooms, rather than the hundreds of cenotaphs dotted across the country, thousands did.

"Apart, but together as one," promised the virtual campaign's slogan.

We were like that before, when a war on the other side of the world separated loved ones, sometimes for good.

The doomed Gallipoli campaign for which Anzac Day takes its date was often talked about as defining us as New Zealanders, Mutch said.

The 76 days to Monday, and our pride in the collective efforts of our "team of five million", would do the same, she said.

It was all there in the language being used - "we" eliminated Covid-19, not "the Government" or "they".

"This is a defining moment in our history ... we see ourselves as a connected unit, and that will stay with us."