Rob Rattenbury: Covid 19 coronavirus - week two blues

COMMENT:

Week One of lockdown done - Week Two is here. Nothing much has changed at the love shack on the hill other than the bride has had to forgo her quilting club activities for the duration.

Being resourceful, talented folk the quilters have organised projects online to be completed while the group is stood down.

We now have to order our groceries online at least seven days early due to the huge upsurge in home deliveries.

Hopefully the supermarkets who provide this wonderful service will move along with their logistical and staff planning to bring this time lapse back a bit.

Many of us rely on home deliveries as we are in the 15 per cent of the population at most risk if we contract Covid-19. It is simply too dangerous for us to leave our homes.

NeedToKnow3

I have to forgo lunches, coffees and beersies with old mates for a few weeks at least but luckily I work from home with a well-stocked personal library and the internet for research purposes.

Rob Rattenbury. Photo / File

Being otherwise retired we have a fairly settled lifestyle but we really miss our kids and grandchild.

Not seeing them or being able to visit them is heart-wrenching but we do have the wonderful technology to enable us to Skype or have video calls on our new iPhones.

We dare not look at our savings, expecting a bit of a loss to say the least but that's life. In the mystery of such matters, what goes down must come back up eventually.

The most important thing to do is not to panic. Rash financial decisions made now are not good ideas in terms of financial planning or investing.

What will be reasonably certain is that New Zealand will get through this pandemic mostly unscathed due to the wisdom of our world-class scientists and medical specialists together with a compassionate and caring government but to make this a certainty we all have to listen and care for each other.

This virus does not move, people move and it sticks on for a ride, rubbing off at the earliest possibility to nestle somewhere else.

It is pleasing to see National has at last formed, if not a Grand Coalition, with Labour and the minor parties, a support partnership.

Wiser heads in National must have got through to leader Simon Bridges. We need the talent of all our elected representatives to save our country and our way of life.

We are at war here. Sure guns and bombs are not the issue but the pandemic is probably more destructive in a shorter time and is a much more sinister enemy than we, as a nation, have faced before.

Recent medical modelling in New Zealand shows a "worst-case scenario" if community transmission became established we could expect 3.3 million Kiwis to get sick with around 46,000 ICU admissions and 28,000 odd deaths, many more than the Spanish Flu claimed or who died in both world wars.

Best case is around 100 deaths, mostly of people over 60 years. Still tragic numbers.

New Zealand will not be the same when this blight leaves us.

It may take many months to open our borders to overseas visitors again, especially from countries that have suffered so much and could still be suffering.

This is not about political correctness, it is simply about survival.

Immigration will need to stop for the foreseeable future as will overseas tourism and business travel.

Cruise ships will likely disappear for some years. No one will be keen on spending weeks in a Petri dish of incubating disease for the foreseeable future after recent events.

Office workers and large companies may decide working from home is the way to go.

Think of the savings on leases of huge office blocks.

We will have a lot more respect for our supermarket workers, delivery drivers, long haul truckies, farmers, nurses, doctors, caregivers, cops, ambos, firees, lab people, rubbish truck drivers, all the important people now and for ever.

They cannot stay home sitting on the couch like the rest of us. Many cannot go home at all due to the risk of community transmission to their loved ones.

The good news is that our wonderful agriculture sector produces enough food for 40 million people so we will never starve in this bountiful land.

We may need to go without for a short or long while.

Some will learn to cook for the first time and some will learn to grow vegetables, life may become a lot simpler and easier for many people.

We may even smile and talk more to each other.

We can do this.

• Covid19.govt.nz: The Government's official Covid-19 advisory website