Every year, around about this time, I look back at some predictions that I would have made at the same time the year prior – they are generally about how the year would pan out. And 2021 is no exception.
2020 was reasonably exceptional, back in January of that year while on holiday I read an article about a mystery infection that had gained traction in a city called Wuhan – with focus on a "wet market". which just happened to be across the road from a virology lab. So, around December of 2020, after unprecedented responses to the novel pathogen, I found predicting 2021's path pretty difficult - in so much as any potential outcome was just as likely as the next.
It was also around that time that I heard of a friend's Auckland business going under (16 employees not counting the owner) and there was also the realisation that new variants were mutating and increasing the transmissibility of the virus. So, the one thought that occurred to me strongest was that in 2021 there was potential for more lockdowns.
And so it came to pass, regularly for Aucklanders, but particularly for Whanganui in August-September when we found ourselves locked down again in an attempt to achieve what no other country had managed – elimination of Delta. The rest is now history but as the World Health Organisation runs out of Greek letters (not all of them will be an anagram for "moronic" like the latest one), I find predicting 2022 even more challenging than 2021. Adding to Covid, rampant inflation, potential global financial crisis with Chinese developer Evergrande as the catalyst and the abject failure of the world to rein in polluting "developing" nations means there are some dark clouds on the horizon (to name but three).
But one matter has all the attention. Unfortunately, the respiratory virus from "unknown" origins is naturally dividing us (evidenced by watching how bystanders react to unmasked patrons – you only have to watch what happens when somebody coughs or sneezes). And, while I disagree completely with the stance of anti-vaxxers, the legislated separation of unvaccinated and subsequent closures of businesses is just plain unkind and wrong – and will be a more lasting and memorable legacy for this government than its intended climate or ending-poverty missions. And regular readers will know my view on the "traffic lights", whose stay could well be cut short if we continue to prove that our luck has run out with our patchwork MIQ.