Yesterday, my life consisted of the 2 movies above.
Why?
Because despite moving 12,000 miles to NZ to get away from covid, we found only ourselves back where we started.
In lockdown.
OK, it’s only for 7 days [for now] … but the feeling of it happening was so familiar.
The gathering of your work stuff.
The dark humour between colleagues tinged with truth.
The sense of things closing in and taking over beyond your control.
You’d think having had well over a year of lockdown, I’d be OK with it, but it still felt uncomfortable, even though I am fortunate to have already had one of my vaccinations.
But there was one big difference between yesterday and March, Friday 13th, 2020.
And that was the way the Government handled it.
Where in the UK we had chaos and confusion … here we had incredibly valuable detail, clarity and calmness.
In addition, the schools not only sent out an immediate message that detailed how online lessons would be handled, the note also said the following:
Given how badly the UK government handled providing parents the tools to teach from home – not to mention the additional pressure they placed on parents to keep up with the curriculums – it was amazing to see them acknowledge the importance of providing reassurance rather than just demand adherence.
It’s a weird time, even if it’s just for a week, but the way it has been handled is light years away from what we experienced not that long ago.
Not only that, the fact the patient and doctor identified and reported their case immediately – and this was followed up with not just track and trace info, but down to individual locations and destinations – is also another reason to be hopeful that if anyone can deal with this situation effectively, it’s NZ.
We’ll see. But regardless of the outcome, thank you to the patient, the doctor, the government and the people of NZ.
If it wasn’t certain before, I can categorically say Jacinda is miles better than Boris.