tones

Strange days have found us. NZ now has 205 cases of coronavirus and the curve is getting steeper as these curves tend to do. I’ve brought my office home and I’ll be doing well to get two weeks of paid work in the next four weeks or however long this shutdown lasts. I’ve had to cut expenses.

This evening a state of emergency was blared through my phone and our alert level goes to 4 at midnight. A skeptic might say the response is over the top and too late but the science experts say this virus is bad and this is the best response now. Either way the call has been made to go hard against this thing, so that’s what we should do. We need to save lives and keep the health and economic impacts on people’s wellbeing as brief as possible. We need to flatten the curve, and learn lessons for next time.

I have a friend who is a hobby glider pilot and he likens the government’s call to shut NZ down to making the call whether to land your glider on a random airstrip or in a paddock because of a sudden lack of lift: you don’t want to make that call, but if you do you better make it early and then commit. Because if you don’t, things can get very bad very quick.

My isolation “bubble” includes my teenager who has to balance school work with having just got a car and wanting to see his mates and wanting to have a bit of a break from his old dad who keeps telling him that peanut butter sandwiches aren’t acceptable for every meal no matter how delicious they are. We have some plans in place though and we’ll be right. But I have a feeling these days are going to keep on being strange.