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Monique Ford / Things
Covid-19 graffiti in Wellington.
OPINION: At 11:59 pm Wednesday, our long national nightmare comes to an end. Something like.
After 49 days in some kind of blockage, things will suddenly become much more normal. You can go shopping, go to the movies, go out to dinner, cut your hair, go out for sports, fly around the country and, best of all, go out to see friends and family.
But some important restrictions remain, some of them discordant. Those gatherings will be limited to 10 people, below an initial limit of 100, meaning anyone who has postponed their wedding so far is unlikely to be happy. Schools won’t fully open until Monday, and bars will be closed for another week.
This means that Kiwis can go to a rugby game, get very close to 29 other people, but cannot go to the pub afterwards. In fact, they can’t even get together for a drink at home with the entire team.
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These kinds of inconsistencies are likely to lead people to treat these new rules a little more flexibly than the Tier 4 restrictions. It’s hard to see someone invite nine people over to their house and then say “no” when one of those guests ask if they can bring a partner, unless they really don’t like it
In revealing these changes, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern made it clear that it was the hard work of the New Zealanders that brought us here, not just luck. Kiwis are proud to go this far with a sacrificial boat.
That sacrifice includes a great record of human misery, as funerals were postponed and deathbeds were neglected. But it’s also broader and more measurable: Statistics NZ figures yesterday showed a 95% year-over-year drop in hotel spending in April. That is a precipice to which many companies will not return.
That sacrifice is the reason why kiwis are emerging from the running of the bulls before much of the rest of the western world. In the long run, this tough but time-limited blockade may seem like the best possible outcome for the economy. But for thousands of companies, and more importantly, for their employees, we are not out of the woods. Thursday’s budget won’t be able to fix this all at once.
It appears that the government and its health experts are generally singing from the same songbook, aside from a slight disagreement about when to open bars. This avoids what could have been an ugly matchup if health officials had sought to extend Level 3 even further.
Kiwis have overwhelmingly endorsed government measures so far, but that patience is not forever. As the days of almost no new cases continue to pile up, the streets of our main cities are already increasingly crowded.
The next decision day will be in two weeks. Now that the economy is back to normal, lobbying to further reduce restrictions will be much quieter. But if the Covid-19 case numbers still look as good as they have for the past week, New Zealand will want to have a party. And we will deserve it.
