Stay Home, Save Lives

“Unprecedented times” are two words I’m sure we’ve all heard heaps over the last few weeks. Now have a think, when was the last time you’ve ever heard something being described as “unprecedented”? Can’t think of anything? That’s cause it never fucking happens! Even describing something like that is… well unprecedented. 

As part of these strange times, the government has had to step in and put some serious rules in place about where to stay, who to see and what to eat. People aren’t happy but take a closer look at the majority of the reasons why? Your overweight cousin is annoyed because he can’t get KFC instead of cooking a nice kai; your alcy mate is gutted because they can’t go and sleeze it up in the Hood on a Saturday night; and the old lady next door is outraged because the muesli she usually buys is $1 more expensive. And if that’s the biggest issue in life at the moment, then you’re a self-entitled prick aren’t you. 

These restrictions have not been easy for anyone and no we don’t want to be stuck inside–that’s not how Kiwis are supposed to live! But why waste all the hard work we have put in over level 4 to potentially have to stay locked with the same bubble for even longer. We need to ensure that what we have done is actually going to have an impact by going through level 3 and slowly weaning ourselves back into some sort of normality. You may not be able to go party in someone’s paru flat yet, but at least you can wait in line for a Big Mac (you probably didn’t have much else to do anyway).

I’m a firm believer in ‘rules enforce the fun’ (thank you Monica from Friends). I don’t know if you’re just a rebellious kid that wants to do whatever you like to stick it to the man, or if you’re a boomer that thinks this is just aunty Cindy’s way of keeping us controlled to install the 5G. Either way, we ain’t shit and we need to look at the bigger picture: stay the fuck home for a little bit longer and save lives.

We’re Already in Level 2, Let’s Make it Official

We should have moved into alert level 2 earlier, controversial opinion I know but that’s just the way the cookie crumbles sometimes. According to the Government COVID website, we still have strict rules regarding gatherings and social distancing. So what is my reasoning? The economy has been put on hold for 7 weeks now, with a lot of people still being unable to return to work. Some people haven’t been able to work from home, such as people in the hospitality industry, and they can only operate on a takeaway basis, which means some have to operate in a capacity as if they’re getting choked and can only have half as much output as they usually can. The Wage subsidy is only meant to cover wages, not overheads such as loan repayments, insurance, power, rent or other unexpected costs such as lawyers, administration costs etc etc. We can operate safely as a society when we know where the disease is, who has it and enforce the quarantine of people who may have been exposed to it. At this stage we know exactly where the virus is, so we could be able to operate nearly at full capacity as a society as long as we enforce people to stay socially distance and stay within their regions unless absolutely necessary. We have seen a similar practice applied in Australia, where people were still allowed to work in non essential industries as long as they distanced properly, and they’ve ended up with less deaths per capita than us, as well as lower projected unemployment with a stronger economy.