How has lockdown us? changed

Five days until liberty. It almost feels like an anticlimax. Can I say that, without incurring the wrath of a million exhausted Aucklanders? In five days, we’ll wave bye-bye to lockdowns altogether, or at least, the kind of hard lockdown we’ve trudged grimly through, eyes on a horizon of freedoms promised, for 102 consecutive days. This calls for celebration! And I’m sure that call will be answered by thousands. Bars and restaurants will re-open (albeit with 100-person limits and masking for all at first), schooling will resume and look something more like we remember; families will gather, Christmas parties will be held, and once we reach orange or green, we won’t even be required by law to wear masks.

But I’m just too tired to celebrate. It’s not even an age thing really – I know people in their early 20s who can no longer muster much of the spark they would once have had, come the December party season. What we all might do, is let out a big breath, maybe let our minds wander the cracks and unities created by the past 20 months, and consider how much we’ve changed.

Getting the essentials done, by hook or by crook

Remember the loo-paper wars of lockdown 2020? Hard not to laugh at that ridiculous lizard-brain impulse to hoard – despite all the assurances that no, supermarkets were not going to close before you could get your mitts on a dozen packs of three-ply – when you look back from this distance. Aucklanders are all seasoned campaigners now.

But I do clearly remember the whiff of danger that hung around my first supermarket outing back then – two metres from my closest neighbours in a queue that snaked around the back of the big box building and into the loading bay.

I remember having to politely ask a stranger to please step back a bit, in the line at Kmart. I remember the first claustrophobic feeling of masking up, and how despite all the warnings, I couldn’t stop touching my face to adjust it. And washing all the groceries one-by-one in the sink when I brought them home.

Masks are now just one of those things you grab without thinking as you walk out the door – as essential as keys and an eftpos card. Living in a masked city has thrown up some funny curveballs, too – I spoke to a doctor last week who’s advising her patients not to get botox for their crow’s feet – because how can you ‘‘smile’’ at people, if you can’t use your eyes?

Amazing how quickly you adjust. By lockdown 2.0, the 2-metre rule, and the squirt of sanitiser at the automatic doors, had become second nature. We had become used to doing things differently.

What is dangerous now?

The concept of danger was flipped on its head. Who could have known before Covid, that shopping in a crowded market, or working out at the gym, would become more perilous than standing in the middle of the city’s main drag with the green light against you?

Who would have thought a simple kiss would be inadvisable, even when both of the puckerers were masked?

One of the most heartbreaking images is of a young boy pressing his palm to the palm of his grandma through a pane of glass. So close and yet so far from being able to hug, as they might have in any other circumstances.

Most Aucklanders will tell you that’s been the hardest bit – the people factor. For business owners missing the faces and the open wallets of their regular customers, and for families and lovers divided by borders and health restrictions.

No matter how devoted you’d become to the collective efforts of the team-of-five-million, the separation hit hard.

Like many other New Zealanders I have family overseas, and it’s not even the length of time we’ve spent apart that hurts most; it’s the knowledge that they can’t come home, even if they want to.

The idea that Aoteaora will always be here for you, ready with a haere mai and an ecstatic hug at the Auckland Airport arrivals hall, is a given. Or at least it was.

The angst Kiwis overseas have felt (still feel, roll on January and February) has copped some criticism, but I get it. It’s the feeling of being trapped – yes, in ‘‘paradise’’, but still trapped. What if something were to happen to my children overseas?

That’s haunted me since the borders closed. I can take any amount of being confined to the house, if I can see and touch the people I love.

That’s not been the case for everyone. Special aroha to those who’ve been trapped with the people who are supposed to love them, but have and will hurt them instead. Staying home has not always meant staying safe.

The concept of what’s dangerous and what’s really not, has fluctuated and shifted as we’ve learned more about the disease that has stopped the globe in its tracks. I haven’t thought about wiping down canned veges for quite some time – and those driveway drinkies sessions you gave the side-eye on your daily hour of exercise? They now seem pretty safe, because at least they’re outside. It’s the influencer parties at ugly mansions on the North Shore you worry about these days.

We’ve got used to the idea of being tested; of having a kindly, reassuring health worker making harmless chitchat as they stick a plastic probe a long, long way up our nostrils. That’s my other favourite of David White’s Covid images – a woman, wincing as she takes the test, but there are her wha¯ nau to hold her – literally – as she does her bit for Aotearoa.

Vax to the max

It is now 355 days since the first member of the public, worldwide, was vaccinated against the Covid-19 virus. Margaret Keenan, a week short of turning 91, called it ‘‘the best early birthday present’’ she could have had, as she bared her arm to nurse May Parsons in Coventry, UK.

For the overwhelming majority of us, this vaccine has been welcomed as a literal lifesaver. We will be the ones with the freedoms now, and

I spoke to a doctor last week who’s advising her patients not to get botox for their crow’s feet – because how can you ‘‘smile’’ at people, if you can’t use your eyes?

that, if you ask me, is how it should be. We hear a lot about personal choice and the taking away of freedoms, but we all have a choice, and this, in pandemic times, is it.

You get jabbed or you can’t eat at a restaurant, go to a festival, or in some case, work at the job you did before. Your choice.

We haven’t done too well at a government level by those citizens in marginalised communities who’ve found it hard to access the vaccine, or who’ve been left confused or mistrustful by false information. There’s been some shining examples of creative, community thinking at grassroots level, though – examples like South Seas Healthcare and their #RallyYourVillage vaccination drive in O¯ tara, or further afield, the stellar work of ha¯ pu representatives in Te Wha¯ nau a¯ Apanui who went door to door to bring their rate close to 90 per cent by early October.

Tautoko to those legends.

Very soon we’ll be free, blinking like moles in the bright sunlight of a Kiwi summer. Rapid antigen tests have been added to our lexicon and will be available to buy at pharmacies next month. News this week of a new Covid variant, which thanks to its mutations may make it much more dangerous than Delta, is bound to make us nervous.

Despite the strides we’ve made – and the way we’ve changed – this plainly isn’t over just yet.