RISE UP BETTER

Published date18 December 2021
Publication titleNorthern Advocate, The (Whangarei, New Zealand)
Some of us wouldn’t mind getting away from loved ones we’ve seen a bit too much of

Some of us wonder if there are people who won’t do their bit until a local Covid scare frightens them into it. We know that might sound horrible, but honestly we have done our bit. Lockdowns were never meant to be forever.

Some of us don’t want people to die because we went on holiday.

Some of us can’t go on holiday. We don’t have the money.

Some of us don’t want anyone coming near us.

Some of us are desperate for everyone to come near us, because otherwise our businesses will die and our towns will collapse and then what?

Some of us are frightened, about what’s in the vaccine, about loss of personal freedoms, about what the mandate’s great weight of exclusion will do to us. We know you think this is wrong, but we’re frightened and we have heard things from people we trust and we think you should be frightened too.

Some of us give thanks we live in a country with one of the best responses to Covid in the world and we think you should too.

Some of us wonder why we are poorer now when others are doing so well.

Some of us are angry and think you need to wake the feck up and realise what the media and the politicians are doing to your brains.

Some of us are sick of hearing that. We’re angry at you.

Some of us watch the courier vans up and down the street all day and wonder how we’ll manage when they’re gone. Or will they always be there now?

Some of us are stranded overseas with no money. We are apart from sick and dying loved ones. We are separated from the people we need with us to survive, from the people who need us with them. We do not want to hear about your compassion because we are beside ourselves now, with fury and frustration and grief.

Some of us give thanks daily that we are safe.

Some of us are grieving, because loved ones were not safe.

Some of us think Covid is an Auckland disease. A punishment, you know, for the poncy shopping and the drinking in the Viaduct and everything else you Jafas do that we don’t want to know about. You think you’re better than us, but now you know you’re not.

Some of us would like to keep calm and carry on.

Some of us would like everything to go back to how it was.

Some of us can’t understand why you would think that’s possible. Or desirable.

Some of us are too tired to think.

Some of us can’t go on holiday because we work on the health frontline or the security frontline and we expect to be quite busy this summer. And we are already exhausted.

Some of us just want to have a swim. Get the boat out and go fishing or bounce along behind on a sea biscuit. Sit under a tree and read a book. Ride a bicycle down a country road. Wander through the Saturday market in a pretty seaside town. Cook the kai on the barbecue and chill. Some of us really need to do this. It’s probably most of us.

And then what?

We are the people who got to 90 per cent, double-vaxxed. It is a heroic achievement. We had tough rules and accepted them and we have lost fewer than 50 lives along the way. We have done so well and we are better placed to build on that than almost everyone.

But we have not earned our “freedom”, the wealth gap has widened and the future feels uncertain in every way. We were triumphant in 2020. Now we are the people who are barely even hopeful.

Fatigue has crept into everything.

Q: What’s the biggest worry?

A: How long have you got, there’s quite a list.

Q: But what is it really?

A: Mental health.

WHO KNOWS what to do? In New York, despite last year’s horror of corpses piled into containers outside hospitals, only 68 per cent of the total population is fully vaxxed. So New York has mandated vaccines for all public and private sector workers.

In Portugal, they put a former submarine commander in charge of the Covid strategy and nearly 100 per cent of the eligible population is now vaxxed. What are the lessons there? In a submarine, everyone has to follow the rules because either you all survive or no one does. You can’t choose to get off the boat.

In Singapore, Covid treatment for people “unvaccinated by choice” is no longer free.

Singapore was the first country in Asia to...

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