Prime Minister Ardern showed foresight and understanding in her March 23 press conference: “These decisions will place the most significant restrictions on New Zealanders' movements in modern history. This is not a decision taken lightly.” She was right. Other articles in this paper will do justice to the true impact of quarantine. So do our memories of the days spent inside to build weeks and months of social distance.
The winds of change that have blown 4.9 million people inside are huffing and puffing on the doors of businesses, big and small. The government has set its shoulder against those doors and is pushing hard to keep the country open for business. In January, the big deal in politics was only possible through years of fine weather and saving for a rainy day: an additional $8 billion pledged towards infrastructure. To deal with the crisis, $12.1 billion - about 4% of New Zealand’s total economy in 2019 - has been committed.
The details matter. Two thirds of that aid is going to businesses in the hopes that money will make its way through to workers. Wallets closed to building wind turbines and new hospitals have opened for New World, McDonalds and the Destiny Church. Only $500 million dollars - 4% of the total spend - are going directly to health services.
Over the past fourteen years, NZ’s population has grown by 18%. In that same time hospitals acquired only four more intensive care beds with ventilators, for critical patients. We’ve gone from having 41 ICU beds for every million of us to just 36. To quote Ardern: “We currently have one hundred and two cases, but so did Italy, once.” We were not, and are not, prepared for pandemic cases to climb into the thousands, and the tens of thousands.
In the years we’ve had to prepare, many New Zealanders have faced their own personal crises. Lockdown has only made matters worse. Mental health problems already erect barriers to going outside, socialising, and carrying out expected functions. Lockdown makes them official. Abusive households become inescapable. An ownership society with so many homeless is a cruelty; telling them to stay home is a cruel joke.
The COVID consensus is simple: lockdown is working. The virus has been starved out by cooperation between government plans and personal conduct. The government response is gradual and comprehensive, balancing the economic and social needs of everyday life and our safety from the virus. The Prime Minister has proven that, when there is a will, there is a way.
Once lockdown is over, the government will have to deal with crises that existed before and will be worse after. Will they act with the same effectiveness? The question of what we should have done with the 2010s is now academic. The question of what country we build in the 2020s - ready to weather not one storm, but every one on the horizon, is now asked of us.
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