I spent the day at home, working, although today I received a Letter of Accreditation from a TV station I sometimes send live reports to. As a journalist, I could move about, as media is deemed an essential service in this country. Quite opposite in Hungary, where plain dictatorship seems to take hold, the Parliament is suspended and you could easily go to jail for expressing your views. Is this the end of the European Union, too?
There are lots of traditional remedies promoted online. many could be potentially dangerous. However, as I woke up in the middle of the night with a dry cough and a sore throat, I mixed salt and lemon juice with warm water and I gargled a few times. It helped. Salt, lemon, water – nothing can be harmful with this combination. Then, I went back to my nightmares. I was in a concentration camp, waiting in a long line to be medically assessed for work or slaughter. We were all wearing white sacks with a hole for our heads and two smaller holes for our arms.
The first time I go out shopping since the lock-down started four days ago. We needed things like eggs, bananas, bread and milk. I could delay it a few days, but I simply wanted to see how war-time shopping works and how easy it is for me to respect some self-imposed hygiene and protection rules.
MY 15 RULES FOR SAFE PANDEMIC SHOPPING
Wear two masks: a better mask like a dust one on the inside, covered by a self-made fabric mask or just a wrapped cloth on the outside.
Wear glasses and cover your hair.
Keep the inner mask for further use, wash the outer mask together with all the clothes that have been outside.
Use the entry of your house area as a quarantine zone, take off all your clothes there and put them straight into the the washing machine.
Keep the outside shoes outside the house if you can, or in the quarantine zone.
Keep the non-perishable products away from your house, like in the boot of your car or in the quarantine zone, and don’t touch them for 72 hours.
Wipe the products to be used sooner with a disinfecting cloth.
Take no bags to the shop, leave them in the car and fill them in the boot from the shopping trolley. If you don’t have a car, use a large backpack the same way.
Use rubber gloves or plastic bags, one hand on the trolley or basket, one hand on the groceries. Throw them away before you enter the car or house.
Use only one credit card, contact-less if you can, and disinfect it at home.
Don’t take your watch, jewellery or other unnecessary accessories outside.
Keep your phone always in the pocket and have a code with your family, like “ring me three times and I’ll ring you back when I can do so safely”.
Don’t touch or take out of your pocket the car keys if your car has key-less entry, or treat your keys like the credit card and disinfect them when you return, if you must touch them.
Treat the inside of your car as “less contaminated”, but the outside and the boot where the bags are as “more likely contaminated” and avoid using the car for the next 72 hours.
Have a shower once you are back home, before you get into new clothes.
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Overall, I drove 3.5 kilometres each way to the nearest supermarket and I saw 15 moving cars and 18 people with 7 dogs. No children at all. The shop was well stocked and they had clear safety measures in place. I was impressed by the whole set-up, not so much by some prices. People’s attitude towards the pandemic is changing. I’d say 50% were wearing masks and 25% had gloves. Everyone was polite, but quiet.
Today we had the first casualty in New Zealand but for the second day in a row the number of new cases has decreased, despite the more increased tested. Total number of cases in our country so far is 415. A month ago we had zero, a week ago we had 52.
I still can’t understand why instead of early measures at the beginning, which would have harmed the economy but saved many lives, we had to wait, hesitate, and then impose late measures which harm human rights (and the economy).
I woke up to the heavenly scent of freshly baked bread.
Yet the reality is not that heavenly at all…
Being a Saturday, this was my first day at home with no work. I thought I’d be able to do a lot, but in fact I did next to nothing. Following the news, chatting to friends, a bit of cooking, that’s pretty much all of it.
The fortress we are trying to build by locking down at the very last moment might prove to be just a sand castle. Whatever it is, we now need to get in behind our leaders, respect and preserve democracy, as the tough times are yet to come.
We are now sitting ducks, and many of us are yet in denial or too naive to undestand what’s actually going on. The number of cases in our country is now 451. A week ago it was only 20! Three weeks ago 5 and merely a month ago we had none (confirmed). Is our memory so short? People are going to the beach, playing touch rugby in the park, there’s car and bike traffic like on an Easter Weekend. This is not your seasonal cold. Why don’t you get it? It’s like going to Africa and when a lion charges towards you, you just smile and go “just another cat, whatever”…
I haven’t been out for three days, not even to buy milk. We still have enough to get by and I understand supermarkets have long cues. In a way, if I had the disease now and I became critical, perhaps it would be good timing, as hospitals still have plenty of room. But if I get it now, chances are that I might feel seriously ill around the peak of the wave and then I’d be just another number.
My kids came home today from their mother’s house, driven by my wife who goes out for work. They saw nobody wearing masks and plenty of cars in the streets, with just one policeman on a motorbike. I am planning to create a mini-golf 9-hole course outside but the children are too busy on their electronic devices and this time around I really encourage that, as they communicate and play with their colleagues. But I can’t stop thinking that we should have closed our island borders a month ago and my kids could still go to school instead of having their childhood and development age fractured by uncertainty.
Enough for today. It’s a weekend night that feels like shit, to be fair, and it’s not really my shit, but I have to accept and put up with it. In a few days, it will hit the fan.
Pressing the RESET button on all we used to know, on all we used to do, on all we used to be.
It’s like God or some unknown entity, be it Terrestrial or not, has this button and decides to reset humankind again after 100 years since the Spanish Flu.
Here in my own “bubble” I spent today working and looking out the window. There were more cars, more bikes, more people running or walking, it seemed like “back to normal within not quite normal” and I thought that the restrictions should be tougher and should be really enforced. Why should you be allowed to drive kilometres away from your home just to do you jogging routine in a nicer park or why should you go across town to walk your dog? What’s wrong with exercising in your immediate neighbourhood? Actually, in New Zealand most properties should be large enough for a stroll, as most have outdoor areas.
My wife went to her work and back. She saw no police car, but plenty of vehicles out and about. I know it was only the second day of our national quarantine, but we either do this or we don’t, there is no grey area. I would expect police with loudspeakers to be present and to enforce this lock-down a bit harder.
I detect in the official media the insinuation of the idea that the lock-down might take longer. I also detect that there is virtually no free voice to challenge some of the actions (or the inaction) of the Government.
People here still don’t get it!
More, many more cases in New Zealand today, a total of 368, with 85 new and one in intensive care for the first time. Yet people still don’t get it. We (some, too many) have this mentality:
It’s just a flu
It won’t affect me because I’m young and strong
It’s not here yet
It will be over in a couple of weeks.
This mentality will kill many and some of the dead will be close to us, some might be us. It’s like standing casually on the railway waiting for the freight train to run you over and saying “there’s not such a thing like e freight train”. Well, it actually is and it goes quite fast through Italy, Spain, the US and other places right now.
Of course, our country is isolated. That’s the general feeling – isolation will protect us. But I am afraid it won’t, because we used to be a hub for tourism, tenths of thousands of Kiwis returned form overseas in the past two months (largely unchecked), not to mention the international visitors and people on student or work visas, of which about 100,000 are understood to be trapped here (for their good, maybe). I give you a simple calculation:
About 80,000 people came to NZ after the outbreak in China, but during the outbreaks in Iran and Europe, plus North America and Australia.
No clear restrictions were in place, though quarantine had been imposed for the first arrivals from Wuhan, China.
Assuming that only 1% of the returnees in February and March were infected, which could be an underestimation, we might have 800 vectors roaming around NZ for a month or so.
If a contagion rate of only 1 to 1 (much lower than the actual spread of the Covid-19) occurred, we are facing at least 1600 loose cases, new vectors in the community. The cat has been out of the bag for too long and there might be many kittens in your neighbourhood already.
Apart from this, we are starting a fashion enterprise at home. My wife makes face masks and I market them. They won’t be cheap, as it takes about one hour to make one and they won’t offer much protection, maybe just psychological.
I’d rather see that RESET button be pushed again, so I can wake up and forget this nightmare altogether before the H A R D part hits us like a tonne of bricks. It could be just a matter of days.
