Okay, that’s it, I’ve had quite enough of this government intruding in my life to rescue me from a virus with an infection fatality rate of between 0.04% and 0.05% and having a 99.5% survival rate.
Lockdown actually means being locked up. Authorities couldn’t care less about my physical or mental well being; I am only a disposable pawn on a political chessboard to be sacrificed for the greater good, directed to do this or do that for the ‘team of five million’.
Forbidden to travel outside Auckland or even drive to the beach, I can’t buy plants for the veggie garden, see family, or meet friends for coffee or a meal out and must forgo prearranged health checks. At this rate, Christmas will be spent home alone, with summer holidays a distant memory.
Over the last week, I’ve observed normally law-abiding people rejecting edicts such as mask-wearing, staying in their bubble and not venturing into forbidden, sunny destinations. The rule to stay home has been increasingly ignored with the onset of warm spring weather.
We’ve always had lawbreakers such as gangs regularly flouting the law (this may be responsible for the latest Auckland Delta outbreak) and this week a man known to police left Auckland illegally to drive to Thames until he was spotted at a police checkpoint. He fled and the police pursued him, eventually apprehending him using a helicopter and road spikes.
Compare these criminals, whose survival rests on breaking the law, to the law-abiding citizens currently thumbing their noses at crippling Covid-19 rules and requests; they are chalk and cheese, the latter expected to studiously obey all rules and regulations which they have done until now.
People pushed too far are fighting back by ignoring or bypassing the rules.
Aucklanders aged over 65 years old who have been instructed to stay home, are venturing out their front gates, talking to neighbours and ignoring the two-metre distancing rules. They are not the only ones flouting the order not to mix and mingle. These acts of defiance are not going unnoticed.
The NZ Herald reported this week that police were called to a Mt Roskill park after 30 people were seen playing touch rugby while crowds – some unmasked – were spotted roaming Auckland’s shopping streets and beaches, and in residential parts of Auckland people were congregating.
The response from the University of Auckland professor of public health Nick Wilson to rule-breaking was to suggest a new rule: mandatory indoor mask-wearing! If people won’t comply, Wilson thinks whacking them over the head with a more onerous rule will rein them in!
You can guarantee the public response to more rules will be more infractions.
Desperation is breeding ingenuity. A yacht owner offered New Zealanders a ride home from Australia in time for Christmas bypassing the ridiculously overloaded MIQ system and becoming yacht crew. The catch is that they must remain at sea for 14 days on a trip usually taking 8 days.
For many, organised marches and rallies are a step too far, but it’s easy to flout the rules in your own suburb – which is what this grassroots, uncoordinated resistance movement is doing. There’s more traffic on the roads, non-essential stores have quietly reopened and fewer people are out and about wearing masks.
What provoked this unheralded response? Possibly the government’s admission that its overreach is not temporary at all, but set to become a permanent fixture. The PM admitted her goal of 90% vaccinated does not promise an end to lockdowns, just that she would prefer not to use them. Her blatant blackmail campaign may not work. Her latest idea is lockdown by suburb. I wonder what the population thinks of that?
People are influenced by the government’s very poor handling of the pandemic; it is pointless supporting a destructive regime of rules and regulations that don’t work.
A Newshub poll this week asked “How you would rate New Zealand’s overall pandemic response“. 8% said “great”, 12% said “good”, 25% said “poor” and 55% said “awful”. The public is pushing back on the Government’s failed elimination strategy.
No one welcomes the government intruding into every aspect of their lives, including health and relationships with family and friends. The government’s intrusion has created uncertainty, making it impossible to plan holidays, sporting events and social and recreational activities. That’s reason enough to stir up a small rebellion.
When Auckland’s Level Four did not turn out to be the promised short, sharp response, but the longest and most arduous, there was a reduction in numbers of people turning up for Covid tests. If the government won’t play fair, the public responds in kind.
People still holding out against vaccination cannot be ignored. They will not respond well to being bludgeoned and bullied by the government and media into compliance. The vaccine is not yet mandatory, but good luck trying to travel, eat out, attend a concert or public event or dine out in future without the promised vaccination certificate. Just over 30% have resisted a jab to date.
If the government takes its health expert’s advice and tightens the screws with more rules and regulations, expect to see public pushback. People have had enough, and just as the government boasts about the many tools in their Covid-19 toolbox, the man in the street has a variety of tools in his toolbox to use against government over-reach.
Bringing pressure to bear on a government totally dependent on public compliance to achieve its elimination goal might result in a faster return to the old normal than this government could ever promise, much less hope to achieve.
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