The phone rings.
“Are you there?”
“Hi Nana, it’s me, Tiff.”
“Oh, hello, dear.”
“How are you?”
“I’m alright, dear. How are you?”
“Not bad.”
Pause.
“Actually, Nana, I’m not great.”
“Oh, what is it, dear?”
“Well… you know this virus stuff that’s going on here?”
“Yes.”
“Well… it’s all getting a bit stressful, actually.”
“How so, dear?”
“Well, René went to the supermarket the other day, you know, the local one, and, well… you know how he had really bad asthma as a kid?”
“Yes, I remember that.”
“Well, he really can’t wear a mask, you know, after all those years he had to work on his breathing, and suffered asthma attacks, you can see even now he works quite hard on his breathing. A therapist actually said he has a sort of PTSD from it, so, you know, it’s a trigger… to reduce his oxygen like that. He feels immediately breathless, and he gets really anxious about it.”
“PTSD?”
“Oh, sorry, yeah- um, post traumatic stress disorder? It’s like, what happens after a person has a big trauma or some tough stuff happen to them.”
“I see.”
“Probably you had it, Nana, you know, after your father died so suddenly when you were eleven. And of course when you lost your son, Avon, when he was only nineteen.”
“Oh. Yes, maybe.”
Pause.
“Nana?”
“Hmmm?”
“Are you ok? I’m sorry, I didn’t want to upset you.”
“Oh, no, dear, it’s alright. It was a long time ago now. I was just thinking, we didn’t have any big words like that for it, back then. It was just that you felt shocked, and then the shock turned to sadness, and you felt sad for a long, long time. Well, forever, really. But if you were lucky, happy things happened in your life, and sort of balanced out the sadness. Like when you and your brother were born. Or fish and chips on the beach.”
Laughter.
“You and your fish and chips, Nana.”
“But you were telling me about René at the supermarket, dear.”
“Oh, yeah. Sorry. So, he didn’t feel comfortable with this mask thing, so he looked up whether there wasn’t some sort of exemption he could get, and, well, there is one. I mean, the government would have known there’d be all sorts of people who couldn’t wear one, so there’s a process where you can be exempted, and that’s all within the law and everything.”
“Well, of course, yes.”
“But now, the government has said it’s mandatory to wear a mask when you go to the supermarket…”
“They what?”
“Yeah, they’ve said you have to wear one…”
“But what do they do?”
“Who, the government?”
“No, what do the masks do?”
“Oh, they think they stop you passing on the virus.”
“But why would you go the supermarket if you have a virus?”
“Oh, I know, Nana. It’s just… well, they think viruses work differently now.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, they think you can pass them on even when you don’t feel sick. It’s called asymptomatic transmission.”
“Goodness.”
“So, anyway, René…”
“Yes. Sorry, dear.”
“That’s ok. It’s all pretty confusing.”
“I’d say so.”
“So he went to do the shopping for us and Mum and Dad this morning…”
“Mum and Dad?”
“Yes.”
“Why was he doing Mum and Dad’s shopping?”
“Oh, because only one person from each household is allowed to shop.”
“Allowed?”
“Yes, because of the virus.”
“Because of the virus that anyone could have, whether they feel sick or not?”
“That’s the one.”
“And wearing a mask will stop you getting it, if you have it but you don’t know you have it?”
“Well, actually, no. They know the masks are not very effective, but they want people to wear them so they’re reminded about the virus, and so they’re reminded to wash their hands and stand two metres away from each other and stuff.”
“Good Lord.”
“Yes. So anyway, they wouldn’t let him in.”
“Wouldn’t let him in?”
“To the supermarket, yes. No, they wouldn’t let him in.”
“To do the shopping?”
“Yes. To do the shopping. To shop at their shop. The shop wouldn’t let him in. They said he had to leave. Because he didn’t have a mask on.”
“But you said he can’t wear one because…”
“That’s right, he can’t wear one. And he has a mask exemption. But they wouldn’t accept it.”
“That’s extraordinary.”
“I know!”
“Was it a mask they wanted him to wear, dear, or a yellow star?”
Ok, I’m getting a little muddled with that last sentence, I admit. (The absence of mask is the yellow star, in this tortured analogy.) Also, full disclosure, this conversation never took place, at least not outside my own imagination.
My Nana has been dead for thirteen years.
But, the incident I recount above did happen. My husband has a disability, like thousands of others, but the fear and misinformation fuelling the mind of the essential worker at our local supermarket was so great, she refused him entry, and became hostile.
To be fair, the supermarket manager later phoned René and offered profuse apologies. (After he made a written complaint.) In equal fairness, I have since heard of at least three other reports of people being turned away from the same supermarket for not wearing masks, despite holding valid exemptions.
Can you imagine all the situations in which it may be unsafe for a person to wear a mask? I can. The government can too; that’s why there is an exemption process.
Yesterday, I shared some words on Facebook, written by a fellow truth-seeker. She’s not a journalist, but she does have two degrees, including one in law. She recounted the details of a phone call between herself and a distraught mother, whose teenaged son had gone to his local supermarket, mask-less, and experienced an apparently alarming level of hostility from a herd of fellow shoppers, who were obviously deeply concerned about being able to see his face.
Whether this youngster had a valid exemption or not is not the issue here (I’m guessing he did, because why on earth would anyone put themselves in that hostile situation if they didn’t absolutely have to?) In fact, the accuracy of the details are not the issue, either.
Most of the commenters on the post saw it that way too, and expressed their concern, both in comments on the post, and by reaching out to me privately, which I had invited them to do.
Why did I post it? Not to make claims about the incident, and certainly not to ‘report’ any facts. To spark conversation, I suppose; perhaps to hold up a mirror. Fear is creating situations like these, all over the world. Have you seen the images of people on the ground, beaten by police during peaceful protests, or shouted at by fellow shoppers in supermarkets? Fully-armed, combat-gear-wearing law enforcement officers squaring off against people on a march?
My usual gang of trolls, erm, I mean, friends-who-only-ever-engage-with-me-on-contentious-posts-which-are-not-to-their-liking, didn’t see it quite the same way. They jumped on the thread*, challenging the veracity of the ‘report’ (oh, I forgot, it’s no longer socially acceptable to post opinions which don’t fit a certain narrative in a social networking space anymore, without ‘substantiating the claims’… the concerned citizenry wish you to only expound on your latest cat-dog-mishap-child’s-birthday-cake-fresh-air-walk-sandcastle-latest-example-of-lockdown-ingenuity instead), berating the youngster for ‘forgetting’ his mask, criticising perceived holes or embellishments in the discourse, and attacking a woeful lack of journalistic integrity (whether mine or the author’s was unclear).
- Sadly my logic-driven human brain can’t work out why my body reacts in such a devastatingly physical way to these verbal attacks. My lizard brain can, but that’s small comfort when you wake up with chest pain at 3am.
I don’t know about you, but here in my locked-down corner of the world, EVERYONE seems to be hurting. From the frightened essential workers being forced to enact the government’s hateful, divisive policies (and let’s face it, probably gagging for some time off, while they watch their non-essential neighbours lounging at home), to the harassed parents dealing with the intensity of homeschooling and children who react in untold and often unexpected different ways to what they know to be a glitch in their Matrix (and don’t even get me started on families living with disability and special needs, and the restriction on their ability to access the resources so crucial to their lives), to the families, friends and networks of the some 650* Kiwis per week who die (of anything) not permitted to mourn properly, nor celebrate that loved one’s life, to the faithful who cannot worship in person, to the lonely people who take great heart and joy from the social groups and activities they participate in, to, frankly, me, waking up at 3am with chest pains.
- I ran some entirely layman’s statistics to arrive at this figure. (Full disclosure, not a statistician.) I took the total number of people who died in NZ in the year to June 2020 (33,990), adjusted for people who died here while visiting from overseas (180), and divided the total deaths for NZ residents (33,810) by 52 (weeks in a year). The true numbers get a bit tricky to calculate because gathering restrictions changed between big, bad, virus-ridden Auckland and the other regions (like Invercargill, where they have not had so much as a whiff of a ‘case’, but they still have to wear masks at the supermarket; also Christchurch; also Nelson; also, everywhere on the whole dang South Island). So, let’s be conservative. Conservatism is a mathematical principle I’ve always been fond of; and which I put to good use in my business life. Manage expectations by inflating the negative and minimising the positive, eg when forecasting, make your possible expenses way bigger, and your possible income way smaller. Not a recipe for a happy personal life, should you transfer the principles of that thinking, but may help you manage your finances a little better. But, I digress. Back to the calculation. So, let’s just take the two weeks New Zealand was fully locked down (alert level 4) from 17th August to 31st August. Two full weeks. Somewhere in the region of 1300 Kiwis passed away. (Not of covid.) If you assume, on average, each individual person left behind at least 50 directly-affected mourners (again, deeply conservative, the last two funerals I attended had nearly a thousand people at each), that means, while we submitted to lockdown to contain a virus which may have raged out of control (but, weirdly, didn’t)…hang on a sec, I need my calculator… 65,000 people were directly affected by level 4 lockdown restrictions, just in terms of being unable to appropriately mourn the loss of their loved one. Not to mention that level 3 restrictions are much the same, in terms of funerals, so the number I’ve estimated is only the (conservative) starting point. Auckland, the most populated city in the country, has been at extreme lockdown for a further three weeks. (Even though the highest number of daily cases country-wide didn’t manage to crack three digits.)
Yes, we all seem to be hurting, this time around. This time, there’s nothing of the frisson and silver-lining-ness of the 2020 experience. (Admit it, you laptoppers, you DIYers, you frenetic gardeners, you haters-of-your-daily-commute.)* Lacking are the cute YouTube videos, the family singalongs, the fun memes. Things have taken a dark turn, and all I hear are versions of, “I”m over it.”
- No offence intended whatsoever. I, too, am all of those things.
I have a friend whose parent-in-law was hospitalised with advancing dementia prior to lockdown. Neither the patient’s spouse nor any of the family have been permitted to visit in five weeks. Can you imagine how frightening that patient’s lucid moments might be? Can you imagine the anguish of that poor family?
I have a friend whose next-door-neighbour was found wandering across the boundary in a miserable state, clutching bottles of medication in elderly hands, living alone because their spouse is in temporary care, no family permitted to visit, and in a terrified state thinking they might give themselves the wrong dose. (My friend is now the de facto carer, despite having their own children and extended family to look after. Lucky for the neighbour, my friend is a luminous soul and a magnificent example of the love of the Creator they so deeply believe in.)
Is this all about protecting our elderly? Another friend works in rest home care; and assured me it’s ‘extremely hard’ on the residents; so cut off from friends, family, visits, smiles, and the small-but-all-important activities throughout their day.
Yes, the novelty has well and truly worn off in 2021, and the toll is beginning to show. We are all various shades of sad and angry and hurt and lonely and scared.
I don’t know anyone who’s happy right now. (The shareholders of the nation’s duopoly of supermarkets, excepted.)
We’re drinking too much. We’re eating too much. We can’t stand the sight of each other. We can’t stand the sight of our own cooking.
Families are being torn apart. My family is being torn apart.
(Good news, though. At midnight tonight, Auckland goes to ‘level 3’, which, to quote the indomitable Libby Johnson, is just ‘level 4 with takeaways’.)
Right about now, you might be tempted to accuse me of being callous about the *undisclosed number of* / *forecasted number of* people who will get sick and die if we let covid run rampant through our communities. You might be pursing your righteous lips and saying, ‘See? The lockdown worked. Look how few cases and deaths we’ve had.’
Well, as with all poorly designed experiments, we can never know that, for certain, can we? But in the meantime, how dare you call me callous to suggest a very specific, manageable risk may be managed without these extreme, widespread, devastating consequences?
Has the government ever talked about health? My inbox has been bursting with evidence of the huge benefit of increasing vitamin D levels for covid outcomes for more than a year. Vitamin D is cheap and readily available. Why haven’t we all been given some?
Because the government decided to buy us all a vaccine*, instead. No, thanks. You can make mine a vitamin.
- NZ gave millions to the vaccine development effort, and we also pay for every dose. Sure, that makes perfect sense. Also, not for the first time, I wonder, if Mr. Gates is such a philanthropist, why can’t he buy everyone in the world a vaccine? (Perversely, but probably appropriately, the tune ‘I’d like to buy the world a Coke’ always plays in my head at this thought.) At last count, shouting 7 billion people a vaccine at $2.15 a throw (which is the lowest price available; yes, different countries pay different prices) would reduce his total net worth to the tune of… grabbing the calculator again… less than 15%. Don’t worry, he’ll still have $111.86 billion in the bank. Gosh, maybe he can pay for all those multiple boosters as well?
One thing I’ve heard from the people who appear so delighted to hand over their freedoms on a silver platter right now is this: “Oh, but we’ve had so much freedom in this country, we don’t know how lucky we are, compared to other countries.” What they mean is, because we enjoyed such a normal life between October 2020 and July 2021, only marred by one very short, sharp lockdown in between, which we hardly felt, then our relative freedom has just been amazing, and I need to stop complaining.
D’you know, the thing is- those freedoms are Creator-given, inalienable human rights. These rights were enshrined by the Nuremburg Code of 1945. These rights are affirmed here in the NZ by the Bill of Rights Act 1990.
They’re not a pat on the back from a totalitarian government. They’re not a doggie treat because we wagged our tails like good boys and girls.
Most Kiwis recognise that although these rights are largely freedoms they’ve always enjoyed (although certainly not for those old enough to have lived through the war, or who have moved here from other totalitarian regime states), there was a time (and there are places) where the same cannot be said.
The freedoms to move, associate, discourse, believe and express what we choose are the very tenets of what it has meant to be human for more than seventy years. In my lowly view, there could never be an earthly justification for taking them away.
(Remember China? North Korea? Myanmar? Remember the Australian refugee crisis? We used to be upset about human rights abuses. Apparently just when they’re happening to someone else, though.)
Let’s say, for a moment, the 2019 virus was as deadly as the Black Plague, or even the Spanish Flu. (It’s not, by any stretch, but let’s say it was.) Let’s say people were literally falling over and dying in the street. (They’re not.) Let’s say, even, that people were falling over and dying in their beds at home. (Also, not.) Let’s say the hospitals were overwhelmed. Now, I’m no Florence Nightingale, but if things were that bad, and if I was healthy, it would likely be my choice to leave my home so I could visit my neighbours, care for my friends, and offer comfort to others. I don’t need to be an essential worker to make this choice, I only need to be human. But these current restrictions would not allow me to do that… not without breaking the law.
The poet and philosopher Suzy Kassem said, “Humanity is lost because people have abandoned using their conscience as their compass.”
My detractors implore me to trust the science, to listen to the experts. And when I reply, yes, and what about these experts, here, with differing data, differing opinions? What about these accredited experts, here? And these ones, with patient experience, with coal-face experience? Or, this published work, these scientific reports, these peer-reviewed papers?
They say, no, they are not experts. They are discredited, they are wrong.
Born in Christchurch in 1917, my grandmother lived through the Great Depression and World War II. She lost her war-traumatised father to suicide when she was barely a teenager, steered three children through the perils of premature birth, mumps, measles, chicken pox, whooping cough and puberty, put up with a perennially unfaithful husband, and lost a son to a senseless road accident before he reached the age of twenty.
Nana experienced the despatching of troops and the trickle of wartime returnees, a brother-in-law ruined by his frontline experience, female cousins never married without enough men to go around. She lived through rationing, food insecurity, decolonization, the Cold War, the space race, earthquakes, the advent of the telephone, the personal computer, the credit card, the ATM machine. (Which she would never, till the end of her life, trust to extract money from her deposit account.)
She often told me the story of the first ‘real supermarket’ opening in south Auckland. It was revolutionary, she said. People queued down the street. Over time, the story became tinged with sadness, as we drove through the suburban villages where she used to buy produce or fish or meat from small family businesses. Like the men off to war, like the nods of greeting in the street, like suits and hats, they were mostly all gone, in the end. The supermarkets won.
With a life so full of tragic sadness it could be fodder for a best-selling book, Nana was, understandably, a bit of a fearful character. She was submissive, and uncomplaining. She wore the permanent look of a person about to receive horrible news. When I lived in Europe, she would call me at work in the middle of her night, and whoever took the call would rush to my cubicle with a face full of fear. “Your grandmother…” they would say, pointing at the phone, “I think you better… she doesn’t sound at all well.” She was fine. That was just my Nana. A face full of sadness, and a thready voice that could break your heart.
I don’t know, exactly, what Nana would make of our current situation. Would she fear, and metaphorically shout about the loss of our precious freedoms, like me? Or would she fear, and shout about masking up and getting jabbed, like my brother? Would she be as broken as my mother is, seeing her two favourite grandchildren at opposite sides of a great and seemingly uncrossable divide?
(Probably not. He was always her favourite. That’s ok… she was always mine.)
I don’t know what Nana would say to me, if we were able to speak on the phone right now.
But, do you know what? I’m thinking of the Pink song Beam Me Up.
‘Beam me up
Give me a minute, I don’t know what I’d say in it
Probably just stare, happy just to be there holding your face‘
Nothing happening down here on earth matters.
Nothing happening where she is, matters. (Ok, not true, I’m deeply curious, and after the above-said face holding, there would be a long conversation on that very topic.)
It’s the love we have in ourselves, and for each other. For me, that’s where compassion flows from, tolerance. It’s where we can meet across uncrossable divides.
If we truly hold it in ourselves and for each other, all the fear and division and bullying and shouting can fade away.
You can do your thing, and I can do mine.
We can be responsible for our own hearts, and for uplifting others, and for making our contribution to this dimension, this space and time of which I, in spite of all the attendant pain, stress and burden, am, at my core, so deeply and lovingly grateful to be a part.
Zigzag Utopia 
Oh Tiff so right and true