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It's Sunday again. One week later. There are 782 community cases now. New infections have dropped. Auckland, where almost all the cases are is a level 4 lockdown. The rest of the country is at level 3. During the first outbreak in New Zealand, last year, before there were mass visualisations and multiple types of graphs I started putting the numbers in a spreadsheet and creating my own line graphs. New cases, total cases, deaths. It was a way of digesting the information, the 1pm briefings, and feeling a little bit in control. When we got to see family again, I discovered my brother had done exactly the same things. Plotting the numbers creating the graphs. Even though graphs are everywhere now I still have been doing my own. A weird kind of meditation, like learning poetry off by heart, bringing the numbers closer. One woman died of Covid yesterday.  The day before yesterday a man grabbed a knife in an Auckland supermarket and attacked people around him. He was openly supporting ISIS type ideology, threatening terrorism and he was under constant surveillance, within 60 seconds of the attack he was killed by police. 7 people were injured. The government knew he was a threat but could do nothing.
Joe Biden, US president, has been pulling US troops out of Afghanisatan after nearly 20 years. Taliban have taken over. Just yesterday they say they overcame the last region of resistance. There's been a rush to get out any non-Afghanis, anyone who can leave. The Taliban are saying they will respect women's and girls' right so long as they comply with Shariah law. But the women are frightened. The women judges are frightened because men they put in prison have been released and are looking for them. The women are frightened that once again the girls will not be allowed to go to school and any women leaving her house will need to be in full burka and accompanied by a man. Women staged a protest yesterday, demanding the Taliban recognises women's rights. It dispersed quickly when the Taliban came to the protest and fired their guns into the air. We're all watching a Netflix series called Turning point which looks at 9/11, but lots of the history of how it got to that point as well, and lots of the thinking by US leaders. Alex stays and watches the programme with us, which is interesting because she is often disdainful of what we watch. Something has sparked her with this one. She spends hours talking to her friends online and laughing. She likes lockdown school because it's more systematic, there's a list of things to do. Her school is loose and liberal and allows for plenty of freedom but my girl wants structure and tasks and homework. She is currently writing a story for school which must be set in a made up land and having a good time, discovering apps for world building and character development. Thinking about a sort of Antarctica 500,000 years hence I think , and the problems of continental drift, and what the people would wear, and how they would talk. In just a few days it will be 20 years since 9/11 and it was just a few days after that that US went into Afghanistan. I was working at the National Library and that day, the day of that terrorism the large TV was brought into the foyer and turned on, an event usually reserved only for major rugby games. We watched over and over the planes flying into the towers, and the buildings collapsing, and the smoke vast and billowing, moving like a dragon down the street seeming to chase the masses of people who were running and screaming like some cheesy disaster movie. There have been 216 million recorded cases of Covid now around the world, and four and a half million deaths.
We're in the lounge at home. Alex has gone to bed. Joe is looking at his phone and Maggie is reading a book. She is unwittingly channelling the 80s. Dyed black hair and a black jacket with patches safety pinned to it and chains around her neck including an old metal key. Old blue jeans ripped across both knees. It's warm and quiet. It is funny how writing has a sound. If I am to dive into the sound of typing, oh I dunno, the closest I can think of, is a very quiet, very scatty group of horses. Kind of determined when they're moving but sporadic. it's Sunday night and we're in lockdown again. Two Tuesdays ago there was a community case and that midnight the whole country went into Level 4 lockdown. No school or work. Just supermarkets and chemists and going out for the daily walks. Maggie walked 12 kilometres today and saw various people on the way. There was a furore in the media especially overseas about going into lockdown over one case. It was only 12 days ago and now it's 453 cases. 15 in Wellington and the rest in Auckland. A Covid-19 outbreak in Fiji started in April, there's been 45,000 cases of since, 19000 of them active. The total population is 903,000 and there have been 530 deaths. There are news reports on many days of another village it has reached. On this coming Tuesday everyone south of Auckland is moving to level 3, which doesn't mean much difference except the children of essential workers can go back to school and a few more shops open. Funerals and weddings can happen but only with 10 people or less. Auckland and north stays at level 4. Auckland and north will be an cut off because no one can move between levels. Vaccinations are being rolled out. Two million people have had at least one dose. One million have had two doses and are fully vaccinated. Joe has had one shot. The kids and I get our first in a coupe of weeks. There's talk of a possible need for booster shots. The delta variant is worse than the one before. More contagious, deadlier. There are groups of people who suffer long Covid where the effects are lasting for months and months and everything has changed for these people, fatigue and pain and brain fog. An epidemiologist, Michael Baker said we can't expect to go back to Level 1 as we know it. I'm the only one left up now. I can't sleep at night and can't wake early in the morning. A week or so ago there were a million recorded deaths from Covid-19. Yesterday, president of the United States, Donald Trump and his wife, Melania Trump, announced they had positive tests. Donald Trump is 74 and mildly obese making him at risk for Covid complications. He tweeted the announcement. Iti s being reported as a mild case. A few days ago he had the first leaders debate with Joe Biden, I didn't watch it, but apparently a total debarcle, and I sense a feeling from everyone, somehow irrelevant. That the most powerful role in the world is being fought over by old white men. The leaders stood apart and did not shake hands but they were in the same room. Biden has tested negative but it may be too early to tell. The presidential elections for the US are on November 3rd. At the debate Trump did not condemn white supremacist groups, telling the Proud Boys to stand by. He's tried to claim he did not know who they were since.
Trump is in quarantine and he won't be able to organise and attend his mass style rallies. He's cancelled all his outings. Just now an announcement that he's just flown by helicopter to a military hospital, Walter Reid Medical Centre. He's taking experimental medication. Joe Biden's campaign has taken down all disparaging comments about Trump. He's been snarky about Biden wearing masks and has had many many rallies and meetings where rejecting masks is part of the culture of his followers, oppressive nonsense. There's a few theories floating around about what could happen:
At the same time, the death of US Supreme Court judge Ruth Bader Ginsberg means there's a spot on the Supreme Court. Trump has nominated an anti-abortionist, Amy Coney Barrett to take the place. A power-grab in that if it goes ahead, will happen weeks before the election, and a way to stack the Court with pro-Republicans. People are worried that it set the scene for overturning Roe vs Wade, which said women could choose an abortion. Apparently that's the phrase people are using about Covid now. Living alongside Covid. Today WHO announced a record number of new world cases in a day: 307,930.
New Zealand had a cluster starting with four people a month ago. Now some scientists are saying it is more accurately described as an outbreak. We now have 96 active cases in NZ, People coming in at the border are put in managed isolation for two weeks and tested on day 3 and day 12, and sent to quarantine if they're positive. The outbreak is in the community, where transmission is from person to person. 37 cases are in managed isolation and 57 are community cases. One of the places there was an outbreak was a Christian church in Auckland where much of the congregation didn't believe in Covid, didn't tell people where thy'd been, and wouldn't get tested. In the last few days a woman has tested positive went to a Les Mills gym and went to three classes while she was unknowingly infectious. There are anti-lockdown protests happening in Auckland in breach of a requirement of no gatherings of more than 10 people. Jami-Lee Ross, formerly of National who accused leader Simon Bridges of corruption and turns out to be a predatory creep has started the Advance New Zealand party and spoke to the rally. The electioneering is in full swing, the election will be on October 17. Judith Collins is delighting in being cruel, her husband is on social media being awful about Jacinda Ardern. Collins brushes it off. We had 101 days with no new community infections in New Zealand. Our last new infection was 22nd May 2020, On 8 June, the last active case was declared recovered and at midnight we moved into Level 1, which meant no restrictions on gatherings, everything back to normal, the shops opened back up, restrictions were lifted, students went back to school. Border restrictions did stay in place. Only returning New Zealand citizens and a few exceptions have been allowed in. All arrivals go into quarantine for two weeks .People got tested on day four and twelve of their quarantine, and must test negative to be able to leave quarantine. At first it was self-isolation but then it was quarantine facilities, mostly large hotels. A few people escaped. Some people will have to pay for the quarantine, causing outrage among ex-pats
Worldwide, outside our border, the virus has still been raging. Worse than ever. For 101 days our cafes and bars open and noisy, our schools full, public transport crowded. But worldwide on 22nd of May there were 5,252, 237 cases recorded of Covid-19 and 344,446 deaths. 101 days later, on 11th August there were 20,489,472 cases and 743,417 deaths. Huge and deadly outbreaks in Australia and the United States. Latin America became a new hotspot for infection. News reports like Victoria's deadliest day yet. On 17 July, the New Zealand Herald reported that the US had broken its daily record of new cases six times in a month, including that day where more than 75,000 new cases were recorded. On 30 July, India recorded a daily record of more than 50,000. More than a million cases in Africa, Over the last week the Director General of Health, and the government amped up warnings saying it was only a matter of time before there would be another community outbreak and bam, on Tuesday just gone, 11th August, four cases of community transmission were announced. That night the PM announced Auckland would go into level 3 (schools closed, non-essential workplaces closed, social distances no gatherings of more than 10). and the rest of New Zealand to level 2 (maintain social distancing, no gatherings of more than 100). Everyone advised to wear masks. They have been contact tracing and testing like mad.23,000 test carried out in a single day. Since Tuesday another 33 community transmissions have been found. President Trump's brother is sick but they're not saying what with yet. Russia is deploying a vaccine that scientists in other countries are saying is not safe. There's a fear a bad vaccine in another country will put people off using one here. It's been really cold the last few days. Joe and I both grumpy and warmth deprived. Today two things happened in New Zealand regarding Covid-19. New Zealand's one remaining active case was declared recovered. For days there's been no new cases, one active case, no new cases one active case day after day. And today, New Zealand has no known active cases. It might be there, of course, in the country, silently infecting, but they've tested a lot and haven't found it. The second thing that happened was that it was announced we would go back down to level 1, basically all remaining restrictions on social gathering and distancing are removed. Our borders remain shut. That happens at midnight, in 44 minutes.
When our borders shut I went for a walk and wrote a blog post. I wrote a few more blog posts. I walked every day. It's been a strange, connected/disconnected time. There was a bend in the path and our family is walking in a different direction, not a u bend. not back the way we come, but definitely different. Maggie started walking every day, or cycling, scrambling. Pockets full of rusty things. Shoes always wet, walking through streams and finding clouds, sunsets and old weed filled cars. Alex made sponge cakes. Joe created and executed a printing project called The Lockdown Alphabet. He finished a few days ago, 28 prints, the letters, the ampersand and a cover page. He's started printing it on good paper and I've helped by setting it up on his website. I turned 50. After a bit of not knowing how many people we could have visiting us, and umming and aaahing, I finally decided I didn't want a big party but I did want the very front garden to be a little patch of native forest so I held a gardening bee and invited about 20 people, and it was lovely. I did garden, and hardly talked but saw lots of people, and now I have a wee baby native forest in my front yard. Joe has started building steps. It was quite a wonderful transformation, with rocks and paths and a lot of mulch and cardboard boxes I stripped of their plastic tape to use as weed mulch. About a week before my gardening bee I started gardening. and it's been a week since, and besides today I have been gardening and gardening and gardening, something I have never really done much of before. Our family, Joe, Maggie (14) and Alex (11) finished watching Stranger Things. We rewatched Cumberbatch's Sherlock, we instituted a taking turns to decide what we watch or do for the evening but it always seemed to end up being Alex's turn. We played anarchy (card game), Settlers of Catan, Splendour, and something else I can't remember. The kids have been having sleepovers. While New Zealand has been holding its breath about case numbers, the United States exploded. Two days before I turned 50, George Floyd, a black American, unarmed at the time, was kneeled on the neck, for 8 minutes by a Minneapolis police officer, and died. Someone took video on their phone of it, of the officer kneeling and George Floyd saying I can't breathe, Please stop, I can't breathe. The video got shared and then the protests started. They've been going for more than a week. Black Lives Matter banners, and I can't breathe banners. The whole country is aflame with it. There was looting and random brick throwing, my friend C, says piles of bricks will suddenly appear at protests, cars on fires. donald Trump said, when the looting starts the shooting starts. Donald Trump called in the homeguard, but today recalled it. Donald Trump called for Antifa (anti fascists) to be declared a terrorist group. Sometimes the police have en-masse kneeled down to the protestors to show their solidarity and joined in the marches. Sometimes the marches have protected police officers isolated from their teams. There are rubber bullets and tear gas. And face masks. And dancing, And chanting. And curfews. The media is getting targetted. From police and protestors. From talking to C, it seems there is heady mix of genuine political torment rising in people, and random crazy people, and looters and white supremacists and things on fire. People are saying it's the end of the US experiment. I haven't read it in detail but I see a headline today about disestablishing or defunding or replacing the Minneapolis police force where it all began. So many years of brutality. There have been solidarity protests in the UK, and Australia and here in New Zealand. Other countries too. Sometimes they go against all the covid rules. In the UK a slave trader statue was brought down and toppled into the sea. Two million Coronavirus cases in the US, a million still active, 112,000 deaths. People still in lockdown. In April unemployment was over 15% it has dropped down to 13%. At my house everyone's in bed except me. My garden growing outside. The fire almost out. Gosh, all the people we didn't lose. I get it all out of order but slang evolving in schools and at parties and on bits of the web too young for me reaches me sometimes and I can see how it does new things, How the word filled a gap, maybe a rebirth of an earlier phrase or concept, but wonk. Like lit. Excellent, and it comes with it a whole fathom of nuance, of lit from within, of lit by a spotlight, of lit like a candle. Something that is illuminated or illuminates.
When I walked tonight, oh, the sky was lit. A great expanse of pink and clouds full of rolls and folds and curls. And the sea was extraordinary, somehow still and smooth and a bright light blue with various pink stripes. Not its usual grey greeny self at all. The South Island was dark and huge and so long, the lines of mountains seemed to go on forever. As if I everything had been somehow heaved up and shifted and landed again in a different place. I was walking the track I had never been on before lockdown, which weaves past the urupa and over the small hills, so you can see the bike track on one side and the sea on the other. Tonight is the last night of lockdown so the walk felt significant. The light, the single cicada vibrating, the high pitched tweeting of small birds. At one point a strange heavy bird flew in front of me, I saw it had landed in a tree but it was quite dark by then and I could only see a silhouette, it was some kind of parrot. The large empty roads of the park with their giant white arrows that I was not following. One hour and fifteen minutes until lockdown lifts. We're moving to level 2, schools open on Monday, tomorrow shops, restaurants, malls, libraries, cafes, hairdressers, doctors, dentists. No gatherings of more than 10 people. KT and Sam are coming over for cards at the exact moment, midnight. Joe slept badly and is half-asleep, his elbow resting on the arm of the sofa, his head tilted into his hand, his eyes closed. Tuesday our cat is clinging on to his sloping lap. The kids have made plans with their friends, Alex's quite definite, Maggie's vaguer. One of Maggie's best friends lives over the fence. They wanted to bring soup to Maggie at midnight but I said no unless Maggie wakes up spontaneously. There were no new cases of Covid-19 in New Zealand today and no deaths. 4.3 million reported cases worldwide, it was only 2 days ago that it reached 4 million. 293,000 reported deaths. Of that 1.4 million cases are in the US,, and they've had 83,000 deaths. These are just the reported cases. The wood burner sounds like an insistent wind. Joe is stretching now, changes position, falls back asleep. Tuesday determinedly purrs on. I love our room full of colour and light, our little house full of the kids crocheting themselves a personhood, their feelings like waterfalls. their brains firing, their stuffing, their stuff. Around 4,116,000 around the world have had the virus. I think I just saw an article saying 10 million people in the US have lost their jobs. In NZ over the last week we have had between -1 and 2 cases. We've had 1400 or so cases and 21 deaths, many of them in rest homes. We are in alert level 3, which meant we were allowed to surf and swim at the beach and kids of essential workers could go to school. Cafes and takeaway places and restaurants could serve takeaway food and drink. Tomorrow there will be an announcement about going into level 2. Level 2 will mean a resumption of pools and malls and schools and workplaces. Kindergartens and some training places, shops, cafes. People are encouraged to work from home still, beauticians and hairdressers wear ppe, personal protective equipment. We have to remain socially distant, cafes can only open with table service, no going up to the counter. They have to limit the number of people allowed inside. No indoor or outdoor gatherings of more than 100 people. We are doing well is the general idea. NZ is doing really well. Joe is printing a lockdown alphabet, commentary on coronavirus. I love it. Today's letter is M. Maggie is asking about the school terms, outraged by a possible longer term (holidays were shifted to the first full weeks of lockdown). She finds science boring, Joe says it may be boring teachers. Ask them to tell you why it's interesting, he says. "Wouldn't this house be more aesthetic, cooler and more fun to visit and generally much better if it grew legs and could walk around?" asks Maggie. Joe and Maggie are discussing this "I think lots of tiny little legs would be better" says Joe "so it could scuttle around.".  I am in our end room. It has high bookshelves on one side of the room and the bed for occasional guests or restless nights on the other. I'm at the desk in between. We have a giant film poster on one wall, Un film de Marcel Camus, L'oiseau de Paradis. It's Cambodian, made in 1962, it is probably the original poster and I should not have it bluetacked to my wall where it is getting damaged. On the wall too, a small kete, postcards, a picture of a wary kestrel fallen out of some book, paper fish, cut, hand drawn and painted with watercolours by Joe. They have small metal hooks in their mouths, a remnant from one of our kid's birthday parties,
On the desk, tins with their labels scrubbed off filled with pens and pencils, none of them useful or practical ones, a can of fixative, Japanese ink still in its box, a pair of sunglasses, a cord I use as a skipping rope, a picture of my Dad. A box of bull clips. The box the bull clips are in once contained a Moomin cup. One of the pictures on the box is of a party in Moominvalley, I think it is a composite, I can't think of a scenewhere this gathering would make sense, but it does capture the essence of a Moomin party, which remains for me, the great ideal of social gatherings. It's in a garden, among huge trees which are decorated and glowing, with lights or their own fruit or flowers, I can't tell. Snufkin is lying in a tree, Moominpappa is playing the accordion, the morose Hemulen has his empty butterfly net, the terrifying Groke is hiding behind a tree, the luminescent hattifatteners are grouped like flowers on long stalks, Sniff looks on skeptically. Moominmamma is in the distance with her handbag. Strangely there is no Moomintroll. When I was a kid with a friend coming over, I would wait at the end of our driveway for them. Wanting to speed the visit up. I spent many years going to mass camping events, protests mostly, sometimes music events or dance parties, sometimes perhaps just social things. My heart would leap when I would see a field, with a fire, and glowing tents or campervans or house buses. The great unknown of what was waiting for me, of friends, of strangers. In Christchurch, for a short time I shared a house with a bunch of women art students. We'd go off to parties en masse, they were larger than life, op shop stylish, I felt like that when I was with them, powerful, our extravagance absorbed into the noise and people of a party. How the party opened to receiveour magnificence and closed around us. We became part of it. When I first visited Wellington as an adult, I found the occupation of the place, the tall buildings, the greenbelt, the streets, the cafes, the gigs, all of it thrilling. It was full of hope and mystery. Things happened here, it was like waking up. When I tramped around London, I remember swearing to myself that I would not get lost there, that this city would make room for one more bedazzled foreigner. That I would be alone but not lonely. There is something about social encounters which fed me. I knew a party or a conversation or a city could change me and that I could change it. That the event or place and I would move on each other like lovers, changed forever. We would slip under each other skins and stay there. I am made up of remembered phrases, of unexpected chiming laughter, of walks through urban tunnels, of dinner in tramping huts, of holding weeping friends through the night, of sunrises, the deep blue of a flatmate's bedroom, the smell of a shared living room, legendary picnics by rivers, Christmas dinner in a London flat, of how someone's body moved when they danced, how air lapped around another, how space was a cloak that moved with them. It was all so dazzling, perhaps because I spent most of my high school years invisible. Untouchable. Eyes would flit across me like I had a sign nothing to see here, nothing to see here, which I may in all fairness have been projecting, because invisibility was better than mockery or contempt or unaccountable venom at my unpopularity, my lack of fit. I was hated. And that was really the only kind of social attention I got. I became so small at high school, so colourless. A shy, unopinionated, frightened person. Ugly had to be quiet. My demons were called Tania or Janelle, Chris or Brent or random strangers to whom I was an affront. I was not attractive, oh no. And as a 1980s Christchurch teenage girl, I had just one job. Our New Zealand Covid-19 full lock down, dubbed Level 4 here, was originally set at 28 days. No malls, or libraries, no flat whites in cafes, no swimming pools. No sports fields illuminated at night, no train trips, no shops except supermarkets. We leave the house only for exercise (everyone walks now) or to get supplies. Only essential goods ordered over the internet. Only essential workers go to an actual place for work. No swimming, no fishing, no gigs, no galleries, no movies. On Day 26 the Prime Minister announced Level 4 was extended for a week. So now next Tuesday we are in level 3, where not much changes except shops can send a wider range of goods to customers, and some sports can be played at private clubs, and kids that can't be looked after at home can go to school. For most of us it will be the same. Our Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern is being hailed in the Western world as the great leader of these times. New Zealand acted fast. She resisted moaning by various business sectors about impact on the economy and said lives were important. As of yesterday we had 1461 total cases, 18 deaths, and we've had only between 3 and 6 new cases for the last five days, testing over 6000 a day. New cases are all linked to overseas travel or known cases (bar one under investigation yesterday). Most people who had it have have now recovered and so we have 325 active cases. Ireland has a similar population: over 18,000 cases, over 1000 deaths. Trump continues to be terrifying, his last suggestion was to disinfect people inside their bodies, or to shine virus-killing lights into them. He's now claiming it was a joke. There are 895,766 cases in the US and 50,439 deaths. People are now talking about the US no longer being a superpower. The thing I have been thinking about is how lockdown is not so different for me. My life once so full of people, so occupied with flatmates, and friends, and activist groups and encounters, so driven by the idea of gatherings, of being with, of standing alongside, has emptied. That pre-lockdown I went to work, I very occasionally went to music, I had a monthly volunteer meeting, I once in a while went to something social, but most of the time would lose interest and instead stay at home. I would see wider family. Joe and I would sometimes have friends over to play cards. I organised a last minute party in late summer before lockdown, and it had something I loved in it, of family and friends, the right portions of people who knew each other and those who didn't. We did put up lights and we did sit in our garden. But it was rare. My life has both expanded and narrowed so I return each night to two kids and a partner, and they have taken the place of those other things. They are my greatest loves. But it's different. I'm thinking how, when we move to Level 2, and to Level 1, that it will not be so different. That it will not be a great release from a prison for me. In Level 4 I still spend too much time on the internet, I still chat with friends mostly online, I sometimes engage with new people but I don't know how real all those exchanges are. Do they sustain me in the same way? Do they expose and expand me? The thing about meeting people online, is that you can control everything, you can engage or disengage at will, you can turn away, or talk over. You aren't accountable. There's no etiquette. You're not physically occupying the same air, breaking bread, or painting a banner or planting a garden with them, or being drawn into the magic of clouds and sun and dusk passing over and through a good conversation. The ones that last from afternoon until night. The ones when you remember a friend saying something important and the way the light fell on them, and how their voice went from quiet to urgent. The traffic in the distance. The birds you all hear. I'm wondering if I'd already locked down. What I'd shut off. What part of being human I'd turned from. What I willingly lost and why I lost the hunger for it. Trump has withdrawn US funding from the World Health Organisation. He is now blaming China, and WHO for not dealing with the virus properly.
15 new cases today. 11 of them known to be associated with known cases. 300 non-symptomatic people were tested in Queenstown today where there is one of the more serious outbreaks. This is to try and figure out if it is out in the community. There was an explanation from Ardern about what will happen if we go into Alert Level 3, which is that schools will open for kids who can't be kept at home, cafes and restaurants can open for takeaways, shops can open for online trading, we can swim, surf, and mountain bike again. Malls, libraries, pools, all stay shut. We continue to work at home if we can. We are told on Monday if we move from level 4 to 3 on Wednesday midnight. Everyone I know waits avidly for the 1pm briefing from Ashley Bloomfield and Jacinda Ardern. Ashley Bloomfield has acquired a cult status, there is a fundraiser for Women's Refuge selling t-shirts and tote bags with Bloomfield's face and the slogan The curve crusher. Three friends and I had a Zoom chat tonight. We weave in and out of each others lives every day through Slack.. H. talked about the virus crisis, and looming under that the economic crisis, and under that the climate crisis. The virus may be being brought under control here in New Zealand but there are bigger more frightening storms brewing. In the fear, stubborn stones of hope. Could we build something new? Could we do something different? None of us wants to go back. |
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