One week later

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.