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19th Jan - 25th Jan
FIRST ON THE STREET
No 784
LAKES WEEKLY BULLETIN
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Hands up, when was the last time you scanned in with the Covid tracer app? Other than at the Lake Hayes A&P show, where a burly farmer in a white coat thrust a QR code under my nose, I have to admit I’ve been inexcusably lazy in recent months. Edward Snowden has a greater digital footprint. I discovered I hadn’t even enabled the Bluetooth feature, which was introduced December 11. And I’m not alone. While there is no regional breakdown available, the number of daily scans nationwide is down a fifth from its peak in September. Last Monday, there were 515,759 scans across New Zealand, compared to the all-time high of 2.5 million on Sept 4. Back then, Dr Ashley Bloomfield was King of the World. He was like Leo with his arms outstretched on the front of the Titanic, if Leo had also been an expert in icebergs, navigation and the hubris of labelling ships ‘unsinkable’. The Ash could have told us to strap lemons to our foreheads, and we’d have made a few memes about it, and then gone to buy some lemons. In contrast, his appeal last week for people to start using the app again has been largely ignored.
Thousands travelled to Cardrona’s Robrosa Station for the Shapeshifter concert on Saturday. Hamish Roberge, Josh Swain, Tim Reid (from TomTom Productions) along with locals Sandra, Kylee & Kendalle.
So how have we gone from literally disinfecting our groceries before taking them into our houses, to being so complacent we can’t even take 10 seconds to scan?
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It feels like we’ve beaten Covid, doesn’t it? Like the risk has gone. When there is an obvious threat, we act, but when it’s a bit more theoretical, we’re back to ‘she’ll be right’. Add to that the fact we’ve had the rest of the world blowing smoke up our collective arse for how Jacinda has handled the pandemic, and it’s easy to become relaxed and, dare I say it, a little smug. But, with these new variants at our borders, especially the more transmissible variant from the UK, which recorded 1,564 deaths on one day last week to take its total deaths past 100,000, the risk is real. Jacinda told The Associated Press recently the goal of eliminating Covid was driven by fear, from the early realisation that NZ’s health system couldn’t cope with a big outbreak. That remains the case, especially in places like Queenstown. I don’t want to start 2021 as a doomsayer, pointing to dark waters on the horizon where a big, cold iceberg looms, but stopping the next potential community outbreak quickly and efficiently is crucial, especially for the Queenstown economy too. Even more so if the trans-Tasman bubble goes ahead. So, I’m going to start scanning again, and I encourage you to, too. There’s a vaccine, so the end is in sight. Hey, here’s an idea. Once the elderly and the vulnerable have been vaccinated, how about we distribute the vaccine based on how often you use the app?
www.thecrownpub.nz
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