50 New cases today, total 205. I;’m predicting we’ll be at 1000 in two weeks time.
Wednesday morning, last day before full lockdown. Many places around the world are preparing for it. We have family in Canada, it’s interesting what they class as ‘essential services’, surely people can do without liquor stores for a while if they’re serious about preventing deaths?
People in general just don’t seem to be getting this. When I mentioned the youngsters grouping together in the park someone reminded me “Oh but total lockdown is only at midnight tonight, they’re young and it’s going to be a long wait for them”. So what does that mean then, that the virus can’t spread until midnight? Get with the program people, we need to stay apart NOW.
Last night I woke up at 1am with toothache and took another pain-killer. A week ago the dentist ground my back tooth into shape after a 10 year old ceramic crown broke loose. They took a mould of the tooth to send away and have a new crown made. He mentioned that it usually takes 10 days to have made but now take up to two weeks. That has changed. Yesterday I contacted them and asked what the chances were of that crown being done because my tooth is getting sensitive and I’m having to take pain-killers so I can sleep. The short answer is “We aren’t allowed to see any patients, you’re going to have to take pain-killers for the next 4-6 weeks and then the procedure will have to be done again because there’s a good chance the shape of your tooth will have changed”. Oh well, I’m pretty sure there are many people who are having it worse than me, some who don’t even have a roof over their heads and regular food intake.
I work for an automotive electrical workshop - which has actually expanded over the years to include light and heavy mechanical services. Yesterday they spent hours debating how things will progress, after all, trucks carrying food, amongst others, are essential services. The guys with vans stocked up for breakdowns will be on call but since I was workshop-based I will stay home. After all I am the one most infected with the A.G.E virus and my breathing is deteriorating with all the pollen in the air. New Zealand’s Waikato region is known as the “allergy capital” of the country. Planted between two mountain ranges we’re in a giant “bowl” that keeps the pollen trapped and the dry season means that not much of it has been washed away. I don’t have asthma ‘as such’ but have been on an inhaler the last two years to counteract the wheezing brought about the hay-fever. Asthma, the A.G.E virus and covid-19 may make for a ‘deadly’ cocktail. If I had been asked to go to work I would rather decline and go on unpaid leave than take that risk.
One of my biggest concerns that nobody seems to be thinking about is these ‘one way’ poles that brush up against our legs, and small kids hands and maybe faces, when we enter a supermarket - this article suggests that the virus survives longest on plastic - which is what is at the end of those prongs…. I mentioned my concern at one supermarket and was told “Don’t worry, we sterilise them every 2 hours”!
Someone messages me at 7 am about a camera I have had for sale on marketplace for months so we make arrangements for me to put on gloves and package the camera and leave it out front when she arrives, then they will leave the money in the mailbox and I will collect it with a pair of pliers after they leave and put it in a cupboard in the garage overnight for any ‘germs’ to die. Times have changed - rapidly.
12pm, back from a visit to the pharmacy to get something to calm the pain of my tooth that is halfway through getting a crown. There was a line of about 10 people before me, I stepped up 2 metres from the last person and as an elderly gentleman came up behind me a few minutes later I turned around and said to him “2 metres away please” and he graciously thanked me for reminding him and stepped back. Across from the line was a barber shop still open, cutting someone’s hair.
To the right of the line was the hairdresser’s open for business, after all lockdown is only at midnight tonight so we’re safe for now right? As we were waiting in the line one of the workers brushed past everyone on the inside of the line, instead of keeping a distance and simply stepping between two people.
The pharmacy was doing it right, they were like a different world compared to the barber and hairdresser, and Subway serving meals.
There are two ways to approach this situation:
1.) Be miserable and complain about having to wait 6 weeks to get my sore tooth treated.
2.) Be grateful that I can actually still get medicine to help me through this time. I think option 2 is the sensible choice.
At 3pm a state of emergency was declared. Good job! The army and police will enforce the rules because many lives are at stake.