Thursday 26/03/2020

The word from the officials is “Act like you have covid-19”, not like others have it, then you will avoid contact with others. 78 new cases today.

“covidiot” : A person who thinks the laws don’t apply to them during lockdown.

7:00 am: Last night at midnight New Zealand went to level 4 lockdown, everyone except essential services to stay at home with a state of emergency declared for the army to control the idiots who don’t take the rules seriously. In the afternoon I heard a car doing a burnout for a long time from one end of the street to the other. This is the part where people revert to being the savages we’ve always been for thousands of years.

For those who think they have back-up because they have a vegetable garden, don’t expect the vegetables to still be there in the morning. Farmers, your sheep and cattle will start to go missing.

Two days ago I went into “Hunting and Fishing” and bought an air rifle because even though possums are considered a pest species in New Zealand they have a reasonable amount of meat on them - who knows how long this will go on and what measures we may need to take to survive. At the store the salesman had no gloves or mask and handled the air rifle like he was invincible. I tried to pick it up where he hadn’t touched it and left it in the garage for a few hours before bringing it into the house. The image of him touching it flashed into my mind last night when I started to cough after getting into bed - then I remembered that I hadn’t dissolved the Disprin completely when I drank it to ease the toothache and it had ‘scratched’ the back of my throat. The coughing only lasted a minute but this morning I woke up with a sore neck, still aching a bit as I type - hopefully from the way I slept. To cheer people up I went for a walk…

People’s attitudes to everything are changing, on the local photography group someone posted a picture they took a while ago of a person walking up a flight of stairs and the first comment was “Touching the hand rail, that’s one way to spread the virus”.

12pm Speaking of hand rails, we just just got back from a walk in the park close to our house. Along the way we saw an elderly lady doing push-ups against this hand railing. She was grateful when we reminded her that others may have also touched that railing and quickly moved away from it.

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On the way back we had seen a family settling down on the park bench, and now another elderly couple was sitting there. I got closer and mentioned that other people had been touching that bench earlier and they said “Yes we know”. So I said “Do you know the virus can live on that surface for a few hours?” and they said “Yes we know” and continued their conversation. Not a care in the world, obviously a joke to them.

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3 pm and I find ways to maintain my sanity.

The world is going to take a while to recover before they make the “Covid 19” movie - I wonder what they will call it?

The couple that bought a camera off me to be able to continue doing podcasts after they dropped their camera have just posted their covid-19 podcast. It was during level 3 and I told them that they could do an online transfer and I would leave the camera in a bag in the middle of the driveway so they could pick it up, with gloves, then leave it somewhere for a few hours before touching it. At 2:40 they mention collecting my camera. At one stage I mentioned my high speed photography and held out the phone to show them a picture - as he reached out to take my phone I warned “You can’t touch my phone” and he quickly withdrew his hand and said “Oops, I forgot for a moment”