Coronavirus tea party
We had a tea party with our nearby bubble mates – friends living in our barn, using a 2 metre separation as measured by our 1.8 metre table.
Author: Jane Shearer
Can I rent an optimist for my bubble?
Bubbles need optimists. My realism outweighs my optimism, which outweighs my pessimism. However, for bubble times, I’d like to invite an optimist into my bubble – here are a couple of people I’d import in a flash.
Bubble fever
Here in Gibbston, I thought I’d introduce you to an important bubble mate – Loki the cat. The good news today is Ashley Bloomfield says we may be near peak COVID case load.
Covi-noia
The USA FDA has granted emergency use of a test that identifies COVID antibodies in blood within 2 minutes from a finger prick sample i.e. it can identify whether someone has COVID. It’s the first in a chain of rapid COVID tests being developed which will reduce the stress in a supermarket queue of wondering whether the coughing person in front of you has COVID.
High trust – high risk
We often rely on trusting others to do the right thing, both when your partner hands you a water bottle and when your COVID experiment requires you to social distance. However, we have the strange discrepancy returning New Zealanders are trusted to self-quarantine while we are not trusted to swim in the sea and not drown. Hmmm…
Thorny issues
COVID-19 is a ‘wicked’ problem – one that is impossible to solve and for which no single solution is sufficient or all-encompassing. The pandemic’s wickedness relates to the interlinked ethical dilemmas around sacrificing people in the interesting of sustaining the economy.
Is this experiment set up right?
COVID is making my brain fuzzy, like when we were living through the Canterbury earthquakes. An opinion piece in Stuff today made my brain even fuzzier, when it suggested we need a milder lockdown to keep the economy going. The economy serves the people, we don’t exist to serve the economy. If a lockdown saves many people’s lives, isn’t that what we need to do?
Contentment as a condition
“You can’t be happy all the time, but you can be content,” my Dad would say. He was remarkably contented. Here are two other exemplars of contentment I’d like to introduce you to.
Testing times
I met my first non-bubble person in a week today. This was ridiculously stressful. How soon will we have rapid tests to show whether people have COVID and vaccinations to prevent people getting it?
Kindness as a practice
The planet is feeling prickly, as is our country. People are telling each other what to do and other people are reacting badly. We all need more kindness to make life work better. Here are some pictures of the people the word ‘kindness’ reminds me of.