It’s easy to get stressed right now. Our household is unlikel to be the only one overreacting when people have symptoms that could be from COVID. Or any other illness that would mean a difficult and risky trip to the doctor.
How many lives have we saved by having an Easter lockdown so no one has died on the road? The problem with reducing the risk of death ad infinitum is a boring life which still has death at the end of it.
We’re locked in a cage, though the boundaries of our incarceration are invisible – defined by government and society.
How’s the experiment going? New Zealand’s vital COVID stats – testing, cases, deaths (only one so far) – are looking good. Norway, Denmark and Sweden are looking similar, which is odd given Sweden’s very different approach, not locking down.
Today I’d like my grandmother to be looking after me. I’d like to be in her house baking then play some ball-on-a-string, then stay the night and go to bed in Granny and Fafa’s spare room after they kiss me goodnight and Granny tells me a story about growing up in India.
Contact tracing is a critical part of suppressing COVID – going back through the chain of people who someone ill has been in contact with. It’s disturbing, the thought of the government knowing your every move through your phone.
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.
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.
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.
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.
