A Facebook post from a recent arrival to New Zealand:
Hi All! We have arrived safely in Auckland and are now in a hotel waiting out our isolation period. I wanted to make everyone aware of what we experienced at the airport this morning.
There was no mention on the plane or information handed out explaining self isolation enforcement and what was involved.
No information was handed out at the airport arrivals. We were given a card where we had to give a contact address (not an isolation address) – no one asked us where we were staying or if we understood our obligations when isolating. No temperature checks.
A handful of staff wearing masks. Lots of people in the arrival area land side waiting to greet and pick up people from category 1 countries – are they now going to isolate too?
A man in front of me in the queue was from the UK, I heard him tell immigration that he was here for 2 weeks. He then grabs a NZ tourism brochure on his way pass – something tells me he doesn’t plan to isolate!
The whole process is a joke! We are an island we can easily stop this virus by shutting our borders down and geo targeting everyone who has to isolate and enforcing a fine if they go out of their isolation area. I’m disappointed and I’m concerned. Any ideas on how we can feed this through to the government better procedures and enforcements need to be in place.
We were supposed to be hosting a 90th birthday for around 100 people on Saturday.
I phoned a couple of friends who are doctors and both told me to cancel it.
They said cases of Covid-19 are increasing in New Zealand, a 90 year-old would be very vulnerable, as would a lot of the guests and it would be very unwise to go ahead with the party.
I took their advice seriously.
The Facebook post suggests that the government, and at least some of its agencies, are not yet taking their response to Covid-19 as seriously as they should be.
Homepaddock 
What we are seeing is an outbreak of mass hysteria that an extremely weak political class is doing nothing to calm
Why can’t the 90 year old woman make up her own mind whether she wishes to party or not? She might say I intend to enjoy life while I still can. Let’s party – that’s what I’d do. Life is short, we must enjoy it while we can because the grave awaits us all
In the same post there is a clue
Seriously think about this for a minute, you travel halfway around the world at vast expense to spend your entire vacation sitting in isolated a hotel room watching the shopping channel on TV before flying home – does that sound like fun to you? The vacation of a lifetime!
People die, old people die – it is an unavoidable reality. The whole Western world are trashing their economies because of a virus that precipitates the final decline of people who are at the end of their days and majority of whom would have died sometime within the next 12 months in any case
Seriously I feel like I have fallen down the rabbithole – everyday in Australia over 450 people come to the end of their lives . In this country it is somewhere between 30 and 40 every day, In China it is over 40,000 a day, day in day out, year in year out and the numbers succumbing to this virus is scarcely a blip in what is going on all the time.
It is going to take about 18 months for this particular virus to burn itself out – are we going to keep this country isolated from the rest of the world that long? What would be the consequences of that?
And what are we going to do when the next one comes, which it will, probably around the same time this one is burning out.
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Reblogged this on The Inquiring Mind.
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Andrei, I phoned the birthday bloke, told him what the 2 doctors had said about the risks to him and guests. He agreed it was best to postpone, not just for his own health’s sake but that of others. If it was just him, he might have chosen to go ahead, but he understood it wasn’t just him.
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Its personal choice Ele, you weigh up the risks and take your chances – but really we have totally gone off the deep end.
Every year come the winter people get colds and flu and every year these trigger the final decline in people at the end of their lives. There is actually nothing particularly unusual going in that sphere.
Every day in New Zealand somewhere between 30 and 40 people take their last breath. Death is an inevitable part of life. Over 40,000 Chinese die every single day and we are focused in on 3000 odd mostly elderly who have died in the last three months. – give me a break
I know this young guy, lovely wife, two sweet little girls and he has just bought their first home Yesterday he lost his livilhood because of this mindless panic. For what?
This virus is in New Zealand, we have even exported a case to South Africa. This virus is everywhere, even the Faroes
You are right to be concerned about your daughter, I would be too but I would put my energies into protecting her and people like her not shutting down rock concerts and closing borders and certainly not trashing the whole economy if I were dictator of New Zealand
This is a black swan event, not the emergence of a new variant of corona virus, that has happened many times before and will again, but our total over reaction to it.
It tells of a culture that sees death even among the elderly as an anomaly ,
It tells of a people wrapped in cotton wool who expect the authorities to be able to fix everything for us. Kiss it and make it better and they can’t.
We are in for a rough ride and a new world will emerge on the other side…
This is a moment in history
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Andrei, I’ve known the two doctors whose advice I sought for decades. They do not panic. They said keeping vulnerable people like our daughter safe requires everyone to reduce the risk of transmission. This is not like the usual cold or flu that all of us get and almost all survive.
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That is obvious Ele – but then you have to consider the practicalties and costs.
Everybody in the world could lock themselves in their homes for a a couple of weeks and not meet with anybody else in that time and that would do the job but can that actually be acheived in the real world.
As for this virus being more dangerous than previous ones nobody will know that for sure until after this epidemic has burned out in about eighteen months. It will manifest itself differently in different places among different people with different genetics but all indications are it is the elderly and infirm who are at the greatest risk
I know that is of little comfort to you with your daughter
My nephew is stuck in Saudi Arabia for the foreseeable with no way home and that is a worry to our family
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