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The Return to Lockdown
After 16 months of freedom.
Here in New Zealand, we forgot there was a pandemic going on in the rest of the world. We’ve been going to concerts, parties, weddings, sports tournaments. We can go out to the restaurants and the movie theatre. We don’t wear masks. Everyone goes to work and the gym and the mall every day.
We were in lockdown for just 33 days over March and April of 2020. During this time, I experienced many things I’ve never experienced: 6 hour coffee breaks because I couldn’t focus, reading the news but never picking up a book (very unusual for me), going for days without eating simply because I couldn’t bring myself to. It was a weird and uncomfortable time.
Thankfully, we didn’t stay in lockdown for long. We gradually downgraded our alert levels, returning to what was as normal as can be with a pandemic raging around the rest of the world. For the past year, I’ve been working, going to events, competing in sports tournaments, and traveling around the country.
We had our lives back.
Until now.
As I was driving home from work last Tuesday, the Prime Minister announced we would be returning to level 4 lockdown at midnight. This was incredibly sudden. In a matter of hours, we’d be back where we were 16 months ago.
