The Lockdown - its implementation and consequences

Peter from Kamo

For starters: I do think that using the concept of staying out of the infection-spreading zone of other people is a really, really good idea. I'm in the high risk group of people; trust me, I do not want to catch the virus.
My wife went to go shopping yesterday. It took her hours to get into the supermarket. HOURS. There were lines formed and directed outside by the staff, and she tells me that no way were the lines at a safe distance from each other. Then some supervisor shouted if someone over 70 was there, there was, and the gentleman was led along the line of other people in the queue --- no distance at all, instead of being led around the outside.

Get this: he was led along the queue, exposed to ever single &^%$* other person waiting, with no distance kept at all. My wife jokingly said to him "you're not 2m away from me" and he just about jumped out of his skin and apologized to her. It wasn't his fault.

They are spraying and 'sterilizing' the trolleys outside the shop. When it got to checkout time, she got shouted at because the packer felt she was too close to the cashier. They packed all her goods into the trolley used by the person before her (sic!) instead of using hers, and when she wanted to walk out she had to pass right by the packer who made no moves to distance herself.

The whole thing is, pardon the pun, a sick joke. The basic idea is good, but the implementation is lousy, and inept, in some cases plain dangerous (talking about exposing the 'over 70' bloke to everybody else waiting in line, here). It is implemented by people who don't understand the underlying principles and flounder around trying to comply with 'rules' they don't really comprehend. In this form, the spread of the virus is highly likely to continue, never mind what.
Keeping people waiting outside the shop for hours (around 4 hours it took!) is NOT sanitary. With my arthritic knees and still recovering from a heart attack, I'd not even consider it, I'd sooner dig up grass roots and carrot weed in the paddock and eat those. And, to wit, the delivery system is completely overloaded.

The other food stores should be OPEN. That would reduce queues. The regulators who came up with this plan have handed a de facto monopoly to foodstuffs and woolworth, which is being exploited (are there any specials at all just now?) and the quarantine measures, as I said above, are poorly understood and implemented.

By and large I am pretty disgusted by the situation.


Incidentally, I notice that the traffic on SH1 through Kauri has picked up by a lot today. Yesterday it was quiet, the day before it was very quiet; today? Quite busy all day ...