Kiwis are fortunate we have a caring, kind PM, unlike America's dickhead Trump

from The Dominion Post…

Coronavirus: This time we're on our own

In past disasters, we were urged to cling together. That won't help now.

By JANE BOWRON | 5:00AM — Monday, 23 March 2020

Self-isolation is an effective precautionary measure to protect those around you from contracting coronavirus.
— Graphic: Kathryn George.

IF I had a dollar for every person telling me that self-isolation has long been their norm, I'd be a rich woman.

When I look at their lives, I know this isn't true. Most of them have partners — someone to cuddle up to, fight like cat and dog with, or just take for granted when they're home “alone”. Come on guys, you aren't even trying.

Domestic violence experts are warning that being cooped up together for prolonged periods could lead to a rise in fisticuffs. And that's not even factoring in the lack of live sport available to distract Him Indoors. Yep, sport was blamed as a cause for domestic violence, and now that it's on the wane, it's being given the penalty card again.

Production has halted on many television and movie sets. Soon Netflix, everybody's best friend, is going to run out of stock. This leads me to wonder why actors, like porn stars, shouldn't be able to turn up on set waving test results to prove they have a clean bill of health.

To those of us who have been nobly self-isolating for years, take it from me: this time at home, really alone, will give you the opportunity to catch up with yourself, maybe take stock of past deeds.

Trudy Joseph and her son Bentley were tested Sunday night for coronavirus and are living in self-isolation
in Flat Bush, Auckland. — Photograph: Chris McKeen.

Warning: it can be exhausting being your own judge and jury, cheer-up resident jester, best friend, lover, life coach, not to mention panic merchant as everyone keeps telling you: “It's going to get worse” or “It's going to get a lot worse”.

Perhaps obsessively watching all those apocalyptic zombie shows has called up this virus into being. The top-rating programme Covid-19 is like watching a show that finishes after series one, and no-one knows what happens next, or if the next series is going to be canned. Permanently.

This series is so gripping it's become a social influencer, has gone viral, and made Americans go out and buy a gun. What do you expect from the richest country in the world that can't get it together to organise a decent public health system better equipped to cope with a pandemic?

And this is happening at a time when there's a Democratic candidate who's been calling for a decent public health system till he's blue in the face. And Bernie Sanders is accused of being a communist?

Those who believe that have put their faith in Trump, who has his eye permanently fixed on the Dow, and can't keep his wandering mind on the task of looking after his fellow Americans.

Jane Bowron: “To those of us who have been nobly self-isolating for years, take it from me: this time at home,
really alone, will give you the opportunity to catch up with yourself, maybe take stock of past deeds.”
— Photograph: Kevin Stent.

Thank God we have a clever and compassionate leader, who has front-footed the money, and is doing her best to contain community spread, rather than let it rip, like Boris Johnson and his death gulag option.

Disasters, natural or otherwise, have a news cycle to them. In most recent times it has been climate change, White Island, Australian bush fires, and now coronavirus — and that's where it will stick for the foreseeable future.

We don't get to be Sleeping Beauty and go to sleep, till handsome Prince Vaccine wakes us up with a cure-all kiss. We must live in the now, wake up each day with it, and try to keep ourselves and everyone else safe.

For those who lived through the quakes, the feelings are similar, but not the same. Back then, when everything shut down, we were encouraged to cling together to share the scary experience. Now we are to be alone, obsessively washing our hands to try and keep out that damned spot and braced for the aftershocks to come.

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• Jane Bowron is a freelance journalist based in Wellington. A columnist for The Dominion Post and The Press, she has also been a TV reviewer for both of those publications as well as for The Evening Post, the Sunday Star-Times, Radio NZ National's Nine to Noon, Radio Live and Newtalk ZB, a feature writer for the Sunday Star-Times, and, as Dawn Dusk, an agony aunt for The Dominion. Her poetry collection “Scenes Away from the Crime”, was published in 1984. Her book, “Old Bucky & Me: Dispatches from the Christchurch Earthquake” was first published in 2011, with a revised edition being published in 2012.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/opinion/120436419/coronavirus-this-time-were-on-our-own