Here We Go Again

Lockdown

As of today, we’re in a two weeks lockdown. In the past week, some local infection clusters have emerged, with a good dozen or so local cases.¹ I think it’s a bit of an overreaction by the government. A possible explanation I could think of is that an important purpose of the lockdown is to recalibrate the population’s behaviour again to be more conscious of the risks and stricter about the measures.

In the past weeks and months, it was obvious that many had become pretty lax as regards their behaviours. I mean, we didn’t have any cases in the wild, all infected people were identified at the border, and put into a hospital. Every healthy arrival had to go through a mandatory quarantine of two weeks. No second wave towards the end of the year. Life was more or less normal. Apart from the masks, no restrictions, all shops and facilities open, schools open. And so on. So the guard went down, unsurprisingly. The lockdown just might bring it up again.

Measures

All public and commercial activities are stopped, people are supposed to stay at home. However, we can go shopping twice a week, as from tomorrow. So far so good. Not quite sure why beaches are closed. It should really be clear by now that the infection risk on a beach is close to zero. Then again, if a strict lockdown of two weeks gets the local infections under control, it’s worth the personal cost. New Zealand has demonstrated that a few times now.

I could go shopping tomorrow morning. But I guess I will not. It will probably be madness. We never had any shortages during the lockdown last year, but I am not confident that people are, well, confident about the supply.

Update 11 March

I went out today to see if there’s a shopping madness. Nope, there was not. I should have had more confidence in my compatriots. All was civil and calm, I didn’t see anyone with overfilled shopping carriages. The big shops again allow only a certain number of people in at the same time, so there are small queues sometimes until the next batch is up, but that’s it.

I have switched my casual cloth mask of the past months to a surgical mask again, because, why not? It’s the same effort to put on and wear.