Today we went to Level 3. Wednesday we will go to Level 4, which is
more or less a complete lock-down of the entire country except for the
bare necessities. We will still be able to go to the supermarket, but
we are expected to keep 2m from other people and minimize contact.
I haven't seen an explicit statement as to why the sudden escalation,
but the matter seems fairly clear. There were 36 new cases announced,
to a total of 102. The majority are related to overseas travel, and
most of the rest are directly related to known cases, but there are
two cases that have not been traced, which seem to suggest community
spread. There also seems to be a feeling among the medical community
that it is probably spreading through the community and we have only
seen the very tip of the iceberg.
A hundred may not seem like a lot, but if left unchecked it can double
every five days. We are going to be at level 4 for four weeks, in
that time it could have grown to over 6000 cases, and that's assuming
the ~100 cases are the only cases there are.
The NZ Herald has a pretty good explanation:
(HTM) What will alert level 4 mean for New Zealand?
Profs Blakely, Baker and Wilson want more clarity on whether the
government's goal is eradication or 'flattening the curve', and take
us through some of the issues:
(HTM) The maths and ethics of minimsing COVID-19 deaths in NZ
⁂
We had our last tai chi face-to-face class today, which was also the
first attempt at a remote class for some of the students. Tai chi
forms don't lend themselves to being filmed with a static camera, so
we are going to be learning the 8 moves. I've been meaning to learn
these for a while, so this is a little bonus! As an assistant
instructor I'm going to be doing a couple of short sessions of private
instruction every week, it seems. I would be doing this for a few
minutes in class anyway, but it seems a bigger deal when you have to
arrange appointments.
(It still makes me laugh a bit on the inside that I'm an assistant
instructor, as I'm so very not an expert, and I haven't even been
doing it for that long. I keep telling myself I don't need to be an
expert, I just need to know enough to profitably instruct people with
less experience.)
I went into work to pick up a prescription. This time I was a bit
more organised about it but I hadn't anticipated a close-down
interfering with it. I also hoped to pick up a camera battery charger
I had accidentally left at my parents. That hasn't emerged and I
feel like I may have seen the last of it. Fortunately there was a
camera shop still open in town so I bought a new one, so at least I'll
be able to take photos. The wags in the store offered to sell me a
'macro lens to take pictures around my house' or an 'end times
camera'.
We worked from home as a trial on Friday, which turned into 'this is
not a drill' today, and will be mandatory by Wednesday. I have been
working from home a bit over the last few months, so in a way it's
nothing new, but it's a bit different when you can't just put meetings
off 'till tomorrow. Annoyingly some things that were working fine
earlier haven't been working so fine.
Our team is going to have to put aside other things to focus on
business continuity for our stakeholders. Away with primitive
printing arrangements, and in with software working over VPNs!
We are still doing the Stuff quiz every afternoon through Microsoft
Teams. It's important to keep up with whatever social activites one
can.
We don't have a good Business Cake Continuity plan, though.
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