COVID-19 AND OUR CHANGING WORLD
With the beauty of hindsight I am able to look back and see just when our world as we knew it began to change.
I was sitting on the third floor of the BBC Broadcasting House in central London working on a World Service Radio programme set up when I noticed an email about a mysterious virus emerging in China.
I think it was late December - a brief interlude in the news cycle between the White Island eruption and the start to the new year.
The virus was a blip that registered on the team’s radar but was just as quickly overshadowed by other news alerts streaming into our inboxes and across the news wires as 2019 drew to a close.
A busy start to 2020 heralded my return to the BBC newsroom. There was the US-ordered drone strike that killed an Iranian general on January 3; the subsequent accidental downing of a Ukranian International Airline plane in Iran amidst heightened tensions; and the news Harry and Meghan were stepping down as senior royals.
Perfect conditions for a novel new virus to proliferate below radar and take the world by surprise as it became one of the fastest-moving in living memory.
But it was not till mid-January that Covid-19 made an appearance on the news agenda - at a time when travel in and out of China was peaking ahead of the Chinese New Year.
By late January, it had breached borders across Asia and days later on January 31 the first case arrived in the United Kingdom.
I was also working shifts at the Mail Online’s foreign desk where headlines erring on the side of theatrical made it difficult for me to gauge whether the level of concern was warranted.
Around this time I made the call to move back home to New Zealand for this job as a political reporter for Newshub Nation. The virus played no role in my decision-making process. It was something I thought would have minimal effect on my life.
In fact part of me was mourning the premature end to my working holiday. My visa was valid till April, and I was giving up plans to travel to France, Jordan, Egypt, Georgia, and hopes of work as a foreign correspondent.
Imagine if I hadn’t chosen to come home. The regret would have been real.
So a pre-booked trip to Iceland became my last European hurrah before I turned my back on London, in the first week of March, with a 17-hour direct flight to Perth where I reconnected with relatives.
I was a little emotional getting on my flight to Perth, given I was leaving my life as I knew it in London. Heathrow airport was quieter than usual, but not for a second did I think that the life I had known in the British capital would change so drastically, so soon.
In Perth tensions were heightened. The rapid rise in Covid-19 cases and public panic saw stringent checks and measures at the border.
Meanwhile, the epicentre of the disease shifted from China to the European bloc. Friends in the United Kingdom said I had timed my departure perfectly, as cities went into lockdown across Europe. In mere days their life in London was irreconcilable with the one I had known.
We joked I might have to make Perth my home for the foreseeable future. This statement would be closer to fact than fiction in just a matter of hours.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced everyone entering New Zealand would have to self-isolate for two weeks. I was on my way to Auckland - but half a day too late. “#@$!&” Cue panicked message to my new boss: “I have an issue…”
On arrival I would have to self-isolate. I briefly mourned the long-awaited meeting of my six-week-old niece, a friend’s wedding and seeing my mother again. But I knew it was the best way of reducing the spread of a novel virus. And so, I began the gradual process of acceptance that this would be my new normal.
And despite feeling as if I have landed on the set of a dystopian film at times, things are not so bad. Kiwis have been kind. Until they were closed down, my local cafe provided me with a daily caffeine fix that I could pick up from a designated safe spot.
I’m two weeks ahead of most Kiwis in self-isolation. The recent four-week extension to my initial isolation period, when freedom felt just within reach, has felt claustrophobic. But at least come Monday I will have the option to do my own groceries. And I can Facetime my mother from the same time zone.
I am one of the lucky ones who will be able to weather the storm working from home; albeit in a bizarre new reality where the first awkward meeting with my new colleagues happened on a choppy phone call, followed by a conference call helping me put faces to voices. Not everyone is so fortunate. Thousands are out of jobs and lives will be lost.
There is some hope in the fact that our leaders, unlike their British and American counterparts - have made a call to clamp down hard, early on, before the virus truly takes hold. Until the confirmed cases in the US topped 1000, US President Donald Trump brushed the virus off as a non-event. Even this week he was talking of things returning to normal in just a fortnight.
Meanwhile, across the Atlantic the British Prime Minister Boris Johnson openly toyed with letting the virus run its course before imposing a lockdown this week - by then deaths had topped 300.
In comparison New Zealand’s leaders made a call to enforce a nation-wide lockdown when numbers were just at 102.
As I work from my lounge in central Auckland and reflect on one of the first Covid-19 calls I made from the BBC headquarters in London, it is surreal to see just how much life has changed.
When I made my decision to come home, I never thought I would soon be living the story in isolation, alongside thousands, if not millions of others around the world.
And as much as I am loath to give up my freedom, I am pleased our leaders have chosen our health as a nation over politics in acting sooner rather than later.
As Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has repeatedly said in recent times, it will be tough times ahead, but stay calm, stay home, keep your physical distance...but most of all be kind...and let’s break this chain together.
