28 Days Later - Day Five

Day 5 dawned grey and wet. The forecast for the day was heavy rains and thunderstorms later, but that never eventuated. Instead, a fine drizzle settled in for much of the day. The cold and pervading damp put the kibosh on any work in the craft room. A fire was needed to warm things up and drive out the damp, but with very limited wood stocks and no idea when - or if - I would be able to get more, I couldn't really afford to heat the whole flat, so the rest of the flat was closed off, and the day was spent in the lounge knitting and watching movies. 
Somewhere over the past few days I remember hearing someone saying "the way to get through a lockdown was to embrace the boredom" Yup. Thank goodness for Netflix.

NZ recorded its first death from COVID-19 on Sunday. Amid the sorrow, we had to remember how lucky we were that our death toll wasn't - and with the early lockdown would likely never be - in the thousands like elsewhere in the world. It was unlikely it would even reach the hundreds. It would take many, many years for places like Spain and Italy to recover from their losses.

Although our lockdown was currently set at 4 weeks, realistically, we were expecting it to be extended to 6 to 8 weeks. And if people keep breaking the lockdown, it could be even longer. At the end of that though, if we were lucky enough to eradicate it from our little paradise in the... well, almost Antarctic, we would be able to get back to some form of normal living.
But "some form of normal" would not be "business as usual" by any means. With the virus still running rampant in so many places, our borders would remain closed. That could be as long as 18 months, maybe more - depending on when a vaccine was developed.
Export production in many countries had ground to halt. Supply lines between countries for raw material had been severely disrupted. There would likely to be restrictions on what imports were still available, to prevent the virus coming back in with crews.

Still, at times like this you have to say "it's good to be Kiwi". As an island nation, it is easier for us to keep isolated. Our population and land mass are both small enough that we have a very good change of eradicating COVID-19 here. Yet we are not so small that life in isolation would be difficult. We have a solid infrastructure, and a good sized workforce. 
And we are a food producing nation. It is what we do most, and what we do best. Meat, poultry, eggs, fish, dairy, fruit and veg. Cheeses from mass produced basic to artisanal. Breweries and wine producers up the wazoo.
We produce wool in abundance, grow trees like they are going out of fashion, and have fiber mills and timber mills. Our electricity is primarily produced by hydro and wind - renewable sources.
We are a nation of crafters and makers, DIY-ers and "she'll be right"-ers. We've always been able to make do with what we have, and weather whatever is thrown at us. Short of an asteroid or the islands sinking, there is not a lot we couldn't get through. We would probably even be able to survive a zombie apocalypse.

So, stay safe, stay strong, stay in lockdown.