The Gilded Cage

 This is the second anniversary of my last overseas visit. That was a short hop to Sydney for a two day work trip. I thought nothing of it at the time, as I was a regular visitor to Australia. My sister lives in Sydney and my favourite sports team is in Melbourne. So, jumping across the Tasman was a frequent feature of my first three years in New Zealand.

I also managed two trips to Ireland in that time and planned to go back once every two years in the future.

Travel has always been passion. I qualified as an Accountant when I was 22 and started earning a decent salary. I had simple tastes, a few beers at the weekend. The occasional takeaway curry. I didn’t spend money on fancy cars or designer clothes. I didn’t gamble, smoke or dabble in Columbian marching powder as so many of my colleagues did.

I spent my money on overseas trips. It started with an Interrail excursion when I was 20 and by the time I was 30, I’d visited almost every country in Western Europe. I came out of a doomed relationship at that age and that drove me further, to look for solace and comfort in the Southern Hemisphere. 

I bought a ‘round the world’ ticket that year and spent five months working my way around the planet. My trip took me to Hong Kong, then to New Zealand with a few days in the Cook Islands and Hawaii on the way home. That cemented my love of flying and the thrill of seeing new places.  I used to really enjoy aviation, the thrill of the acceleration down the runway, the scream of the engines as the plane clawed its way into the clouds. I even enjoyed the smells. Aircraft fuel, the hot soupy air that met you when you landed in a foreign city and that faint aroma of coffee and stale beer that you find in every airport terminal.

But it was the destination that always drew me to those flights. I’ve seen the world and kept on running and sometimes I ran back to places I’ve been before.

I’m blessed that when the music stopped, I found myself in New Zealand. If you’re going to live through a pandemic, then this is the best place to do it. We’ve enjoyed a normal lifestyle for much of the last eighteen months, albeit with the occasional lockdown thrown in. I’ve even managed to squeeze in a plane journey in that time. We headed down to the South Island just after Christmas. That was fun, but it barely satisfied my thirst for adventure.

Four weeks ago, Auckland went into its fourth lockdown. The dreaded Delta variant had finally sneaked into New Zealand and had wormed its way through the city before anyone noticed. I’ve coped pretty well with the previous three but I’m finding this one tough. Staying at home doesn’t bother me too much. It’s a little boring and I’ve demonstrated beyond doubt that I was never cut out to be a teacher. It’s the Groundhog day feeling that gets me and the sense that this will go on for a long time. New Zealand is determined to keep working on an elimination policy which means that borders won’t be open any time soon. It means that all Kiwis need to be vaccinated and everyone coming in and out of the country would need to be vaccinated too.

This is a big ask and will take many months to accomplish. My worry is that is an unachievable goal. Like every other country, New Zealand has its fair share of tin foil hatted nut cases that are running an anti-vaccination campaign. It would be nice if we lived in a world where only anti-vaxxers could catch the virus, but it’s not as simple as that. About 10% of the vaccinated population would catch it and we have to pay for the anti-vaxxer buggers when they get hospitalised.

In the meantime, we are following what’s known as an “Elimination Strategy”. That means tough lockdowns like the one we’re currently going through until we fully wipe out any infestations. Then we open everything up except the border.

Strangely enough, this felt fine until the Delta variant arrived at the beginning of August. We could go to the pub, sports events and so on, while the rest of the world suffered in their lockdown. Now the roles have been reversed. I’m stuck in the garage most days trying to work and do homeschooling, while I listen to Northern Hemisphere podcasts and reading the Irish Times. The rest of the world seems to be opening up while New Zealand clings to its high principles.

It feels, as my favourite NZ economist said, that we live in a gilded cage. It’s a cage that has kept the country healthy, avoided the deaths that other countries have experienced and meant that we’ve lived relatively normal lives for most of the last eighteen months. But the Delta variance has made people wonder what the exit strategy is. It sort of feels like the American invasion of Afghanistan (and feels almost as long). It’s easy to start off a policy, but more difficult to end.

New Zealand doesn’t have the ICU beds to deal with a major outbreak. That’s why they go with the elimination strategy. One unchecked Airbus A380 from Asia would likely overwhelm the hospital system within days. Alternatively, you could vaccinate the entire population but even if we met that unlikely target, the numbers of edge cases would probably still destroy the health system.

Which means we have to wait for the rest of the world to sort the problem out. They might discover a magic vaccine that is 100% effective or let the virus rip through the countries until it wears itself out. Neither of those things are likely to happen soon. In the meantime, I’ll have to find some other corners of this gilded cage to visit.