My lovely husband and I went to our local Supermarket today and managed to get in the way of a couple racing to get everything done. I’m feeling a lot better after my surgery but I did learn to slow down in Bermuda and not wish my life away by the hurry, hurry attitude I find foreign here to me now in New Zealand. These people today completely riled me, and you all know I’m a fairly patient person. Well here’s why:

They made me feel like I was in their way because I stopped to scan in with my Covid tracing app. I thought it was a requirement and it certainly is for me according to the NZ Govt website. There’s manual signing in available if you can’t scan or don’t have a phone that has that kind of technology. These people did not scan or sign in.

They weren’t wearing masks and were not challenged at all by the supermarket staff to find out why! Now I know there are mask exemptions but they are not obvious, to me, but surely staff should be sidling up to them and checking why they are risking everyone else in the supermarket by opting not to pop a mask on. There are even masks and hand sanitiser available at the door but they just blatantly walked in and did not care and weren’t challenged. That made me cross. I work with vulnerable people that I will put at risk by others stupidity if these particular people happened to have Covid.

So I asked the staff at the supermarket. They do not enforce mask wearing because the person concerned may have an exemption. Ah. I checked the MOH website when I got home and that was the same statement virtually word for word.

So why have I been so careful, triple vaccinated, using hand sanitiser where ever i can, and double masking at every opportunity? Because I don’t want Covid. I don’t want to experience it, risk it, or be responsible for others getting it. Simple really.

Now Omicron is here, there’s an attitude of ‘well we’re all going to get it now anyway’. That’s so sad after everything NZ has done to keep their numbers low and the pandemic at bay. Good luck everyone, my hope for us all to avoid it went west very quickly today.

More soon – Sally