I have been writing regularly for last many issues about the effects and aftereffects of pandemic Covid-19, on our day to day lives and our lifestyle in future. Unfortunately, this is not over yet in most part of the world and many countries are still struggling to fight with the deadly virus. New Zealanders have been particularly lucky to have contain it by strictly complying to the lockdown rules and by staying in their bubbles. Despite of being a smaller population, fear of community spread here was as strong as anywhere else. This surely does not undermine some very sincere hard work done by NZ government, its health workers, police, and various other agencies.

Now it is likely that we are moving towards level 2 of restrictions from next week as there have been no new cases reported in last few days. It may appear at the moment as if everything is hunky dory and we are heading towards normalcy but that is not the reality. The economic and financial impact of lockdown and complete closure of all sort of economic and industrial activities will start showing up as we come out of these restrictions. A countless number of businesses closed due to the lockdown may never open again due the financial impact it made on these businesses. Many other businesses when open, may take months and years to come back to the situation they were at. While some other may work at lesser capacity and the rest will reduce the number of employees to cut costs to reduce business overheads. These situations will lead towards under performance of economy and massive unemployment soon.

The New Zealand government was still able to support businesses and industries with wage subsidies and other financial assistance to self-employed people to reduce the impact of initial jolt to their income. What will happen once we are out of this support and subsidy period, is any body’s guess. This is also election year in New Zealand and Prime Minister Jacinda is surely under pressure to announce her decision on the election date soon. Any delay or postponement of election may cost her dear as economy of the country may take a downturn by that time. Also, to bring the economy back on track and to save as many jobs as possible, its imperative to restore normalcy at soonest. So, it is a ‘catch 22’ situation for government. The pressure is being built by opposition leader Simon Bridges of National Party on government to restore normalcy at soonest. The main opposition party appears to be more concerned about the economy than the actual Covid-19 crises which is a bitter fact too.

Even when New Zealand is completely out of all sort of Corona related restrictions, we will need to adopt to the new norms of living our lives. Social distancing will continue for much longer time than anticipated. Rigorous attention will be required on cleanliness and personal hygiene in future as well. We will have to control our dining out habits for a very long time. Big gatherings will still be a no-no for some more time and one of the biggest changes we will get to see in our society will be of our work culture. More and more employers would encourage people to work from home to not only for their wellbeing but also to cut down on business costs too.

As per human nature, it may take us some time to adapt to the changed situations and to get accustomed to the to ways of life, we eventually will need to learn these new ways quickly. We soon will realise some benefits also of our new lifestyle like seeing less pollution, less traffic on roads, saving time in transit and money on fuel and spending more quality time with loved ones. On the flip side we should feel happy about the fringe benefits that we may get from our changed lifestyle.

– Yugal Parashar