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SocietyDecember 8, 2021

New Covid cases are dipping under 100 a day. Are we on the brink of victory?

Editor-at-large
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A decline in case numbers comes as restrictions are relaxed. There are some important unknowns, however, just around the corner.

Auckland is out of lockdown, there are 17 days to Christmas and that curve looks very good. After five weeks of three-figure daily counts, three of the last six days have brought fewer than 100 new community cases of Covid-19. Both three-day and seven-day averages suggest we’ve hit the crest, and now we’re sledging delightedly, festively downhill. 

The spread of the coronavirus has been stymied by a pincer movement: the restrictions of alert level three in Auckland combined with high levels of vaccination. As of yesterday, 93% of the eligible population aged 12 and over had received at least one dose, with 88% double-dosed. Across the Auckland region, where the delta outbreak is centred, 91% are now fully vaccinated.

That success is just as importantly reflected in hospitalisations. Yesterday’s update recorded 66 people in hospital, the lowest since November 4. There were seven people in ICU or HDU, down from a peak of 11 last month. The picture, as the traffic light system beds in, looks rosier than it has for some time.

But – yes, of course, there is a but coming – it’s no time to wrap a Mission Accomplished banner on our frigate. “It’s definitely good news,” said Michael Plank, a professor in the School of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Canterbury. Modelling by Te Pūnaha Matatini, for which Plank is principal investigator, had projected the size and timing of the peak, but the drop since that peak has been sharper than anticipated. “Moving into the traffic light system I think that puts us into a reasonably strong position, with case numbers dropping and hospital numbers at a reasonably manageable level. But it’s really quite unpredictable what happens next.”

The critical next question concerns the impact of the traffic light system, which launched last Friday, bringing considerable relaxation of the rules around hospitality and social gatherings. We’ll need to wait for those answers. It wouldn’t be until at least 10 days in – so next Monday, December 13 – that any growth in case numbers would be discernible, said Plank. 

The reproduction rate

The latest case numbers suggested the reproduction rate, or R number, had fallen to somewhere between 0.8 and 0.9, reckoned Plank. (An R number of 0.8 means every five infected people pass the virus on to four between them; an R number of 1.5 would mean every two people pass it on to another three.) “It has been declining fairly consistently over the past couple of months almost,” said Plank. “We think that is the effect of increased vaccination rates, just making it harder for the virus to spread.”

What can TPM modelling tell us about how that might change under the traffic light system? “The model suggests that if we went back to life completely as normal, as level one – if we forgot about masks, forgot about everything – we’d expect the R number to be in the order of 1.6. That would mean quite rapid case growth. Obviously we do have masks, we have vaccine passes, we’ve got gathering limits under the red setting, so those things will bring the R number down. But it’s quite tricky to predict exactly where it will land. I would expect it would be somewhere between 1 and 1.5. There’s quite a big difference there in terms of how quickly cases would grow, from reasonably stable to cases growing quite sharply.”

It’s complicated further by the arrival of summer holidays. Schools breaking up “will possibly give us a temporary reprieve”, but once they return, workplaces regroup and the weather cools, that brings with it risk of a “more sustained rise in cases”, said Plank.

Europe stands as a warning of the way winter heralds a surge in infections. “We do have a few aces up our sleeves, though. We’re starting with a booster programme now, which gives us a headstart relative to countries in Europe. I think we need a really strong push on boosters now to use the time we have over the summer to really get that programme out widely.” On top of that, children aged 5-11 are likely soon to be able to be vaccinated. “That provides another layer of protection.”

The other imminent change is the lifting of the hard border around Tāmaki Makaurau. Just as we begin to get a sense of how the traffic light system has influenced case numbers, on December 15 Aucklanders will be free to travel – if double vaccinated or having returned a negative test – to all corners of the country. “It’s difficult to relate the travel variables with the R number,” said Plank. While cases move around the country, that doesn’t directly change the spread.

Most concerningly, Covid could make its way into pockets of Aotearoa where some of the most vulnerable people live, including communities with high Māori populations, and where health services are thinner on the ground and further away. “The biggest concern as people start to move around the country more is if the virus finds its way into parts of the community with low vaccination rates it could start a dangerous outbreak,” said Plank.

The omicron factor

As New Zealand prepares to enjoy summer, meanwhile, an amorphous, ominous storm cloud has appeared on the horizon, in the form of the omicron variant. Could that blow the trends, models and expectations out of the water were it to penetrate New Zealand’s defences?

“It’s very concerning,” said Plank, adding a note of caution: “It’s still early days in terms of trying to model how omicron could spread in New Zealand. We still don’t really know how well existing vaccines will work. We don’t know the nature of omicron in terms of how transmissible it is and how well it can bypass immunity and the severity of the disease. What we do know is that it appears to be able to spread much faster than delta. That’s certainly true in South Africa. It looks like it’s starting to be the case in the UK as well.”

The sheer speed of transmission meant that “you are potentially going to be looking a very large number of cases – even a small number of infections can cause a large problem for the health system,” he said. “Personally I think we need to do all we can to delay the arrival of omicron in New Zealand.” We have “a few weeks of breathing space”, before border restrictions are relaxed further. “We’ll know a lot more by that time … Maybe things will look different in a month, but from what we know at the moment it certainly looks concerning.”

Speaking in parliamentary question time yesterday, Jacinda Ardern said the decline in the key numbers was “heartening”, but the government was at this point keeping large parts of the country in the red traffic light setting because, informed by examples around the world, they would continue to “deliberately take a cautious approach”. 

Keep going!
Michele A’Court, Natalie Samy, James Roque, David Correos and Ray O’Leary at The Tuning Fork (Photo: supplied)
Michele A’Court, Natalie Samy, James Roque, David Correos and Ray O’Leary at The Tuning Fork (Photo: supplied)

SocietyDecember 7, 2021

At Auckland’s first comedy show post-lockdown, laughter never sounded so good

Guest writer
Michele A’Court, Natalie Samy, James Roque, David Correos and Ray O’Leary at The Tuning Fork (Photo: supplied)
Michele A’Court, Natalie Samy, James Roque, David Correos and Ray O’Leary at The Tuning Fork (Photo: supplied)

My goodness I’d missed this feeling, writes standup comedian Michele A’Court.

There’s a bit right at the top of the show before I start talking when I look out at the roomful of faces and think: Look at you, you beautiful humans all gathered together in one place for the first time in 107 days, aren’t you fucking awesome for coming out and being with each other. And so that’s exactly what I say to them, and you can tell they feel pretty good about it, too, and it feels like we all deserve a round of applause for getting this far, so we do that, and then I remember how to do comedy and start the show.

It’s Friday, day one of the traffic light system – red in Tāmaki Makaurau – and the Tuning Fork is the first venue to open up with live comedy. The Classic, our full-time comedy club, will open a day later to equally enthusiastic comedians and punters. It’s one of the great things about comedy as opposed to theatre, dance or music – you can get it up fast. No rehearsals, no lines to learn or sets to build or bands to get back together. Just lights and a PA, and enough time to get the tickets sold.

This show went on sale last Monday and the room is just over half-filled to its socially distanced capacity of one hundred. Interestingly, next Friday’s gig sold out first – an indication maybe of a little hesitancy about live gigs, or that the thing people most wanted to do immediately was catch up with friends rather than watch a show. The people in the room are mostly in pairs, mostly in their 20s and 30s. There’s an unusually small (though still enthusiastic) response when I ask the menopausal women in the room to make some noise.

They’ve all come masked, vaccine passes ready, and are served by bar staff at their tables. The only person who buggers this up is me when towards the end of the night I go looking for my first wine and don’t know how the system works, and get asked very politely to step away from the bar area. I feel like a dick, like I’ve gone to someone’s house and noticed halfway through dinner that I’m the only person who’s got their shoes on. Despite being an idiot, I am allowed a wine.

Michele A’Court on stage, left, and Michele’s photo of the audience (Photos supplied)

She’s a helluva line-up – Natalie Samy, Ray O’Leary, Donna Brookbanks, David Correos and James Roque (and me). We’ve been messaging each other all week – dying to get back to work, and also sick with nerves. The more gigs you do, the better you are which means we’re all sure we’ll be quite shit by now. I spend the whole day waiting for the show, distracting myself occasionally with vital chores like cleaning out my handbag. I listen to an audio recording of a gig to see if I can remember how my jokes go.

We all arrive stupid early. In the green room it is collectively agreed we are allowed to take our masks off and also to hug each other and it is delightful. We swap work stories – Correos and Roque have both just shot episodes of Give Us A Clue. David says it’s his favourite ever TV experience and Ray cannot believe he is ranking it above Taskmaster NZ but David insists he is. Which is what comedians do, really – say something that feels right at the time, then defend it to the death, but also change our minds later if we want.

There’s been online community chatter all week about how much we should talk about lockdowns and Covid and vaccinations, and there are two schools of thought. One is that people are sick of it all – bored with the subject, tired of the divisions, looking for distraction. The other is that are you fucking mental, of course we have to talk about what our lives have been like since August and who doesn’t want to hear about how we got through. Plus pre-lockdown stories that start, “So I was in Hamilton,” won’t fly because no you weren’t, the border is closed.

We talk about this and decide, you know what? Let’s tell the stories we most want to tell and do what makes us happy because that kind of attitude is catchy and it’ll make the audience happy, too.

I have new stories about turning into a 1950s housewife and DIY personal grooming which get sandwiched between the other bits I remember about climate change and the pay gap, and I am particularly pleased at the way they laugh at my joke about anti-vaxxers at the top of the show because, oof, those people have made it easy for me to access my rage over past months and turning that anger into a gag is what I live for.

After so long away, it’s possible some punters have forgotten the difference between a show and a Facebook thread. While Natalie is on stage, a woman comes over to our table and says, “You’re very funny, but…” and every comedian knows how this is going to go. “You’re very funny, but you need to let people make their own decisions.” And I have a million things to say about individual rights versus collectively responsibility in a global pandemic, and that my job is to express my sincerely held opinions and other comedians will express theirs, and that also the gag had worked a treat. But what I actually say is, “Go and sit down” in my best Mother Voice while pointing at her table, and she does.

Every comedian flies, and all of us are buzzing afterwards. We talk about how we’ve missed this version of ourselves – who each of us is, but dialled right up to be at our sharpest and shiniest. I stay up later than I have since August and, in the morning, when I look at the photos I took of the audience from the stage at the end, I get a bit weepy. I can even see the lady who had been mad at me at the start. She is grinning back at me now, waving her hands in the air.

That problem we’ve had lately with social cohesion? Now that we can be in a room together, I think we might be OK.

Society