Members of Canterbury University volunteer army clean up liquefaction on February 24, 2011.  (Photo by Martin Hunter/Getty Images)
Members of Canterbury University volunteer army clean up liquefaction on February 24, 2011. (Photo by Martin Hunter/Getty Images)

OPINIONSocietyMarch 21, 2020

Embrace the new normal: Why our earthquake recoveries give reason for hope

Members of Canterbury University volunteer army clean up liquefaction on February 24, 2011.  (Photo by Martin Hunter/Getty Images)
Members of Canterbury University volunteer army clean up liquefaction on February 24, 2011. (Photo by Martin Hunter/Getty Images)

Some thought the 2010 and 2011 earthquakes would be the end of Christchurch – they weren’t. For all its unique challenges, we have it in us to get through Covid-19, too, writes earthquake scientist Ursula Cochran.

We can do this.

Darfield 2010, Christchurch 2011, Seddon 2013, Kaikōura 2016. We have already had our lives turned upside-down. And, as a nation, we have come through.

Large earthquakes are a different kind of shock from a global pandemic, but their occurrence in New Zealand over the last decade means we are well-practised at living with uncertainty, being prepared and flexible, adapting to rapidly-evolving situations, and calling on our individual and community resilience to cope with trauma.

Features that helped us through those earthquakes – good leadership, sound science, dedicated healthcare professionals, tight communities and a Kiwi-sized dose of ingenuity – are still abundant in Aotearoa and will help us make it through the current Covid-19 pandemic.

At government level, New Zealand’s leadership is, as far as I’m concerned, among the best in the world. Thank you, Jacinda and your team, for being able to distinguish fact from fiction, for knowing who the experts are and listening to them, for engaging with the science, for putting money where it is needed and for calmly making excellent decisions quickly.

Good leadership flourishes across Aotearoa at all levels. Often behind the scenes, leaders have organised the rebuild of a city and many roads and railways after earthquakes, cleared farmland after floods, and rebuilt communities after fires. Marae have opened their doors, finding homes for the homeless and food for the hungry. It is never easy, but we know there are good leaders who will respond to Covid-19 in New Zealand. Let’s stay ahead of the game, get behind them, and follow official advice to ensure New Zealand has the best possible outcome from this global disruption.

New Zealand is producing its own excellent science on Covid-19. Many scientists and medical professionals are working hard to provide accurate information.

Microbiologist Siouxsie Wiles has emerged as one of New Zealand’s strongest voices on the Covid-19 pandemic.

Siouxsie Wiles, I’ve read all your articles on The Spinoff and I still can’t spell your name, but I do know much more about Covid-19 and I feel like writing you a fan letter. Thank you for all the information you’ve delivered over the last three weeks with authority, clarity, enthusiasm, a welcome dose of emotion, and also for an occasional letter to a politician.

Michelle Dickinson, you gave my boys a “eureka” moment with your Nanogirl experiment that demonstrates why we use soap when we wash our hands. I am grateful they’ve discovered that before they head into adolescence, let alone as they head into a pandemic. I’m a fan of yours, too, Nanogirl.

This gratitude is how some people felt towards GeoNet after the earthquakes. And I hope you’ve noticed that when you remove the catastrophic headlines and identify the facts from the fake news, it is easy to feel reassured by the science, and even empowered. There are some simple measures we must all take to keep ourselves and others safe. End of story.

Our healthcare professionals are a dedicated force. They don’t have the numbers or resources of some countries, but they do have a track record of responding impressively to sudden shocks. Tragically, they have had too much practice recently with the Christchurch mosque shootings and the Whakaari eruption. We must all do our bit to reduce their load.

Communities coming together in times of trouble is a familiar narrative in Aotearoa. We are good at this. Stable parts of the country may not have had much earthquake-induced practice, but your cousins on shaky ground are happy to be good role models for you. Think back to Takahanga Marae in Kaikoura, which served over 10,000 meals in the week immediately after the earthquake. Think back to the Student Volunteer Army and the “Farmy Army” who provided so much physical help and moral support after the earthquakes in Christchurch. I was so happy to hear that the Wellington Student Volunteer Army is already gearing up to help with the Covid-19 response.

Tourists trapped by the Kaikoura earthquakes are helped by medical staff, 2016. Photo: Getty

There is nothing Kiwis are more famous for than their ingenuity. Think back to the post-earthquake “normal”. People lived in tents or at work if homes were damaged, and worked from home if it was their offices that were out of order. Domestic toilets became shared Portaloos down the end of the road. People walked or biked because roads were too mangled. We shopped at malls made out of shipping containers. Art took to the streets because galleries were closed. Bands played in parks because bars were closed. Empty lots got kitted out with makeshift stages for dancing or with gardens to provide vegetables. Isolated communities had supplies delivered by helicopter, wheelbarrow, or ship. Sound familiar? We’ve done this all before – we can do it again.

One thing we can do better this time around is to look after our mental health. At times of crisis our health can be compromised because routines are thrown out the window and, as we get busy responding to the crisis, we forget to prioritise our basic needs. In addition, we may start living in fear – fear of sickness, fear of death, fear of the unknown – and too long spent living this way leads to burn-out and illness.

My consistent advice for earthquakes – “don’t be scared, be prepared” – is sounding very familiar right now. We are being told not to panic over the pandemic. Obviously, we don’t want panic-buying to lead to a temporary shortage of goods, but there is a more important reason to respond calmly to this pandemic. Fear triggers a chemical response in the body that enables us to respond to danger in a physical way – by fighting, fleeing or freezing. It is designed to give us a brief period of extra strength and speed. It is a human superpower, very useful for fighting off an attacker or running from an out-of-control vehicle.

It is not needed for more than a few minutes, and it is not needed when facing Covid-19. When we are in “fight-or-flight” mode other abilities such as clear thinking, good digestion, and repairing the body are compromised. The “rest, digest, repair” mode is what we need most of the time, especially right now, as this new normal may be around for some time. To get out of fear mode, don’t fuel the fire. Our brains are biased towards consuming negative information so we need to consciously feed them positive information as a counterbalance. Caremongering is better for us than scaremongering.

Limit your news intake to your usual amounts and to sources you trust. Ensure your social media activities are of the humorous and uplifting kind, allow yourself time for enjoyable activities and prioritise basic health needs.

My favourite description of the brain’s basic needs comes from Nigel Latta’s The Curious Mind: sleep, good fuel, exercise, relationships, and challenges. The list sounds simple, but it can be hard to maintain at times like this.

  • If you are having trouble sleeping, try making time in the evening for your favourite relaxing activities. Limit your media intake. Get some Headspace before bed.
  • Good fuel means eating healthily, drinking water, and making sure you have supplies at home to get you through a period of self-isolation.
  • Thankfully the ground is not moving in aftershocks for this crisis, so we can be outdoors and feel like the world is normal. Get outside. Preferably where there’s some greenery and not many people. It’s easy to practise social distance while out for a walk.
  • Keep in touch with people with good, old-fashioned phone calls. Get creative about socialising at a distance, like the Italians singing across streets from balconies. Relish the extra time you have with children, pets, and family.

Get prepared. Embrace the new normal. There will be some very hard times. If you can, help people less fortunate than you. The challenges will be in many respects different from an earthquake recovery, but there is good reason for hope given New Zealand’s track record of coming together with creativity and compassion. Now is the time to start drive-in movies, make tin-can telephones with the kids, laugh, dance, and sing from our front lawns. I look forward to witnessing the kind and ingenious things Kiwis discover to get us through.

Keep going!
The usually bustling Royal Arcade on Wednesday. (Photo by Asanka Ratnayake/Getty Images)
The usually bustling Royal Arcade on Wednesday. (Photo by Asanka Ratnayake/Getty Images)

SocietyMarch 20, 2020

The urgent and the invisible: 26 thoughts on the lockdown

The usually bustling Royal Arcade on Wednesday. (Photo by Asanka Ratnayake/Getty Images)
The usually bustling Royal Arcade on Wednesday. (Photo by Asanka Ratnayake/Getty Images)

Kate Rassie, a New Zealand doctor living in Melbourne – but writing in her personal capacity – reflects on an unfathomable week.

This piece was first published on March 20.

1

Highly specific items do remain on supermarket shelves. Even in a pandemic; no-one wants canned tater tots, canned mushrooms, large-sized squeezy bottles of pizza sauce or mung-bean pasta.

2

There are some extraordinarily gifted statistical modellers among us, and I am grateful to them. (This is ten days old, but has had more than 30 million views and is still by far the best explanation I’ve seen of all of this. It’s utterly worth the 26 minute read).

3

Something about all this feels awfully medieval, doesn’t it?

4

We should absolutely be social-distancing.

But I liked shaking hands. I liked farmers markets. I liked coins. I liked strictly unessential meetings. I liked keep-cups. I liked shared lunches. I liked communion wine. I liked dancefloors. I liked gatherings of more than a hundred people.

5

Busy public places filled with slightly-panicked people are awful.

6

Eerily quiet public places are safer, but feel much worse.

7

Radio, as a medium, is perfect for a time like this. When one is anxious, clicking-and-scrolling becomes feverish and fragmented. You’re an untrustworthy pilot of the narrative. Radio allows you to relinquish control, to be taken by the hand and guided through the facts.

8

Virologist Chris Smith from Cambridge University, who talks regularly to Kim Hill on RNZ, is an international treasure and a gifted science communicator.

9

One of the most difficult things about this issue is its invisibility: unless we’re on the front line, our day-to-day worlds in Australasia currently look much the same as they always have (supermarkets aside).

That’s because, unlike bushfires and volcanoes and shootings, this thing happening is on a macro level (population transmission, growth curves, mathematical projections, travel networks, economic systems) and a micro level (viral capsules, proteins, receptors, vaccines). These both require an enormous amount of abstract thought, and a whole new vocabulary. I think that’s part of why we finish each day feeling so intellectually exhausted.

10

We are all bitterly disappointed about something. There’s a pathetic little child in all of us wheedling, but I was so looking forward to that.

11

There’s a bizarre irony (and a significant practical challenge) in the fact that a situation requiring unprecedented teamwork and extraordinary coordination of human response also requires physical separation.

12

We still have babies, and fresh bread, and wine, and smiles, and birdsong.

13

While this feels like it’s hitting us all hard, it’s also accentuating the disparities in our society. It’s a top-slice luxury to work from home, to avoid crowded subways, to have an internet connection and a pantry. A patient came to my diabetes clinic to get a prescription today (she’s terrified her insulin supplies might be exhausted, and I don’t blame her). The bus services are stripped back, so she’d been up since 4am making the cross-town commute. By the time she arrived her blood sugar was dangerously low. We gave her jellybeans and a cheese sandwich and she left, alone, to find a pharmacy that wasn’t out of stock.

14

Which brings me to important and urgent. Covid-19 is currently both of those things, and is – quite rightly – our sole current focus.

As well as the urgent, though, I’m worried about all my equally important patients with probable cancers and high-risk pregnancies and new diagnoses of diabetes. We’re already indefinitely cancelling all elective surgeries and outpatient clinics for the foreseeable future (these already had year-long waitlists). There simply is no contingency plan for the other side. All of this will, left untreated, also become urgent (perhaps not tomorrow, but in days or weeks or months); and I honestly don’t know what the health system will look like then.

15

New Zealand is an excellent place to live.

16

I’ve been thinking about pangolins a lot. They’re a possible scapegoat, an unwitting viral vector, a potential intermediary between horseshoe bat and human in the origins of all this. Look at a picture and try to feel sympathetic, I’m not sure I can. They are repulsive, with lean conical snouts and damp brown noses and scalloped armour.

As the world’s most-trafficked mammal, they are apparently best served braised or steamed, with ginger or citronella.

17

Surely, this is a lesson that universal healthcare is a necessity.

18

Doctors are intrinsically careful people. We like evidence and guidelines. Our training teaches us to do things with extreme caution, and to avoid rash decisions. We do not use drugs until we are sure they are absolutely safe. An article in a reputable academic journal ordinarily requires multiple rounds of peer review over several months, careful referencing and micro-analysis of statistical accuracy. This situation challenges all of that. But we’re stepping up. We’re being quick, flexible, dedicated.

Less than two weeks after the first reported cases (December 31), the entire genetic sequence of the virus was mapped. We’ve created and mass-produced diagnostic tests. We’ve identified the cell surface receptors the virus uses to access human cells. We’re feverishly trialling antiviral agents (existing ones ones repurposed, and investigational ones). We are researching the effects of Covid-19 on the liver, in pregnancy, on heart muscle, in smokers, in the immunocompromised. The first trial dose of a vaccine was administered in to a patient in Seattle on Monday. There are already more than 1,000 rigorous, peer-reviewed articles in the medical literature on Covid-19.

19

We’re going laterally, too. We’re researching the psychological implications of quarantine. We’re creating telehealth hubs so we can see diabetic and cancer patients outside of hospitals. We’re devising new statistical modelling techniques. We’re trying to work out why children seem relatively unaffected, and whether they may be capable of asymptomatic transmission. We’re preparing for a burgeoning mental health crisis. We’re cancelling all our conferences, and organising big online international conferences on Covid-19 instead. We’re on the internet late into the night talking about this thing, because none of us can sleep.

20

Lost money has taken on an arbitrary feeling. No, you won’t get a refund, but nor will anyone else. The business may fold anyway. Money suddenly seems conceptual, a highly-contrived social construct; far less real and less important than lungs and respiratory droplets.

21

I saw a mouse today, on our suburban street in Melbourne, licking an empty Nutella sachet. He looked absorbed and blissful. I stood and watched him for three minutes and felt jealous.

22

All of us, regardless of social standing or financial status or positions of power; are dependent every minute on the gas exchange that occurs across damp tissue-paper membranes in our alveoli. We are only as good as our immune systems. Each day, we all take our improbably precarious knife-edge physiology for granted.

23

You might, in extremis, spend $4.50 on a canned of tinned tomatoes at a specialty grocery store, because no supermarket in the city has them. They taste like privilege and guilt.

24

Dr Ashley Bloomfield is doing an excellent job at fronting for public health in New Zealand. He also looks like he is rapidly losing weight and has not slept for days.

25

I am enjoying the sun and my morning cups of coffee with a sort of desperate, potent, pre-apocalyptic gratitude.

26

No-one panic-buys Easter eggs. The displays are untouched, and it’s the only aisle in the supermarket fully stocked.