On Thursday morning I walked into a ‘shop’ that wasn’t a supermarket for the first time in over six weeks. It was the office of the hire car company that was providing my ride for the next month. As I walked through the door I said to the booking agent ‘Hey! I’m walking into a shop!!’ She laughed and said ‘It’s been a while!’ Both staff and customers are pleased to see things return to something like normality here in NZ.

I spent Thursday grabbing a few things from around town in preparation for finally leaving Auckland. Alert Level 3 shopping protocols include signing in when entering a store (thus enabling contact tracing if a Covid-19 case is identified), mandatory hand sanitising, social distancing, and limits on how many customers can be in a shop at one time.

Although it was novel to enter the first few shops of my post-lockdown spree, the most surprising thing was how quickly it all felt, well, normal. How soon I seemed to forget that for a month and a half I couldn’t just walk into a camping store or surf shop.

The Covid-19 restrictions obviously affected me a lot less acutely than others. For starters I didn’t lose my job, my business didn’t go broke, and I didn’t have to look after kids at home for what apparently felt like an eternity. I didn’t have to postpone a wedding or a funeral, or be unable to visit family or friends outside my ‘bubble’ (household). Regardless of this, I wonder how many people will have the same thought as me as we go about our lives post-lockdown?

There has been a fair bit of commentary in the media and broader community about whether lifestyle changes enforced by Covid-19 restrictions may be carried on voluntarily post-lockdown. Working from home, spending more time with the family, and socialising with neighbours have been recognised by many as the upside of the whole Covid-19 drama. However my gut feeling is that before too long the pre-Covid work/life balance will return. For better or worse, our lifestyles pre-Covid were shaped by needs, wants and pressures that are likely to still be there in the post-viral age.

What is more likely to remain, at least for a while, is a greater mindfulness of how illness spreads, and the basic steps we can all take to minimise it. Perhaps the flu will be claim fewer lives this winter as a result.

If you enjoyed this post, you may also like Day 40, Shopping at Alert Level 3

Know someone who might like this post?