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I have to say that I’m really looking forward to the summer holiday and the Christmas period. So it was kind of sobering recently to read the figures around the new COVID infections, which tell us that over 42,000 new cases have been found in the community over the past seven days.  

That’s about one in every 120 New Zealanders in the course of a week. Now I guess that there are probably more that more cases than that, because not everyone would report their positive cases.

And we can all make our own guess as to how many cases there really are, but what it does to serve to tell us is that COVID is still around at the moment and cases “continue to soar”.  

But I guess while I wasn’t surprised, I was maybe a little disappointed at the reaction to our breakfast show talking with Dr Brian Betty about the number of cases and maybe some sensible cautions people could take.  

One text even accused us of fear mongering. I just wanted to address that.  

Get a grip.

We are living after almost three very difficult years in a time where we largely and thankfully have a choice as to what we do with information. Can you just imagine if we didn’t get the information and the theories that would abound?

 But at the moment, what we have is information which actually is relevant to us all as New Zealanders looking forward to summer, who are being visited by relatives, who want to go on holiday, who might want to make sure that they don’t pass anything on to their elderly and cherished members of their family.

I can understand how people have an emotional reaction to this stuff because, frankly, we are all over it. I’m over it.  

I had a family member in the last few days who hasn’t been very well and has displayed cold and flu symptoms. My wife and I rolled our eyes and thought “Oh goodness me, hope she hasn’t got Covid.”

But you know what? We ended up testing her, because we wanted to know we wanted the information so we could make our own decisions as to how to keep the people around us safe.  

Thankfully it was negative, and it’s probably just a bad case of hay fever. But I just wanted to take the moment to just remind everyone that -thankfully- we have a choice as to how we respond to this information.  

And isn’t that great? Because we’ve been through two or three years where we had a lot of the time, especially in Auckland, a period where we felt we had very little choice.

So embrace that choice, and embrace the fact that we live in a society where we actually do have good access to information that helps us make choices around how we run our lives, and look forward to a safe and enjoyable Christmas.

And again, make your own choices about how to keep yourselves and your families safe and happy this Christmas- fingers crossed.

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