New Zealand has lifted its lockdown a little as of today, since apparently* we’ve broken the back of COVID here. Retail and hospitality is still closed, but non-consumer-facing business are allowed to re-open, so the builders are restarting work on our house renovation, and I can buy car bits and DIY stuff again.
But more importantly, food outlets are allowed to open for takeaways, so I can have MY FIRST DECENT COFFEE IN 5 WEEKS!!! Hallelujah, brothers, the good times have come again**.
*Yes, I know. But we’ve been under 10 new cases a day for over a week now, it’s about two weeks since they detected a case that wasn’t transmitted from unavoidable close contact with an already-known case, and testing levels are high enough that we’re probably not missing great swathes of it in the wild. Plus we have the geographic ability to keep our borders hermetic. Against that: asymptomatic transmission, plus people are assholes. So who knows. Ask me again in a month...
**For selected values of good times - I may or may not still have a job in 12 months and I’m expecting the boss to announce blanket salary cuts in the next few weeks. But we take our victories where we can.