Editorial

Covid Blues

Richard Archer wrote this on 20th March. He is now in isolation on his property in South Taranaki.

I am sitting here at my desk at Singapore Institute of Technology marking “Reflections” written by groups of students on their first ever pilot scale build-and-operate lab. Singapore has just gone through 345 confirmed Covid19 cases with 32 new cases yesterday. New Zealand has just hit 39 with 11 new ones yesterday. I have measured my temperature and logged it. And I have just uploaded photos I took of each group in the class. Including the group exiled to the next-door room so the limit of 50 students in the room was not broken. The photos are for contact tracing in case…

I am just about to sanitise my hands and to go to the Food Hall for lunch from one of the hawker stands there. I will sit in an empty seat flanked by chairs with an A4 sheet taped to them asking students not to sit there to maintain social distancing. I’ll not let my chopsticks touch the tray or tabletop.

I am due to fly home tomorrow evening by Air New Zealand. The NZ Government says advance your return date. My family says come home earlier. The NZ travel agency says my flight on Saturday is still scheduled: it doesn’t seem interested in earlier. Richard Archer, President NZIFST

Singapore is a very controlled place. TV is for government messages more than sharp critique. There are jingoistic songs about uniting as one and supporting front-line health staff. A pretty woman appeals to us not to panic-buy. We see news articles about how well the supply chains are functioning. And many news items about how badly struck other countries are. Singapore has held its curve down very well while maintaining business not too far from usual.

I am writing this as a dot in time. Things spread round the world very quickly these days – ideas, news, fake news, people, computer viruses, coronaviruses. But hasn’t that always been the case? Samuel Pepys recorded in his famous diary news he gleaned in the 1660’s from “the exchange” from sea captains returning from abroad. Fresh news. One foreigner who gave false news had his nose slit as punishment. Pepys observed and recorded the great plague which came in from abroad. He related the death tolls published daily by the parishes and the mass burials at Lambeth.

Pepys was also in the food industry. For a decade or so he held a commission for victualling Tangier. He got rich on that one. The King’s money was “sticky” – it tended to stick to people’s hands as it passed through.

Food gets to be centre focus again in times of crisis. People are stocking up ready for periods of isolation. I am – I will be entering 14 days self-isolation on Sunday. At least my personal panic-shopper is doing it for me. The grocery trade has never been hotter. Food companies are having to rev up to catch up. Fruit is having a resurgence as a healthy food in this time of ill-health. Apples will leave our shores in record numbers just as soon as we can get some reefers out of China.

And what of the people manning our wider food industry? That is nearly every worker in New Zealand – most people are only one degree of freedom away from the food industry – they support at least one agricultural or food company in some way.

What of us? We individually are carrying all the pressures and worries at work and at home. Pressures and worries on top of the normal ones. Who looks after us? Well, we do. We look after each other. I am seeing some tremendous good will being shown up here in Asia from one group to another. I hope to see it when I get home.

Richard Archer, FNZIFST, President NZIFST