I haven’t been out of my bubble much but I suspect there’s an uptick in the number of skinheads and longhaired hippies. This will throw people who judge a book by its cover. My Covid coupe is starting to resemble that of an extra in the musical Hair but without the other perks.
Once the Covid traffic light changes to red, I’ll floor it to race to a hairdresser. Quite a few have disappeared already and there will be longer queues than for a testing station at the beginning of an outbreak. The lead-up to Christmas is always a bad time to book an appointment anyways.
I guess it will involve a lot of paperwork to ensure the haircut is done safely. Barbers may have to brush up on their bikini trim techniques to work around the mandatory facemasks. It’ll be lots of fun, no doubt. I also assume the mall Santas will be cancelled this year.
I’m lucky enough to have a job where my hairdo doesn’t affect my ability to do my job and I’d like to think that I’d be re-hired easily if it came to this. In NZ, we firmly believe we must not discriminate based on appearance and we not only tolerate but also celebrate diversity. Don’t we? Obviously, being vaccinated against Covid does affect my ability to meet the requirements of my employment if/when my boss says so because our Government has made it so. If you read that sentence without blinking an eye or raising an eyebrow, you should stop reading this and go to OM or somewhere else. Pretty please.
Presumably because of urgency consultation by government is even less optimal than usual and even unions are less involved, which is ironic for and under a Labour Government. The overdue Health Protection Order covering health and disability, education, and prison workers was announced by Government only yesterday (Saturday) and during a long weekend for the whole nation.
The mythical bubble of kindness has already burst and made way for a cynical hard-line coercive approach to meet the 90% vaccination target with or without which we will ‘enjoy’ Freedom Day before Christmas AKA the show must go on. I’d never have thought that we would follow Plan Boris here in NZ.
I’d have more problems working with an office psychopath than with an unvaccinated colleague irrespective of their hairstyle, for a very simple reason – no need to explain. But psychopaths have rights too AKA Human Rights and these must be respected and are protected by (international) Law. In fact, it is pretty legal to be a psychopath as long as you don’t harm anybody else and don’t get caught.
Socialising with workmates or friends will be different when we all have to wear facemasks, carry a vaccine certificate + photo ID, scan, and maintain social distance once inside a bar or restaurant. It kinda kills the whole experience – I really enjoy watching people, particularly their faces, but now I have to look at their amateur haircuts done with DIY kits bought on Trade Me. But Kiwis are a malleable lot who will happily conform to the new rules imposed by the authoritarian government and wear the Covid niqab as a badge of national pride and honour and socio-civil obedience.
Far from being a social butterfly who goes out at least once a week I not only lament the ‘new normal’, I resent it. This virus is starting to really piss me off and I wish it would just go away and leave us alone. With a bit of luck it’ll become endemic over the next 5 years or so and we can or will treat it as almost any other infectious disease. However, as we have seen with the security measures put in place after 9/11, once these authoritarian measures are in place they’re almost impossible to unwind even when their intended impact and effectiveness arguably have waned. This is yet another example of Kafkaesque development with Frankensteinish rules & regulations supported by Orwellian methods of mass manipulation and control management that is stifling and suffocating not only individual but also social agency.
Besides the infantile (but not always futile) attempts at political point scoring and other usual forms of ego-wanking, finger-pointing, and blame-gaming there’s been very little real robust critical analysis of what’s happening at the moment in our society and how the plates of (central) political power are drifting and shifting due to human forces generated by the pandemic. In addition, there are potential fault lines of social division opening up. This is a huge worry.
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