It’s a fools game trying to read what this government might do. Which makes me a fool.

I said yesterday, in fact I was adamant, that the PM would read the mood, she’d see the haemorrhaging businesses, the lack of compliance and buy-in from the Auckland public, the low number of community cases and the perimeter of the cluster, and all of that would lead her to the obvious and inevitable conclusion that we could come out of level 3 as originally promised, on Wednesday at midnight.

How wrong I was.

What I forgot, was how wedded she is to the epidemiologists and her director general of health, the uber cautious Ashley Bloomfield.

These are the people running the country right now, make no mistake.

Where in that cabinet room discussion was the economic talk? Where was NZ First? Where was Grant Robertson?

Is anyone representing the economic arm of this? Because if we’re going to keep deferring to health wonks to run the country, why even have politicians?

I actually don’t feel as bad for Aucklanders as I do for the rest of the country. They’re being unfairly punished. Staying in Level 2 until September is over the top. It’s hampering their ability to get back to normal, it seems woefully unfair for them.

But also not being able to have Aucklanders travel to other parts of the country has an undeniable impact on the economy.

My brother’s in Queenstown at the moment, and he says local operators are desperate for people to be able to travel from Auckland to the region. They want them back on the skifields, back in the restaurants, back at the hotels. According to one report, Cardrona, and Treble Cone have lost more than 30 percent of their business so far due to level 3 restrictions in Auckland.

And here’s the rub, one; the weather’s getting better so will there even be snow by the time we can travel again?

And on a broader note, will the sugar rush we had post the last lockdown.. where we all rushed out and spent up large and travelled.. will we do that again? Or has lockdown 2.0 had a chilling effect? Will we now be a bit more cautious and worried that we’re going to yo-yo in and out of lockdowns, therefore we’re more reserved?

Do the border cock ups and the bungling of testing and slowness of tracing, leave a bad taste and we’ve lost trust?

This lockdown extension move, will be political. She's playing a long game.

Do the unpopular thing now, risk the ire of the public in the short term with an extended lockdown, and then in a few weeks.. when we head to the polls, we’ll be Covid free again (fingers crossed) and it’ll all be a distant memory.

Then again, I said at the start of this that trying to interpret this government is a fool’s game.. so actually, who knows.