My fear with the current news cycle is that we are becoming so focused and obsessed on who should wear a mask, how and why, and who should enforce it, that we’re missing the big picture here.

The economy.

Do you think we are so blinded by lockdowns, how many tests have been done, who is or isn’t a casual contact of a community cluster case, that we have not yet woken up to what’s really happening here?

Are we so bogged down in the minutiae of the micro – that we’re forgetting the macro picture?

I mean I’m sure business owners and those in the hospitality sector are sweating the macro. Tourism operators, investors, those running hotels and motels, cafes and restaurants, those in the events business, the arts and culture scene, they’re probably all thinking long and hard about where all this lands them down the track. How sustainable their business model is, their workforce structure, their future prospects.

But we don’t get a lot of coverage on that.

The media cycle of coverage tends to be – Prime Minister speaks, media repeats, Bloomfield speaks, media repeats, then we get an  epidemiologist's view which invariably is.. more masks, more lockdowns, more social distancing, and usually a big reminder that this is a very serious global pandemic that could swallow us all up at any moment. Then the 6 o’clock news hits their local street, to talk to the first 4 people who walk past them and agree to be filmed. That’s supposed to give us a snapshot of what ‘the public’.. the great unwashed.. think. And invariably they’re all polite, deferential or not sure, because Kiwis are a humble and low key lot.

Usually they say something basic like ‘Yeah. It’s OK, I guess.’ Because if you’re stopped in the middle of the street and have a camera and a microphone thrust in your face, it’s quite intimidating.

Having done a million of these in my time, I can tell you you’re looking for a mix of for's and against and a don't know. It’s not really indicative of anything.

But where are all the people worried about the economy and what’s happening to the driving force of this country.. which is small to medium enterprises? Where’s the big picture stuff on just where this is going to land us all? In a giant heap of eye watering debt, shut shops, 'for lease' signs, closed businesses and struggling families.

If you’re in any doubt how serious this is, just ask Air NZ how ‘tricky’ it is when the health response keeps getting put in front of the economic one. Air NZ’s now battling physical distancing rules on planes alongside mandatory masks, they’re saying the distancing aspect is not commercially viable.

At some point, somewhere along the way here, we’re going to have to wake up to what’s happening to our country, before we realise we’ve sleepwalked into a quagmire of incompetence that we can’t get out of.