Six weeks ago we had very little data, no capacity, no capabilities and large black clouds on the near horizon approaching fast. 

The Government asked us to listen, to trust them and to act – and we did.  

It’s a collective high five for all of us, (in gloves of course.)

But now that we did our bit, (partygoers excluded) is the government still doing theirs?

Where’s the contact tracing data?

Where’s the breakdown of the numbers on cases, who was asymptomatic and who wasn’t, where’s the cluster detail, where’s the rest of the facts they were working on to uphold their end of this?

Professor Michael Baker says we need to drill down deeper on the stats.

We get gender and ethnicity, age and location of cases, but we don’t get source of infection, any links to air crew or whether further investigations for transmission are being looked at.

We are now at the grand total of zero cases.

Holding us in Level 2 for a second longer beyond next Wednesday at midnight, would now seem beyond the pale.

It would be nigh on impossible for the PM to justify, short of a big spike in cases in the next few days.

Why we can’t go to Level 2 earlier is beyond me, but what we really need now is the detail on exactly when we’ll be there and what it looks like.

Hairdressers, physios,gyms and dentists need to make appointments and start emailing clients and firing up their calendars.

Retail owners need to roster staff and know what form their business operations might take.

Café and restaurant owners need to start planning supply chains and making orders.

These businesses all have to be able to do this before May 11th.

And that’s before we get to the thousands of sick Kiwis who’ve been essentially sitting on hold for weeks.

60 thousand specialist appointments were made before lockdown, there’ve been delays on elective surgeries, pathologies, lab tests.. these all need to be up and running so we’re clearing the backlog as soon as possible.

In fact that should be happening now.

Tourist operators need to know what domestic travel will look like over the coming weeks.

The PM said yesterday that she’ll give the detail on what Level 2 will look like on Thursday.

That detail can’t come soon enough.

If the surfers at the beaches and the party goers and the traffic and the numbers of people gathering on the streets are anything to go by, New Zealanders have made their own minds up about how much of a threat Covid is right now, and their behaviour seems to be saying 'it's over'.. even if the government isn’t.