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Heather du Plessis-Allan: The lockdown means no playgrounds and no walking groups

Author
Newstalk ZB,
Publish Date
Thu, 26 Mar 2020, 4:13PM

Heather du Plessis-Allan: The lockdown means no playgrounds and no walking groups

Author
Newstalk ZB,
Publish Date
Thu, 26 Mar 2020, 4:13PM

I’m a bit worried that not everyone’s getting the message here with this lockdown.

We are getting a lot of reports here about people and businesses breaking the rules

I spoke this afternoon to an Uber driver who called in. He’s so concerned by what he’s seeing. He’s seen groups of kids playing on playground equipment. He’s seen takeaway shops open. People driving huge distances across Auckland city in their cars.

We’ve got reports of groups of mums with pushchairs walking in groups, and big groups of people out for walks together.

I think it’s really important to remind everyone - all of these are a no no.

Kids shouldn’t be on the playground equipment. This virus survives on metal for as much as five days.

Takeaways are supposed to be shut. We should be using our cars only for essential trips. We’re not supposed to be mixing with people outside of our households.

And, disappointingly, we’ve got heaps of examples of stores breaking the rules

In Christchurch a bunch of stores including The Mad Butcher are open. We might not all agree with the rules, we might think butchers should be allowed to be open, but the rules are the rules, and we all have to stick with them.

Crackerjack in Hamilton, a bargain store, is also trying to stay open. These guys can try to argue that they sell cleaning products but come on, they also sell fake bunny ears and stickers.

Look, please, if you’re breaking the rules, please don’t. The more of us who break the rules the longer this thing is going to go on.

The best-case scenario is that we’re out of this lockdown in four weeks. But as long as people keep flouting the rules like we’re hearing today, the chances keep going up that we’re in it for five weeks, six weeks, two months - who knows!

None of us want that.

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