Kate Hawkesby: A lot of numbers painting a bleak picture

I’m wondering how much the Government’s following all the numbers we’re getting these days. We are getting bombarded with numbers at the moment. Every day, every night, every news channel, every front page. It’s all numbers. Cases, hospitalisations, protestors, petitions, tents, cars, prices.Case wise – yesterday we hit 2500. So all the news outlets were able to use the now completely over used words “new record”. Which is getting about as annoying as the way “unprecedented” got thrashed. Let’s all accept that every day from here on in is going to be a 'new record'. So cases – higher than we’ve had, hospitalisations – 100, people in ICU – still 0 though. Average age of those hospitalized with the infection – 56 years old.There are just under 14,000 active community cases in New Zealand as of the past 21 days. A PCR test result is taking about 5 days to get back. These are the numbers I imagine the government's following very closely. These are the numbers they’ll be really worried about, given they had two years to prepare for this, and didn’t.Then there’s the next most important set of numbers right now: those of the protestors.Day 14 of the protest today, 1000 people there, 800 cars, 750 tents.These numbers aren't just bad news for the government but also the Police Commissioner, whose nickname ‘Cuddles’ will likely see him sent somewhere else to hug people after this, given the hugging hasn’t worked. We could add another number here too actually – likelihood of Coster keeping his job after this protest rolls on: 0.But there are other concerning numbers floating around which the Government would be naïve not to pay attention to. Because when the media runs out of puff on reporting Covid numbers, it’s the real world impact numbers which will cause the most damage. The cost of living. Petrol, food, fruit and vege, building supplies, it’s all through the roof. $6 for a lettuce and more than $3 a litre for petrol is the stuff of nightmares for many. But for a government solely focused on Covid, it’s going to be their nightmare soon too, once Omicron takes a back seat. When the Covid headlines, case numbers and protest numbers move off the front page, what are we left with?Businesses in trouble by the thousand, thousands of jobs lost due to mandates, many more thousands of people unable to pay their bills, Hospo, tourism and events on its knees, and New Zealand still woefully short of nurses, teachers, agriculture workers, labourers, engineers, doctors. In fact there’s not much we’re not short of.So a lot of numbers being thrown around right now, but it's important the government pays attention to all of them, not just the ones they’ve got PR campaigns attached to.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.