We need solidarity right now, not judgment
When it comes to exercise during the COVID-19 lockdown, New Zealanders have taken "use your judgment' to mean being judgy about other people, writes Professor Annemarie Jutel.
How far can you run? Should you bike?
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield have been appropriately vague in providing instructions about exercise during this period of rāhui.
"Use your judgment," urged Ardern, but "stay local". "Go for a ride!" said Bloomfield, as he brightened up with questions about cycling.
The challenge is the range of people and activities to which these comments are addressed. "Local" for sedate everyday walkers will mean something totally different to a highly trained endurance athlete. How do we negotiate this ambiguity, and why are we so keen to judge others rather than simply make good decisions ourselves?
In other countries, instructions have been more prescriptive. In France, for example, only brief travel, near home, connected to individual physical activity, and excluding all team sport training, has been allowed since 17 March. The minister of sport has added the additional spec: people can only walk within a radius of 2km of their home. Sport cycling is forbidden.
When New Zealand All of Government Controller John Ombler expanded the instruction to Kiwis—"don't be stupid"—at the media briefing on March 28, he created an additional layer to the admonition "use your judgment". It implies the right decisions are universally obvious; and ultimately that my standards should be yours.
Unfortunately, we are seeing increased adoption of judgment used to cast moral aspersions on our neighbours, with the evening news capturing footage of this collective decision-making.
To the critical viewer, there are many unanswered questions. Any one of the activities being condemned as irresponsible may be completely safe with the full picture. Playing Frisbee golf (between members of the same bubble), swimming or long boarding (on a mirror-like bay, by the shore, by experienced swimmers), walking in a group of six (if they are all from the same family)—all represent probably no more risk than crossing the street. A large tourist family, stranded far from their home, explained to us that they didn't feel they could walk as a family any more. Too many people criticised them on their stroll.
There are undoubtedly flouters, but simply looking out the window and judging what we see is rather more complex than just taking a look. It appeals to prejudice first, rather than to reason.
Discussions (was it only a week ago?) about whether foreigners should be required to wear a colourful wrist band are a powerful example of how prejudice guides our judgments. Paradoxically, at the same time, we were lamenting the suffering of our compatriots, stuck in faraway lands, and shunned by the local population for their otherness.
We live in an era of judgments, prejudices and resentment; with populist demand for walls and detention facilities seemingly justified by the pandemic. However, rather than being civil defence watchdogs, fingers primed to dial 105, we could focus in our exercise, as we have otherwise been advised, on "act[ing] like you have COVID-19".
Exercise, but modestly, and with the lowest risk possible. Stay away from the single tracks, the rough surf, and act out of solidarity, whatever that means to you.
Annemarie Jutel is Professor of Health at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington (and a rural first responder currently isolated in Central Otago).
Read the original article on Stuff.