Seven cases and the country's biggest city, yet again, is locked down. Parts of New Zealand so far away from the seven cases being in level two seemed absurd.

Events like the National Rowing Champs stalled as they stared out at the water wondering what level of inconvenience could be imposed upon them if this thing didn’t get sorted.

As we predicted, it's Americold all over again. The source is unknown, and we'll never know. We have hundreds of millions in lost business and productivity. One hotel last week had three events canned and half a million dollars lost.

As level one is reinstated for Auckland, is it not time for some proper planning? Is the now well-touted idea of MIQ facilities outside of Auckland not actually worth acting on? Just how many more times is this nonsense going to be tolerated?

A government driven by fear is never going to make any other decision than the most conservative one. This cluster's lessons are the same lessons as Americold. The border leaks, testing needs to be more intense, and they need to do better.

But will they?

And in that is the predicament we face. The government don't appear to want to do better,

This, as far as I can work out, is the price they think we should pay to be so called Covid free, which of course is the irony, we aren't. But locking down is part of the deal, doing it over and over is just an inconvenience, not something that needs improving, or avoiding.

The idea that we can be better, or we can do things differently, is not part of how they think. All the ideas from the experts, one of the key ones being you don’t put MIQ facilities in the biggest cities seems to be an argument going nowhere.

There is little, if any, doubt in my mind now given we've been through this too many times. This is a control exercise.

They've worked out too many of us live in fear. Fear brings support. Those one o'clock sessions, even for the slavishly enthusiastic Labour Party supporter surely now can be seen for what it really is.

A platform for politicking. Telling you the level and timeframe of the level is a two or three sentence exercise, not half an hour of propaganda.

They have seized, very successfully, on the idea that locking us down is annoying, but that annoyance is forgotten once they start teasing the chance of freedom. The cleverness of the trick is that half the people falling for it don’t even realise they're being manipulated.

It's a hard truth to stomach. A government not up to much, a system not looking to be improved, a growing level of frustration amongst those awake enough to know when they're being played.

Enjoy level one. History shows it doesn’t last.