Well, what a revelation.

We will not be going back to Level 4. Remember that? The Prime Minister said that post our first big lockdown. And yet as of Delta we are, or will be when Delta gets here, heading back there.

There is no doubt Delta has changed the game. It may well be that Lambda or whatever comes after that will change it again.

But what is happening globally is increasingly fascinating. This country has decided that lockdowns are still a thing. The reason Chris Hipkins said what he did is because, as I alluded to earlier this week, the Government are currently panicking about a border breach and Tauranga has brought that home.

Australia, especially Sydney, is in a quagmire and Scott Morrison is taking a massive popularity hit. Don't for a second believe that Jacinda Ardern and co aren't watching that like hawks, their political survival depends on this vaccine and your belief that they know what they are doing. The numbers have already shown that 10 percent drop, so they are freaking out.

The race is on; do we get jabbed before Delta breaches?

Level 4, remember, ruins economies, requires massive debt, and leads to businesses going under and mental health issues to spike.

So given the Sir David Skegg report talking of ongoing lockdowns for years, Ardern's so called speech today about borders and going forward, and Hipkins' level 4 revelation, we are at an interesting part of the journey.

How long are you prepared to live with the threat of level 4? How many level 4s suck confidence out of everyone? Especially given huge swathes of the world have been vaccinated, have vaccine passports, are travelling, are growing economically, and don’t have lockdowns.

How big a risk are we taking doing something very different? And how long do we do it for?

The reality would appear the moment we open the border at all, Delta will be in. It's happened everywhere, so why are we different? The answer is we aren't.

The lesson we've learned from all over the planet is people have so much tolerance. We seem to have a little more given we've put up with less.

But you watch that change, when our dream of defying gravity comes crashing back to Earth.