We appear to be at a crossroads for our strategy on COVID-19, and our government is finally ready to walk the path most travelled. For the first time, lockdown level has lowered in a region where community cases persist daily, and of the newly domesticated Delta variant at that. This comes on the heels of some Aucklanders risking contagion and legal repercussions to mingle on the beach, giving the impression that Level Four compliance cannot be counted on any longer.
Most aspects of our COVID response are internationally outstanding. However, our vaccination rollout has been at the bottom of the OECD. The rate of jabs remains objectively slow for meeting our goals: ensuring no lives are lost to the current outbreak, and readying the country to “open up” by 2022.
The media cycle has produced a wave of calls that Kiwis are growing weary of lockdowns and we need a new approach. As the prime example of this trend, Sir John Key got his opinion piece on Stuff, NZ Herald, Newshub, and even the Otago Daily Times. He called the current strategy too costly, particularly in isolating Aotearoa. He demanded a deadline for its end. The tide appears to be turning. Auckland might never return to Level Four again. Why?
The best reason is the vaccine failure. The goal of lockdowns was always to buy time until we reached herd immunity. This is a threshold reached when enough people get vaccinated. The impact is that those who aren’t, including people who can’t safely choose to be vaccinated, as well as those who could but don’t, are surrounded by safe, vaccinated people. We don’t know what population percentage this is yet for COVID; examples like polio and measles suggest a range of 80% to 95%.
Only 65% of our population have gotten a first dose. Just 38% of us are fully vaccinated. We can keep buying time, but evidence from other Western countries like ours suggests we're nearing a 65-70% ceiling. Once we reach that point, everybody who's likely to decide to get vaccinated has been vaccinated.
There are no easy gains beyond that point. We are now trying to persuade people who have bought into misinformation, or have at least been unsettled by skepticism; those who have no clear, convenient way to get vaccinated; and those simply too lazy or not motivated enough to. Think low-information Kiwis with high school educations or less; people in poor and/or rural areas with few and overloaded health services; and humans of Remuera. The former two groups tend to be more Māori and Pasifika than the wider population, but the Opposition demands policy blind to this fact.
The government must accordingly reconsider their balance. If we can't hope to achieve herd immunity in the foreseeable future, then the COVID response is a much more unequivocal choice: lockdowns, or let the virus in and deal with cases as they come. Will the government of Aotearoa really do that?
The first reason that makes this seem less than a certainty is that this would admit their own failure on vaccines. Anyway, even if our rate of vaccination slows soon, jab rates won’t have stopped growing entirely. Compared to the exorbitant expenses of this disaster era, more vaccination outreach is cost efficient. The only issue is the difficulty solving the problem entails.
The other reason is one that has motivated the government’s uniquely vigilant response from the start. An outbreak in our population would be more lethal than in many other wealthy Western countries. They may have generally worse healthcare, but they outperform us in readiness for disasters. You can read more about this in my article from the start of the crisis.
Finally, this government, and particularly their capable Prime Minister, has built much of their identity around a good (if overrated) disaster response. They won their historic majority mandate from the public on the premise that they protected the public from COVID. Repeal our protections, and they might soon find a mob banging on their door, demanding the restoration of lockdown.
The idea of change is premised on the assertion that we can’t stand lockdowns any longer. I, personally, am biased, as I don’t mind lockdowns much, but I haven’t seen any real evidence that we as a nation are especially sick of lockdowns. Of course a lot of us don’t like them, but what I’m demanding is a reason why we need to switch course now. How have things gotten any worse than in 2020?
Perhaps the more pointed question is to return to the reasons why a change is being suggested. The alternatives to a strict elimination strategy have been set forward because of ideology (ACT represents business and liberty), opportunism (National need to find some real political issue), and mystery (while outside the scope of this article, musing on John Key’s move ranges from reinforcing National’s message, to undermining Judith Collins in favour of Christopher Luxon, to attempting to secure a return to the leadership for Simon Bridges or even himself).
Each have presented separate plans (bizarrely, the Guardian describes them as agreeing on the same approach). Labour is still, ostensibly, for elimination. National wants “vigorous suppression”, while ACT is only for “harm minimisation” (click here for a more detailed explanation). Key, funnily enough, is closer to the latter than his own party: his “carrot and stick” approach is relatively fatalist and resentful of our status as a “smug hermit kingdom”, while still envisioning a strong role for government in increasing vaccination rates. However, this would be a larger leap and a greater challenge to the status quo, and so any move is likelier to bring us closer to the Judith Collins position. Harm minimisation is not yet worth discussing until the Overton Window shifts.
These are all different ideas about how to go forward, and we should be grateful that there is now a genuine contest of ideas about what's best. Furthermore, the COVID-19 debate worldwide has never lacked for a discussion of priorities: do we value physical or mental health more? People’s livelihoods, or their lives?
All of them, especially competitors with the status quo, are missing everything beyond the plan. Why do we need to change? What are the reasons? They need evidence. Evidence can let them determine what is genuinely the best strategy to help the country, not just what sounds good for the moment. Evidence is then also essential to sell the public on the need for change.
Where can politicians, public servants, influential media figures and their ilk collect their evidence? Start with the persistent Ground Zero for the virus: Auckland. Communities in South Auckland especially best fit the categories I laid out earlier for people most disadvantaged against COVID, both in being protected from the virus and saved once infected.
Put the call out on social media, on newsletters, on Breakfast. Interview Aucklanders on Zoom and collect their emails. Ask about what they’re going through, and if they think lockdown is worth the lives saved. This is particularly useful for hearing from small business owners about how close they are to shutting up shop. At some point, if lockdowns continue, widespread economic collapse will result as a host of small businesses with similar finances hit an unsustainable threshold. We need to be able to make an educated guess when that is.
These testimonies will only be anecdotal, though. If you want to hear from everybody, look at the polls. Commission polls specifically about lockdown, about vaccination, about COVID. The New Zealand polling industry isn’t large or especially effective, and I’m typically a critic of leaning on them. This is one case where their mass responsiveness can help to assess the overall mood, rather than just guessing that, because lockdowns have been used for a year and half now, we’re all sick of them. To deepen that broad understanding of public opinion, talk to staff in the mental health system and COVID call centres to see how people are holding up, and what they’re worrying about.
These are just two salient examples of institutions that can proffer plenty of thoughts, plans, and facts around how the response to the virus is going. Governing parties Labour and the Greens, especially, can speak to the public service from the inside. What are their estimates for how long we can safely sustain current levels of debt accumulation? How is the healthcare system currently functioning, and how ready are we for different scenarios?
Finally, get ahold of those public servants whose job it is to be in touch with the public: elected officials, especially Members of Parliament. Because of restrictions on gatherings, especially in Auckland, we’re not so much talking figures like Mayor Phil Goff. Instead, we’re talking those who are especially good at connecting to people online (e.g Auckland Central MP Chlöe Swarbrick, via social media), or whose communities most need to be heard from. Most of the overlapping groups of South, Māori, and Pasifika Auckland have representation in MPs Jenny Salesa, Aupito William Sio, Arena Williams, Neru Leavasa, and Peeni Henare. Speaking with these five, as well as grassroots community leaders like pastors, organizers and micro-celebrities, about how koreros are going in their communities is a must.
The other Māori electorate MPs, like Nanaia Mahuta, Adrian Rurawhe, Kelvin Davis and Rino Tirikatene, represent huge swathes of New Zealand compared to general electorates, and accordingly are far more pressed to stay in touch with their constituents on a personal level. Debbie Ngarewa-Packer and Rawiri Waititi have impressed me most of anybody in Parliament in their ability to connect on social media.
The thing is that Parliament should be prioritising the voices of these people anyway! This bunch, and MPs elsewhere like Kiritapu Allan, are the ones whose communities are most vulnerable to COVID and who most need directed vaccination efforts. Go listen to them, and hear from them how their constituents feel about lockdown, what they want to see in the future, and what’s stopping some of them getting vaccinated. Calibrate policy accordingly.
Unfortunately, other incentives may clash with this recommendation. Labour reliably wins South Auckland in elections. On the other hand, if they want to hold onto power, they need to compete in more affluent, healthy seats likelier to consider National. This is part of why they complied with Mayor Goff’s unusually strong demand to depart from Level Four.
The quest for evidence cannot rely solely on broad-based feedback that’ll tend to come more from plugged-in, high-information regions elsewhere, such as business owners in Epsom, Fendalton and Ilam. We need to consider how COVID and our response affects everybody, but our priority needs to be those most at risk of dying, and of being Patient Zero in the next outbreak.
What I’m asking for here is a broad-based effort to reach out to the public and platform their voices about lockdown. I want to hear more people support lockdown than expected. We might hear less people support it than expected. I understand that that runs against the grain of a knee-jerk culture I’m absolutely part of. We typically permit no critique of lockdown or demand to live with the virus - just ask Simon Bridges how well his critiques (many of which have been validated by the passage of time) turned out for him.
Hearing a groundswell of dissent when you start listening is the risk you run in a free democracy. I’m confident we can still do a good enough job distinguishing between paranoid conspiracy theories and genuinely well-intentioned considerations about the best way to navigate Aotearoa through COVID-19.
However, this culture has been genuinely important for the government. Abrogating it and inviting open debate by collating and presenting public evidence puts them in a bind. Admitting their vaccination strategy isn’t working so well is not the smartest way to convince people that we can get easily vaccinated. At the same time, we need to be reminded the threat of COVID could break out any day in order to maintain popular support for necessary strategies against COVID, whatever they might end up being. This balance must be struck delicately, so that the government doesn’t end up being perceived as crying wolf all the time.
Funnily enough, for all his talk about the government ruling by fear, it’s actually Sir John Key who has been 2021’s biggest proponent of such an approach. His COVID strategy was premised on scaring the shit out of Kiwis by announcing we need to get vaccinated before the walls come down, or else. There’s cruelty in that approach, particularly in kicking disadvantaged communities while they’re down. I think it says a lot about why we’ve been so willing to instead follow a leader who, whatever her faults, has urged us to be kind, has stayed calm and disciplined, and has put our safety first. We can count on that remaining the case, whether the government stays the course or takes onboard contributions from National and/or ACT.
This is the debate going into 2022. Critics need to put up or shut up with proof that the current approach doesn’t work. Proponents of the way things are need to prove what is working, and demonstrate that they’re ready to change what isn’t. We need a real, informed debate, not one that slings around ugly arguments from overseas that instinctively drives us back to our domestic bunkers. No more “hermit kingdom”, no more “fear”. Quit painting a picture with pretty words and demonstrate what is actually going on in this country with the words of everyday people and the stats to back it up.
I want opponents of the status quo to be able to get a word in edgeways, but I also think it’s necessary to breathe new life into elimination. My concern is that the few elite decision-makers are starting to convince themselves that lockdown can’t continue simply because it’s gone on so long, and their instincts have convinced them it’s unbearable. To let them drift off course uninterrupted would be change for the worst reason of all: for the sake of change.
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