Kerre Woodham: There are lessons to learn from the Covid response

The first phase of the Royal Commission of inquiry into the COVID-19 response will be handed to the Government today. There’s one of finding I know is going to really resonate with a section of this listening audience and members of the wider community. The head of the inquiry, Professor Tony Blakely, says vaccine mandates caused huge pain to a “substantial minority” during the pandemic, and the government should consider whether their benefits, that is the vaccine mandates, outweighed their harms. The report found while the mandates during the later stages of the pandemic were supported by most New Zealanders, the damage to social cohesion needed to be considered when planning for future outbreaks as he told Mike Hosking on the Mike Hosking Breakfast this morning.  

“I think a lot of us around the world are learning that those mandates might have gone a bit too far, for a bit too long and it's a very delicate balance. In a future pandemic, which is what we're really focused on now, you can't rule out the need for doing mandatory measures again because the virus might be two/four times as fatal, and two or four times as infectious, and you just need to do everything. However, if we had something like Covid again, I think all of us are saying that if we prepare better, have better contact tracing, then we'll need less of the mandatory measures like lockdowns and vaccine mandates.” 

Absolutely. I heard Mike too say this morning that inquiries and reports aren't really worth the paper they're written on. That enormous amounts of energy are expended on them, and then they're delivered behind closed doors, and that's that. He said the response to a crisis will depend on whomever you have in government – if they're halfway capable, you get a halfway capable response. If they're not, you don't. But I disagree. I think you can learn from what you've done right and what you've done wrong, and I think the way the government handled the mandates, among other things, was poor.  

I mean, first of all, not getting the vaccines when they did so we're behind the eight-ball. And I would have put anything, anywhere, up any orifice, to get the hell out of lockdown. The frustration and fury felt by many, mainly North Islanders, over following increasingly more ludicrous rules as we struggled to get to some arbitrary vaccination target is still ongoing. As is the fury felt by the significant minority of New Zealanders who lost their jobs and their livelihoods, because they refused to get vaccinated – and this is despite Jacinda Ardern saying in September of 2020 there would be no forced vaccinations and there weren't, and those who chose to opt out, more importantly, would not face sanctions. So that's what she said, and then it all changed again.  

So people chose not to get vaccinated for many, many reasons. Do not lump them all into one basket. I mean, there were some basket cases in amongst them, the people who had the tin foil on top of their heads, but there were also people who were extremely genuine in their motivations and their reasons for not getting vaccinated. Think Novak Djokovic, sort of as the poster boy for that - very, very careful about what they put into their bodies and why they choose to put into their bodies what they do. I mean, these were not the lovies who jumped on the bandwagon who were pumped full of Botox and filler and the like. There are many, many reasons why people chose not to get vaccinated, and initially they were assured by the Prime Minister they wouldn't have to and there would be no sanctions if they chose not to.  

So I think Professor Blakely is right, that you can learn from the past and you can learn how to manage it, because the fallout is ongoing. Every time we get something about the rising colorectal cancer - well, yes, that'll be the vax. So, you've got people who don't believe in science. You've got vaccine fatigue. Now we've got a rise in whooping cough because people are just sick to death of the of the word vaccination. They don't trust vaccinations. They don't trust governments telling you to get vaccinated because of what has happened, and this is the Western world over, not just in New Zealand. So the fallout from not managing the vaccination program is going to be felt for years to come. They did say in this first phase of the Royal Commission of Inquiry that some aspects were handled well. The first six weeks – great. After that, the wheels fell off. I think he said the wheels were wobbly, I'd go further and say the wheels fell completely and utterly off. I think we can learn, and I think we should learn, and I think there are lessons that can be learned, and the first phase of the inquiry has proven that. 

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