Here we all are in week two of an event that is unprecedented in our lifetimes. Our country closed down by the Government and everyone quarantined at home.
While the Prime Minister claims that putting us under an effective state of house arrest is the only way to stop the spread of the COVID-19 virus and prevent “tens of thousands of New Zealand deaths”, many questions remain about the way this crisis is being handled.
First some perspective.
During every winter’s influenza epidemic, around a million New Zealanders become infected with highly contagious flu viruses. Upwards of 500 people die. The very young and very old are most at risk, as well as those with pre-existing medical conditions. Although our hospitals can be overwhelmed, for most of us life continues without too much disruption.
The difference between this COVID-19 outbreak and the flu is, of course, the fact that there are vaccines for influenza. While they may not always be a perfect match with the particular strain of flu prevailing at the time, they nevertheless help to create widespread immunity.
Any potential mis-match is due to timing. The decision on the content of a vaccine has to be made in October to allow 5 to 6 month for the manufacture of the 1.5 million doses New Zealand needs by March. While it’s based on the dominant strains of influenza in the northern hemisphere winter, by the time the viruses make their way to New Zealand for our winter, they may have mutated so even those who have been vaccinated may be vulnerable to some of the strains in circulation.
Individuals become immune to a virus when they develop antibodies either naturally through exposure or a vaccine. When enough people can no longer transmit an infectious virus, the disease will die out and the population will have gained what is known as ‘herd immunity’.
Pandemics like COVID-19 occur when there is no herd immunity and no vaccine. It’s similar to the situation in 2003 when another new coronavirus – Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome or SARS – emerged from China.
Following that pandemic, the Ministry of Health produced a plan for dealing with such outbreaks. It required all contacts to be tracked and anyone not needing hospital care to “be isolated at home or in some other suitable facility throughout the period of communicability”.
Household members were to be relocated away from anyone infected. If that was not possible, they were to minimise contact, with daily follow up by public health officials to determine whether symptoms develop.
Since COVID-19 is the same virus family as SARS, questions must be asked as to why such a plan was not enacted once the World Health Organisation declared the outbreak to be a pandemic on 12 March?
More specifically, why did the Government decide not to isolate the ten cases in New Zealand at the time?
By isolating infected people, Singapore was not only able to contain the virus without putting others at risk, but they also avoided the need to shut their entire economy down.
Meanwhile, new research emerging from around the world suggests that the virus is not as dangerous as originally thought. Once the high incidence of asymptomatic cases had been factored in, the fatality rate of Covid-19 in the Chinese city of Wuhan drops to between 0.04 percent and 0.12 percent – lower than the seasonal flu at 0.1 percent.
Oxford University researchers found that fewer than one in a thousand people infected with COVID-19 becomes sick enough to need hospitalisation. The vast majority have only mild symptoms or none at all. Their assessment of the fatality rate for the virus in the UK is around 0.002 percent, far lower than the seasonal flu.
Many specialists are also beginning to conclude that pre-existing diseases may be a more important factor than the virus itself, with 99 percent of the patients in Italy, who tested positive for the virus and died having had one or more pre-existing conditions.
German immunologist and toxicologist Professor Stefan Hockertz concurs, explaining that most so-called ‘corona deaths’ have in fact died of other causes while also testing positive for the virus. He believes up to ten times more people than reported are infected, but show no or few symptoms. Professor Hockertz says, “Covid-19 is no more dangerous than influenza, but is simply observed much more closely. More dangerous than the virus is the fear and panic created by the media and the ‘authoritarian reaction’ of many governments.”
Northwestern University’s Professor Charles Manski, who has analysed government responses to the virus, explains, “Two fundamental strategies are possible: mitigation, which focuses on slowing but not necessarily stopping epidemic spread – reducing peak healthcare demand while protecting those most at risk of severe disease from infection; and suppression, which aims to reverse epidemic growth, reducing case numbers to low levels and maintaining that situation indefinitely.”
He warns about the risk when governments choose ‘suppression’, saying that the epidemiological modelling upon which such approaches are based, does not quantify “the enormous social and economic costs which have a significant impact on health and well-being in the short and longer-term.”
Singapore is a country that has chosen mitigation as its policy approach, but so too has Sweden. It has adopted a far more liberal strategy.
Sweden has not closed its borders nor its schools. Neither has it closed non-essential businesses. Even the ski slopes are continuing to operate. Skiers are asked to keep their distance while queuing at the lifts – and in restaurants – but otherwise, it’s business as usual.
This response is based on their philosophy of “trusting the public to adopt voluntary measures to delay the spread of the virus”.
Along with a common sense approach to hygiene and social distancing, the Swedish strategy is based on two principles: firstly, at-risk groups must be protected by requiring older people and those with underlying health problems to remain isolated, and secondly, anyone with flu symptoms must stay at home.
In comparison, here in New Zealand, the lockdown policy imposed by Jacinda Ardern’s Government, which is crippling our economy, is based on suppression.
Their decision was informed by modelling produced by Otago University, which included a doomsday scenario. That report, Potential Worse Case Health Impacts from the COVID-19 Pandemic for New Zealand if Eradication Fails, states:
“In this worse case scenario the epidemic would be expected to peak in early July 2020. A total of 3.32 million New Zealanders would be expected to get symptomatic illness; 146,000 would be sick enough to require hospital admission; 36,600 would be sick enough to require critical care; and 27,600 would be expected to die. This death toll would far exceed the death toll for NZ from World War One (18,000 deaths) and from the 1918 influenza pandemic (9000 deaths). Not considered here also are all the deaths from people who don’t receive normal care (eg, for heart attacks) due to re-orientation of the health system to deal with COVID-19.”
Their modelling indicates restrictions may need to be in place for 6 months, 9 months, or the ‘rest of year’ to reduce ‘peak’ hospital demand. It concludes, “If New Zealand fails with its current eradication strategy toward COVID-19, then health outcomes for New Zealand could be very severe. If interventions were intense enough however, in some scenarios the epidemic peak could still be suppressed or pushed out to the following year (at which time a vaccine may be available).”
Just as the Government’s zero carbon policies are based on apocalyptic climate models that don’t take into account real-life evidence, has Jacinda Ardern fallen into the same trap with COVID-19?
The Prime Minister has called for national unity in dealing with the virus pandemic: everyone working together. And largely, that’s what people are doing.
She also wanted an end to political point scoring during the emergency, accusing National’s leader Simon Bridges of politicising the crisis whenever he challenged the Government’s coronavirus strategy.
But while National MPs and candidates have now put electioneering on hold for the duration of the crisis, Labour has been publishing taxpayer funded adverts promoting their ‘success’ in handling the pandemic.
In fact, politics appears to underlie many of the Government’s recent decisions.
Isn’t that why billions of dollars of the business support package were targeted at beneficiaries through a permanent $25 a week increase in benefits and a doubling of the winter energy payment?
Isn’t it why landlords were attacked just before the lockdown through a rent freeze and a ban on evicting dangerous tenants?
Isn’t it why an additional $56 million in race-based funding was given to Maori on top of all of the other support being provided to New Zealanders?
And isn’t it why the Police and Jacinda Ardern have turned a blind eye to the vigilante road blocks set up by tribal activists around the country?
This week’s NZCPR Guest Commentator, freelance writer Michael Coote, has been outraged by the actions of politicians, police and councils in condoning these illegal blockades:
“The roadblocks are mendaciously represented as precautionary COVID-19 sanitary cordons imposed at alleged tribal borders, yet patently have a political function as Trojan horses for Maori racial supremacists to claim control of contemporary internal borders at which other people can be stopped and prevented from entry just like sovereign states. The COVID-19 blockades are actually crude assertions of Maori tribal sovereignty. COVID-19 will eventually pass as an issue, but the precedent that Maoris can arbitrarily prevent people from lawful passage and freedom of movement throughout New Zealand will linger unless central government takes a stand…
“Maori rahuis have no legal force. The current ‘road rahui’ Maoris are private interests who have no legal right to block public roads, impede lawful passage, or stop, obstruct, interrogate, and turn back travelers, or otherwise impair access to public or private land, apart from land they themselves own. People promoting and implementing illegal public road blockades should be subject to swift official interventions such as warnings, arrest and removal, and court prosecution by authorities such as Police and local and central government.”
That our Government is not only condoning vigilante border patrols in blatant breach of a country-wide lockdown – but also the effective establishment of tribal sovereignty – is indeed a constitutional outrage. How can this be acceptable under any circumstances?
More importantly, what is the Prime Minister going to do about it?
Without a doubt, these are troubling times. New Zealand’s COVID-19 cases continue to grow and tragically we have had our first death. While for now we are all stuck in our “bubbles”, questions remain about what happens next?
Will the Government’s commitment to their models mean we will be forced to stay in home detention for longer than the four weeks they indicated? Or will they allow the economy to start rebuilding, while recommending that at-risk groups continue to protect themselves until a vaccine is available?
Professor Michael Osterholm, the director of the US Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, who has been researching options for re-starting an economy after a lockdown, has observed that there was hardly any difference in the rate of transmission of the COVID-19 virus between Hong Kong, which closed its schools, and Singapore, which didn’t.
So, if New Zealand schools could re-open at the end of the 28-day lockdown, then family members would be able to work, paving the way for our recovery to begin.
Professor Osterholm suggests: “The best alternative will probably entail letting those at low risk for serious disease continue to work, keep business and manufacturing operating, and ‘run’ society, while at the same time advising higher-risk individuals to protect themselves through physical distancing and ramping up our health-care capacity as aggressively as possible. With this battle plan, we could gradually build up immunity without destroying the financial structure on which our lives are based…”
That sounds like a pretty sensible plan for New Zealand too.
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