Richard HumeÂ
The premise behind the vaccine mandates (and indeed all Covid restrictions) is that they are temporary risk-based measures to protect public safety. Yet when I look around New Zealand, I see very little correlation between the measures imposed by entities, relative to the level of risk presented by unvaccinated people. In fact, I would go a step further and say that there is reasonable evidence that the positions taken by a lot of organisations are phoney.
This is apparent when you encounter organisations that on one hand preach extreme measures against the unvaccinated, while on the other hand take on lots of risk relating to Covid spread in other contexts, as and when it suits them.
An example of an important public sector organisation that I would accuse of speaking with a forked tongue in this regard is Auckland Council.
Recently I dropped into one of the North Shore libraries. The place was almost deserted and if I had been looking to take some books out, I could have checked them out on their machine without interacting with anyone. Because a library is largely a self-service facility, in a space where distancing is easy I would describe the risk presented by an unvaccinated person using a library as low.
I would also say that if unvaccinated people want to read books at home, that is about the lowest risk activity they could undertake, so if I was a Government that was genuinely worried about the risks posed by unvaccinated people, I would take steps to facilitate them reading as many books at home as they wanted.
However, as far as Auckland Council is concerned, the idea of an unvaccinated person taking away some books to read at home without interacting with anyone presents an unacceptable risk to the vaccinated. Therefore when I visited the library on that day they had a woman stationed in the foyer scrupulously checking everyone’s vaccine pass as they came in, just in case someone from the tiny portion of the unvaccinated population of the North Shore tried to slip in (great use of ratepayer money).
The irony in this situation is that the very act of setting up a vaccine pass checking station at the door means that every patron now has to interact with a member of library staff, which is surely higher risk as far as Covid spread is concerned than if everyone were free to do their own thing without dealing with the staff.
While Auckland Council appears to have an incredibly low tolerance for risk (If you ignore the fact that there would be less risk if everyone were able to come and go as they pleased) when it comes to libraries, the same cannot be said for buses, which as I note above, they also control.
I set out below a photo of the bottom floor of the double-decker bus that I take into town every day. As you can see it is standing room only and people are touching each other throughout their journey. Buses are also a place where the vaccinated and unvaccinated and people from all walks of life come together and then get widely redistributed across the city.
While I concede that Auckland Transport/Council has no choice in the fact that unvaccinated people are allowed to travel on the buses (because they are an essential service) they do have a choice as to how many buses they put on and hence as to how full the buses are and therefore whether some measure of distancing is possible.
The reason why these particular buses are so full is not that there is an unusual number of commuters, but because Auckland Transport/Council chose to run a reduced service at the same time that schools went back.
I cannot see how Auckland Council can on one hand hold a sincere view that the possibility of an unvaccinated person in a largely self serve library is such high risk that they need to employ a permanent guard on the door, while at the same time holding a sincere view that it is reasonable to intentionally turn its buses (where vaccinated alike mix, and then get distributed across the city) into sardine cans by reducing service.
I look at the inconsistency and suspect that the intention of the restrictions as far as the library is concerned is just to make life unpleasant for the unvaccinated, rather than a genuine attempt to impose proportionate risk-based measures. If Auckland Council were genuinely concerned about Covid spread, it would never dream of running its bus service in the way that it is, and as I noted above, it would probably be encouraging the unvaccinated to spend their time reading books at home.
Auckland Council is by no means alone in displaying what I perceive to be false virtue by applying extreme caution with respect to Covid measures (particularly against the unvaccinated) in some contexts but not others as and when it suits them. It is also rife in the corporate sector. For example, this Christmas one of the big four accounting firms cancelled the staff Christmas party for the ordinary staff but held a Christmas party for the partners of the firm only. This was justified on the basis of limiting party sizes.
I am vaccinated myself and support minimal and meaningful measures to reduce risk as we live with Covid, but I think this culture we are developing that seeks to have everyone engaged in shunning or shaming the unvaccinated (or indeed anyone who questions any aspect of the Covid response) is corrosive to our society. It is also causing deep rifts within families and organisations. I also despise the fact that Covid risk is being used so widely for self-serving purposes.
At this point in time, we have a highly vaccinated population in New Zealand. The doom-laden prophecies from the epidemiologists predicting that our hospitals would become overwhelmed as soon as lockdowns and other restrictions were eased are not playing out. Globally, the strains of the virus seem to be getting milder while our ability to treat people with Covid is also improving. Therefore we are not in a position where we are forced to take actions that override basic respect for all people in our society.
In contrast, the direction that our society is moving in under the excuse of Covid (of which the treatment of the unvaccinated is just one strand; other examples are the willingness of the Government to keep on unilaterally imposing cost and complexity on small businesses without really considering the consequences, the extreme power being given to a small number of unelected people, and the unchecked rise in use of people’s private information) is getting worse and worse and needs urgent attention.
The pendulum needs to start swinging back the other way.