![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
This is very much not what I am supposed to be doing today, but I got sidetracked. Submissions close 27-04-2025 (two days from post).
My household got off relatively lightly during the lockdowns - I continued to be able to work from home (although at reduced efficiency) and we were able to keep track of our family and social circles via the internet. My wife has a weakened immune system and she was able to get the vaccine early, about the 3rd tranche if I recall correctly. We had no concerns about the safety of the vaccines. I recall some public debate about the time it took to get vaccines approved for use in New Zealand when they were already in use in other countries, but I also understand that those responsible were trying to follow the official, legal processes as best they could.
In my view the government did the best it could with the information and resources it had. In hindsight of course mistakes were made - mistakes will always be made in a novel situation - but these can be taken on board for future emergency planning. Strictly speaking some legal powers were stretched to/past breaking point; this showed up weaknesses in our system which can be fixed. That these were able to be called out through the courts and acknowledged after the fact I consider a good sign of the strength of our political and legal systems.
Between my wife and several immunocompromised friends we had good reason to try and keep on top of what was known about the virus at any given time. I feel that our distance as a country from the rest of the world and the relatively small impact here has led to many New Zealanders believing that the worldwide pandemic, which is technically ongoing, "wasn't that bad" overall and a sense of complacency. It might have helped had numbers from elsewhere been held up more for comparison with our own numbers.
Closing the borders and extensive isolation measures until vaccines could be rolled out was very much the correct thing to do, I believe that had the previous National government still been in power they would have been "relaxed" about the risks to New Zealand and this would have led to many more deaths. While our household is fortunate in that only one relative has died with Covid as a contributing factor, many of our friends, especially those with relatives overseas, were not as lucky and we share their grief.
I was surprised to learn via events during the pandemic that NZ health workers are not required to be fully vaccinated as a matter of course (something which should be easy to remedy), and at the sheer amount of anti-vaccination, anti-science, anti-government bile which was loudly spilt from some quarters. I understand that these people were and are very much a minority but I am not sure what can be done about it in a future event without the media voluntarily refraining from amplifying their disinformation. It may take an educational campaign on a multi-generational time scale to shift the baseline of New Zealanders understanding of medical science upwards.
Re-reading the submission brief it strikes me that "how the government should *respond to pandemics in the future*" is placing the emphasis in the wrong place. The government needs to be responding to the *possibility of a future pandemic* right now, taking the weaknesses that were exposed in our preparedness and remedying them, fine tuning the tools that were of necessity wielded bluntly this time so that they can be invoked more delicately next time.
There needs to be massive investment in our health system in particular so that it has spare capacity available both for preparing (practising) for the event of another pandemic or similar event, and for responding to an actual event. This includes raising public awareness and mainstreaming of personal health activities like masking and keeping vaccinations up to date. Broader free or very subsidised access to mask, vaccinations and tests (especially the useful all-in-one Covid/RSV/Flu ones), and strong support for employees, especially public-facing / health / food workers taking leave from work while sick, and a culture of not having to work until your body is so run down that it can't effectively fight an exposure.
In the case of an actual event future governments need to be willing to invoke the big guns (border closures, lockdowns, quarantines, vaccine mandates) early and hard. Citizens need to be prepared to "buy into" those actions.
One last thing that sticks in my head from this pandemic was people trying to get back to New Zealand. Next time there needs to be a plan to bring people home ASAP, whether that is purchasing commercial tickets for those who can't afford it or running entire government chartered flights empty out and occupied back, and sufficient quarantine space available.
The COVID-19 Inquiry is assessing key decisions made by the New Zealand Government in 2021 and 2022 in the following areas:
* Vaccines, including mandates, approvals, and safety
* Lockdowns, especially the lockdowns of late 2021
* Testing and tracing technologies (like RATs or the COVID-19 Tracer app), and public health materials (like masks).
In relation to these topics, we need to hear from you about your COVID-19 experiences and how you think the Government should respond to pandemics in the future.
My household got off relatively lightly during the lockdowns - I continued to be able to work from home (although at reduced efficiency) and we were able to keep track of our family and social circles via the internet. My wife has a weakened immune system and she was able to get the vaccine early, about the 3rd tranche if I recall correctly. We had no concerns about the safety of the vaccines. I recall some public debate about the time it took to get vaccines approved for use in New Zealand when they were already in use in other countries, but I also understand that those responsible were trying to follow the official, legal processes as best they could.
In my view the government did the best it could with the information and resources it had. In hindsight of course mistakes were made - mistakes will always be made in a novel situation - but these can be taken on board for future emergency planning. Strictly speaking some legal powers were stretched to/past breaking point; this showed up weaknesses in our system which can be fixed. That these were able to be called out through the courts and acknowledged after the fact I consider a good sign of the strength of our political and legal systems.
Between my wife and several immunocompromised friends we had good reason to try and keep on top of what was known about the virus at any given time. I feel that our distance as a country from the rest of the world and the relatively small impact here has led to many New Zealanders believing that the worldwide pandemic, which is technically ongoing, "wasn't that bad" overall and a sense of complacency. It might have helped had numbers from elsewhere been held up more for comparison with our own numbers.
Closing the borders and extensive isolation measures until vaccines could be rolled out was very much the correct thing to do, I believe that had the previous National government still been in power they would have been "relaxed" about the risks to New Zealand and this would have led to many more deaths. While our household is fortunate in that only one relative has died with Covid as a contributing factor, many of our friends, especially those with relatives overseas, were not as lucky and we share their grief.
I was surprised to learn via events during the pandemic that NZ health workers are not required to be fully vaccinated as a matter of course (something which should be easy to remedy), and at the sheer amount of anti-vaccination, anti-science, anti-government bile which was loudly spilt from some quarters. I understand that these people were and are very much a minority but I am not sure what can be done about it in a future event without the media voluntarily refraining from amplifying their disinformation. It may take an educational campaign on a multi-generational time scale to shift the baseline of New Zealanders understanding of medical science upwards.
Re-reading the submission brief it strikes me that "how the government should *respond to pandemics in the future*" is placing the emphasis in the wrong place. The government needs to be responding to the *possibility of a future pandemic* right now, taking the weaknesses that were exposed in our preparedness and remedying them, fine tuning the tools that were of necessity wielded bluntly this time so that they can be invoked more delicately next time.
There needs to be massive investment in our health system in particular so that it has spare capacity available both for preparing (practising) for the event of another pandemic or similar event, and for responding to an actual event. This includes raising public awareness and mainstreaming of personal health activities like masking and keeping vaccinations up to date. Broader free or very subsidised access to mask, vaccinations and tests (especially the useful all-in-one Covid/RSV/Flu ones), and strong support for employees, especially public-facing / health / food workers taking leave from work while sick, and a culture of not having to work until your body is so run down that it can't effectively fight an exposure.
In the case of an actual event future governments need to be willing to invoke the big guns (border closures, lockdowns, quarantines, vaccine mandates) early and hard. Citizens need to be prepared to "buy into" those actions.
One last thing that sticks in my head from this pandemic was people trying to get back to New Zealand. Next time there needs to be a plan to bring people home ASAP, whether that is purchasing commercial tickets for those who can't afford it or running entire government chartered flights empty out and occupied back, and sufficient quarantine space available.
