Keeping out Covid comes at a cost

This week in New York, more than 100 world leaders and heads of state will gather for the United Nations general assembly.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison is expected to be there, along with his new Aukus mates British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and United States President Joe Biden.

Our own prime minister would usually be there, too; the UN has been good to Jacinda Ardern, and her last appearance there with new baby Neve turned her into something of a media darling.

But of course, these are far from ordinary times. Ardern has been forced to stay home, even though the current New Zealand outbreak, on a global scale, is tiny – one in which daily case numbers are in the 10s, rather than the thousands, or tens of thousands, that other world leaders turning up to the UN are dealing with back home.

However, it’s not the size of the outbreak that’s the reason for Jacinda Ardern staying home; shutting ourselves off from the rest of the world may have kept Covid out for much of last year, but it’s also locked us in.

Jacinda Ardern jetting off to a diplomatic talkfest in New York would have been political poison while families are separated by MIQ, while business people with desperate need to travel are stopped from doing so, and while expats, desperate to get home because of cancer, or dying relatives, are refused compassionate leave.

New Zealanders have been prepared to accept that as the price of staying Covid-free – even now, after our longest and hardest lockdown yet, for Auckland at least if not the rest of the country.

However, Delta may mean the worst of all worlds, one where Delta still manages to sneak through our closed borders every few months, and we remain stuck in a rolling cycle of lockdowns, while still locked off from the rest of the world.

Families will go for a third year without seeing loved ones overseas, a million expats will eventually fall out of love with their homeland, alienated by the casual cruelty of the mob towards their plight, tired of the abuse, and the vitriol every time they dare talk about wanting to come home. And our best and brightest will eventually flee; not just Kiwis, but those who came here believing in the utopia of a Covid-free New Zealand. The reality of being unable to do business overseas, of not being able to see friends and families offshore, will eventually start to bite.

Diplomatically meanwhile, New Zealand risks its voice becoming smaller and smaller on the international stage. In New York this week, Ardern’s Australian counterpart Scott Morrison will attend a reception marking the 70th anniversary of the Anzus alliance. He’ll have breakfast with US VicePresident Kamala Harris and see the leaders of the World Bank, and key members of the US legislature including its foreign affairs and intelligence committees.

That’s the real value of a gathering like the UN: the face time with other world leaders and key officials – particularly now, when the international community is facing unpredented challenges – freeing up frozen supply chains, inflation, global vaccination efforts, and the movement of people and labour: the list goes on and on.

That’s what this week’s UN gathering underscores; it also reinforces that we are looking increasingly isolated in a world that has given up on eliminating Covid, but has decided to live with it instead. We can protest that the rest of the world is wrong, but that doesn’t change the reality. If the rest of the world doesn’t share our plan, keeping Covid out becomes an impossibility – even with closed borders, as this latest outbreak shows.

The Government’s recent urgency to lift New Zealand’s vaccination rate to 90 per cent plus reflects that reality; that’s a precursor to lifting border restrictions. But it needs to start leading the debate on that issue, rather than waiting for the polls to tell it when peple are ready to hear that message.

Delta may mean the worst of all worlds, one where Delta still manages to sneak through our closed borders every few months, and we remain stuck in a rolling cycle of lockdowns, while still locked off from the rest of the world.