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Sticks as well as carrots key to vaccination target

Janet Wilson

inning athletes will tell you that achieving a well-intentioned aim is less hoping, wishing and praying and more a clearly defined training regime that means they achieve their goals.

Which suggests that, when it comes to our vaccination rollout, Jacinda Ardern should be taking a leaf out of Dame Valerie Adams’ playbook, rather than the vague roadmap the Ministry of Health has devised.

Sure, there’s nothing like the arrival of the Delta variant and a drawn-out level 4 lockdown – especially for those from Ta¯ maki Makaurau – to get vaccination numbers shooting through the roof.

Those numbers are tailing off now and the Government’s vague call-to-arms messaging, that more than 90 per cent of eligible Kiwis must be fully vaccinated, without giving a deadline of when, simplywon’t cut it.

Let’s not forget that very few countries have achieved that rate. Gibraltar has, and Ireland has vaccinated more than 90 per cent of those over 16, with the UAE achieving more than 90 per cent of the first doses.

What the vaccine rollout has failed to acknowledge to any degree is those among us who are either vaccine hesitant or anti-vaxxers. Ministry research estimates that, as of August, that figure is 20 per cent of Kiwis. Half of those – the dedicated tin-foil hat-wearers – will ‘‘definitely not’’ get a vaccine.

There’s a stark difference in mindset between the vaccinehesitant and anti-vaxxers. The barriers to uptake, the research shows, centre on the vaccination’s long-term effects, its safety, any adverse reactions, and the vaccine being effective against new variants.

To allay those fears, the hesitant will need a targeted information campaign, one without judgment, if vaccination rates are to achieve anything more than 80 per cent.

Without a clearly articulated plan of how we’re to achieve that aim of more than 90 per cent, it will remain nothing more than an elusive dream.

Change agents will tell you that what’s needed to achieve any game plan is clearly articulated forecasting, with demonstrable targets of how you are going to get there. Instead, Ardern and her

Government have finally decided to pin their hopes on the vaccination rollout.

It’s less a ‘‘roll of the dice’’, as the commentariat would have you believe, and more an acknowledgment of how mentally and financially crippling level four lockdowns are.

In stark contrast to the Government’s insistence on the elimination

strategy and visions of ‘‘getting back to normal’’, one forecaster this week offered a blunt vision of the immediate future – a new normal.

igram Capital’s Rodney Jones declared it was unlikely the country would ever get back to zero cases, with outbreak numbers likely to drift higher. It all comes down to that pesky R-value, which captures the rate of the virus’ spread. That R-value was too high to be eliminated. New Zealanders, he said, had to ‘‘stop looking back in the rear-view mirror’’.

‘‘We have to stop holding on to our successes of last year – this is different,’’ Jones said. ‘‘That means learning to live with the virus.’’

He pointed out that while no country has managed to eliminate the virus, there were those which had successfully learnt to live with it. That means that masks will become part of daily life, there’ll be more rapid testing, with the ability of people to self-test, and an emphasis on people monitoring themselves for as long as the virus represents a threat.

Accurate or not, there was something thrillingly liberating about the drawing up of this future state. It offered a vision of how we will live, even with the Delta variant in our midst.

If the Government hopes to reach anything like its 90 per cent target, it’s clear there will have to be a series of incentives and penalties. Australia, with its more realistic vaccination target of 80 per cent for those 16 and over by Christmas, now requires vaccination passports to get into some pubs and major events. We must do the same and include events where more than 100 people gather.

Another harbinger of the new normal came from Speaker Trevor Mallard this week when he revealed to Newsroom that he was seeking legal advice on whether staff, the public and the media may not be allowed on the Parliamentary Precinct if they were unvaccinated.

That decision has real repercussions for business, as workplaces grapple with who is and isn’t vaccinated.

Our world is about to be split into two very definitive tribes; those who have the vaccine and those who don’t.

Those who have the jab won’t enjoy the freedoms of the past, but they will be able to travel, while those who don’t have it won’t be able to. That may well become the ultimate decider for the vaccinehesitant.

It may be ‘‘my body, my choice’’ when it comes to vaccination, but only if you can enjoy the freedom that everyone else does.

Opinion

en-nz

2021-09-25T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-09-25T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://fairfaxmedia.pressreader.com/article/282175064264279

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