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Freedom is coming, but what will it look like?

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

Luke Malpass Political editor

In the next couple of weeks we should expect to find out more about what life after Covid will look like. While Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has refused to be drawn on exactly when that plan will come, Stuff understands it will most likely be in the next two weeks.

The National Party’s best attack to date has been about the speed of the vaccination rate. But the window for that being effective is fast closing. In a couple of months the vaccine programme will be winding down. The political train moves on. All that will matter is the final number.

Up to now, vaccinations have been a moving arms race. Each nation has jostled to compare itself with others for what they have achieved and how quickly each has gone. But by the end of this year – three months away – that will no longer be the comparison.

Basically all developed nations will have finished their vaccination programmes. Sure, there will be rats and mice to clean up, but it will essentially be done.

That means that, by the end of the year, the real measure of vaccine performance will not be how fast you vaccinated, but how much. Did your country manage 70 per cent, 80 per cent, or 90 per cent? Or more or less?

The higher the vaccination rate, the better the ability of the system to deal with Covid-19 making its way about in the community.

This should not be any surprise. Yet for some reason, vaccines have become tied up with cultures wars and the Ardern-Government-isusing-it-as-a-pretext-to-take-myfreedom brigade.

As a matter of plain fact, part of that is clearly true. Well, freedoms have been taken away, anyway. But it is also true that what has been done has been the basic consensus of the entire political class since Covid broke out here.

National leader Judith Collins also has zero tolerance of Covid. Until a week or two ago, when ACT leader David Seymour started to break ranks, there was a very cosy consensus.

All this was for good reason: the New Zealand hospital system clearly could not cope with many Covid cases at all. Unbelievably, it appears barely better equipped now – at least as measured by scale – than it was 18 months ago when Covid first hit.

Even on Thursday, directorgeneral of health Ashley Bloomfield had been defending the system on the basis that it didn’t matter how good or well-resourced the health system, a full-blown Covid outbreak sees it overwhelmed.

Delta has meant that the timeline of what a new opening-up plan looks like has been brought forward. Whereas originally it was going to be early next year and nobody was too fussed because there was no Covid in New Zealand, it has now taken on urgency: and that urgency has been buttressed by a vaccination rate ahead of what was expected two months ago.

There are several things we should expect to start seeing in the next few weeks: the first will be movement on some form of vaccine pass. This would be the sort of thing that people may have to present when entering a bar/ church/large venue.

One of the tricky things for any government is the balance between mandating and encouraging use – and the anti-vaxx union riots in Victoria this week attest to that.

The Government may not need to mandate much usage, but instead set up a platform for some sort of standardised card, and businesses themselves will have enough incentive to monitor it. Lockdowns are a pretty good reason to get on with it.

Next cab off the rank will be selfisolation: when an outbreak appears in New Zealand, how will people be isolated? At present, in the public mind, there are essentially twin goals: elimination and zero cases.

The Government and the epidemiologist community have been keen to stress that one is a process, and one an end point. But Ardern has conflated the two when useful. Either way, it has meant that every positive case has been put in MIQ. Home isolation, and how to support it, will be a big and complex move forward.

That then leads to the biggest question of all: the border. At the moment, local Covid cases are being controlled through level 3 in Auckland, and it is hoped they will continue to dwindle over the next couple of weeks. Cases went down to single figures yesterday for the first time since the early days of the outbreak.

But the real test will be how many cases coming across the border can be handled. There are several factors at play here that are overlooked, and may make it a simpler exercise than is sometimes assumed. First is that, at least when the border first opens, most people who travel to New Zealand will be vaccinated. That means they are less likely to bring Covid, and those who do won’t be able to spread it that far.

In addition to this, some airlines won’t let people travel without evidence of vaccination.

On Thursday, the Government released figures produced by one of its modellers, Auckland University professor Shaun Hendy, to demonstrate the impact of opening up at different vaccination levels.

He pinned reopening with no restrictions to 7000 deaths per year.

Rodney Jones, another modeller who has also advised the Government, thought the figure was grossly exaggerated and did not reflect real-life experience on the ground.

That two men both closely involved with the Covid response disagree – and do so publicly – should be comforting for the rest of us. It means the Government is being exposed to different views, and has contestable advice.

In all likelihood, politics will get messier leading into the end of the year.

Aucklanders will likely come out of lockdown much grumpier than last year, and the whole nation will be wanting to know what is next. Meanwhile, MIQ will continue to be a running sore, emblematic of New Zealand’s closure to the world.

The ‘‘what’s next’’ now needs to be answered.

In all likelihood, politics will get messier leading into the end of the year.

Opinion

en-nz

2021-09-25T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-09-25T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://fairfaxmedia.pressreader.com/article/281986085703236

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