Dr Liz Gordon: Daunting comparisons and necessary compulsion

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A scan around the world shows nothing is going to be easy if we are to live with Covid 19.

  1. Fully vaccinated people can still get Covid and transmit it.
  2. But vaccinated people will get it less severely and are much less likely to die.
  3. Vaccine effectiveness will dwindle over time and vaccination will become a way of life, probably annual.
  4. Getting the infection fosters a natural immunity, but it is not lasting.
  5. People who are not vaccinated and live in a nation where Covid 19 is endemic can expect to catch the virus around every 16 months, although many reinfections are much quicker.
  6. People who have been infected and vaccinated have a slightly higher level of immunity than others, but it still wanes fairly quickly.
  7. There are already potentially more infectious and fast-moving variants than Delta (including one called Delta-plus) and these will continue to emerge.
  8. The virus seems to love winter, and case numbers are soaring in northern countries even where vaccination rates are very high.  The UK is on 45,000 cases per day, with 3,500 deaths in the past month, with about the same level of vaccination as NZ.
  9. Summer may therefore give us a welcome respite – the calm before the storm.
  10. Humanity is going to have to live with Covid for the long term.  It’s not going to go away.  
  11. It is a very serious and deadly illness that can only be partially mitigated by vaccination – but that vaccination, accompanied by simple public health measures, is the best protection for all of us currently.

I did this scan initially to try and work out my own position on the vexed question of compulsory vaccinations for workers. Is this a terrible breach of human rights or is it a case of saving them from themselves?

The trouble with leaving people unvaccinated and expecting that nature will take its course – they will get the virus and either die or come out the other end (possibly after a degrading stint in hospital) with a moderate immunity – is now revealed.

We are going to have to live with Covid forever. Not just next week, month or year. Our health system will not be able to cope with the levels of sickness we will have opening up.

We have a responsibility to all of us to reduce the burden as much as possible.  This means compulsory vaccination for all, masks when infection rates are high and working from home as needed.

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We will still need to treat non-vaccinated people who get sick as our duty of care does not end because a person acts foolishly.

I like the National Party’s S100 bonus. But it needs to be annual – each year a jab or two and $100.  I heard it calculated at $4 billion, but that’s not right: $100 for each of 5,000,000 is only $500 million! Cheap as chips.  Someone got a naught wrong. Naughty!

And yes, vaccine passports.  I can see we need them.  Paper or app. Let’s gear up for the long haul.

 

Dr Liz Gordon is a researcher and a barrister, with interests in destroying neo-liberalism in all its forms and moving towards a socially just society. She usually blogs on justice, social welfare and education topics.

33 COMMENTS

  2. Does NZ have a greater or lesser % of “vaccine hesitant” than Aussie? If greater, combined with our considerably worse health system, does it follow we may be in for a bigger clusterfuck than across the ditch? My twisted brain thinks so.

  3. I can’t see any benefit in giving money to idiots for a free (but expensive ) vaccination. It would simply be money wasted. How about a health campaign on how to boost the immune system and perhaps subsidise Vitamins C and D for example ? The majority of NZers seem to be unaware of the nutritional needs of their body.

  4. A great reality check. I’m also afraid that the proposed restructuring of the health sector will bring a certain amount of chaos as is usually the case with restructuring.

    Also agree with Garibaldi.
    I think NZrs are nutritionally ignorant in general. How many people are aware, for example that minerals such as Zinc and Selenium are deficient in our soils and therefore, in our food? These minerals are vital to a healthy immune system. We decided to add Iodine to our salt decades ago to prevent goitre. Deficiencies in other minerals don’t present in such a grotesque and visible way.
    Education and subsidised supplements would be money well spent and a useful addition to all the measures outlined by Dr. Gordon.
    However there are a lot of shonky supplements out there. We would need to ensure that the educators are well qualified.

  5. What about using early treatment protocols. We can’t just put our eggs in the vaccine will save us for few months at a time basket. Fighting covid through being healthy and Every household gets a pack(immune vitamins, evermectin etc.) Like the WHO handed out in uttar pradesh. Maybe we can learn from our 3rd world friends who can’t afford rip-off big pharma products.

      • Unfortunately there is no good evidence that Ivermectin (I guess you were referring to) is effective. Dr. Gordon’s outline was thorough and didn’t mention it.

    • I did answer it. I am certainly not going to support Lindsay Mitchell who has been banging on about getting people (whether single mothers or the unemployed) off welfare for some 20 years or more. As I said, neither should we withdraw health support. I am opposed to any model that excludes people from the basic right to live in society. Apart from a shameful episode with confining people with leprosy to Quail Island, and the internment of various groups in the world wars on the basis of nationality, NZ has been very free from that kind of thing. m

  7. There’s every indication that the public and private sector are overwhelmingly in favour of mandates and passports. The government needn’t take a heavy handed approach toward all the ‘freedom-fighting’ anti-vax Fonzis out there – the right of these people to choose should be balanced with the rights of everyone else to protect themselves from the irresponsible behaviour of a churlish and selfish minority. I can’t be the only person to notice the absurdity in the fact we can legislate which steps of a ladder a tradesman can and can’t use, but there’s still ongoing confusion surrounding whether employers and business owners can choose to enforce even the most simple and expedient measures to protect staff and clientele from a potentially deadly illness.

    Choices have consequences. The hardcore anti-vaxxers will simply have to come to terms with that apparently not obvious enough fact. Enough of their tantrums, these are grown adults, not toddlers, and it’s time to start acting like it.

  9. Humans have always had boundaries constraining our lifestyle set by infectious diseases. There was a time when big cities were not feasible, before we learned to use fermentation or boiling or separated sewerage to produce safe drinking water.

    Sexual and other behavior had to change in response to Columbus and other explorers carrying STIs and other diseases between the New World and Europe, and to other countries.

    HIV/AIDS changed our behavior for decades, then PREP changed the scene again.

    There is nothing stopping a much more lethal version of Covid from emerging, or some other much worse pandemic. We are in a worse position to fight a new threat now than we were in 2020, due to the worldwide adoption of antivax as a political tool by extremist right wing parties and foreign wreckers.

    • Hi Simon, That is a really interesting perspective. You can see from that how the very uncertainty over the effects of Covid infection (from barely noticeable, to severe disease, to death or to long Covid) help sustain the antivax movement. If you got it, got horribly ill and died, there wouldn’t be all this dilly-dallying. Mind you, the virus would have been long gone by now, having taken millions with it (such as 1918 flu -it burned itself out by being too deadly). I am afraid I had to look up PREP-had never heard of it.

      • Yes Liz. The anti vax fear of the unknown side effects of covid (although the evidence is known), from a personal perspective, my fear is not the fear of death itself but the unknown, having to live with long covid.

    • Agree 100% Simon.
      NZ is really in a shitty position.
      A health system that is on it’s knee’s daily with an endemic pandemic threatening to over power it with anti’ vax people who have no real reason to decline it threatening to bring the whole system down bringing normal healthcare down with it.
      Many people with long term illnesses are shiting bricks right now.
      That includes the 29 year old T1 diabetic friend whose meds I shell out $400 to 500 a week for.

      This is what it does
      https://www.the-scientist.com/infographics/infographic-the-havoc-sars-cov-2-wreaks-on-the-body-69111?

      I have shared it around heaps and still the anti’s call it misinformation bull crap.

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