No, the New Zealand Covid Response is not ‘tailored to Pakeha’
The interminable Auckland Covid outbreak has been dying down. Thank goodness. If the Government can be persuaded to cancel the idiotic border-loosening plans in early 2022, we might actually see Delta die out on its own accord, putting New Zealand back into the halcyon days of zero Covid. To that end, the sudden emergence of Omicron actually works in our favour, since it makes it much, much harder to politically justify border loosening… and if the rest of the world is going back into restrictions, that definitely takes the wind out of the media sails.
It’s not over, of course. Far from it. But for now, we can take comfort that things are heading in the right direction, so far as Covid in New Zealand goes.
However, that is not really what I’m intending to address today. Instead, to celebrate my 39th birthday (I am now a crotchety old bastard), I thought I would take aim at some of the handwringing that has been doing the rounds in the last few days. Specifically, the claim that the Government has let Maori down over Covid:
Now, at face value, the above ethnic breakdown does suggest that Maori have rather fallen through the cracks. The problem is, the implications are not what the handwringers think. You see, there are really three defining attributes of the Auckland Covid Outbreak:
- Cases tend to be younger. Comparatively few over 50 years old.
- Cases are heavily weighted towards the unvaccinated, to a virtually unrealistic degree. Vaccines are wonderful things, but the sort of effectiveness implied by Auckland borders on the absurd.
- The ethnic breakdown of cases looks nothing like the communities the disease is circulating within.
The first attribute also carries with it one pleasant side-effect – compared with Sydney and Melbourne, Auckland has seen very few deaths. And, contrary to what the handwringers might think, that is a sign of Government success – the disease has been largely kept away from those most vulnerable to Death from Covid, namely the elderly. The Government’s phased roll-out of vaccines was initially focused on getting the jab to the over 65s, of whatever ethnicity… because the disease doesn’t actually care what skin colour you are, and an 85 year old is in more need of protection than a 25 year old.
This also means that elderly Maori have been largely spared the disease. Elderly Maori have very good vaccination rates, as do Pacific Islanders – which really does kill off any argument that this is a Pakeha-centred response, or that vaccine rates are simply a reflection of poverty. South Auckland’s Pacific Islanders, after all, are as poor as anyone in the country. The conflation of Maori with Pacific Islanders – as the hand-wringers are inclined to do – is also intellectually dishonest, since the majority of Pasifika cases were in the very early days of the outbreak, falling accidental victim to a super-spreader Church event, before vaccines were widely available. The case numbers have been dominated by young Maori for a long time, even while South Auckland (heavily Pacific Islander, fewer Maori) has been the epicentre.
The hand-wringers would then argue that the Government should have prioritised these young Maori sooner. Except that that would have led to more overall deaths, since, as noted, it’s the elderly (of whatever ethnicity) that matter here, and focusing on 30 year old Maori over octogenarians is just asking for trouble. Sure, the Health Authorities are now putting exorbitant efforts into hunting down aforementioned 30 year old Maori, but the point is people in that age group could not have come first in the vaccination queue. And I dare say current vaccination rates bring to mind an expression about “leading a horse to water”, rather than any matters of access, or preference for Pakeha. Again, elderly Maori and Pacific Islanders are the counter-point here. At this point in the roll-out, if you are an unvaccinated New Zealand adult, it is because you choose to be unvaccinated.
(Yes, there are certain people who can’t get vaccinated for genuine medical reasons, but you know what I am talking about).
At the risk of getting into sensitive areas, I would also suggest that misinformation about vaccines has had quite wide currency among a certain subset of upper North Island Maori, to a degree where it has taken more authoritarian methods – vaccine mandates and vaccine passports – to motivate people. Far-right pseudo-Trumpist nuttery in New Zealand might be more common among the indigenous population than is commonly suggested, and the role of Destiny Church and Auckland’s criminal underworld in circulating the virus should not be underestimated.
If one is dealing with an Epidemic of the Non-compliant – people who don’t obey restrictions, who lie to contact-tracers, and who tend to be unvaccinated in a city where vaccination rates have easily topped 90% – then the only option for dealing with such people is to wait for the virus to burn through the potential targets. And that is basically what has finally happened – with restrictions on the unvaccinated serving to keep the disease from leaking back into everyone else. One just hopes that a fresh leakage does not occur in light of further liberalisation. The Auckland internal border came down at midnight, after all.
A Phuulish Fellow 