Analysis: Watching Aucklanders playing it fast and loose with level 3 rules this week, it’s clear that repeated lockdowns aren’t a sustainable answer. Our hope – for our health, and for our economy – lies in vaccination
I will be last in line for the Covid vaccine ... but I will definitely be in the line. The reason I’ll be last in line is not through any lack of enthusiasm on my part. I am anxious to protect myself and my family from Covid-19 as soon as I can.
The reason is that, rightly enough, border workers come first. Then frontline health workers. And when the vaccine rolls out to the general population, the Prime Minister confirmed this week that it will start with South Auckland.
That is a very good decision. Most of the workers in the Auckland International Airport precinct and at Mangere’s Jet Park quarantine facility are based with their families in South Auckland. It’s a community that’s been at the centre of the last two big outbreaks.
It’s a community that is economically vulnerable and where, despite the best efforts of authorities and local leaders, it can be sometimes hard to get out a message of strict isolation. There are 150 languages spoken in Auckland, the council says; among those communities are many people who fear losing their jobs and their capacity to feed their kids.
Other vaccination priority groups will be those with respiratory and cardiac illnesses, and the elderly. There are calls for Māori and Pasifika to also be prioritised, because as well as being disproportionately at risk, distributing the vaccine through their existing community channels could be quick and effective.
The first 48 hours of elevated alert levels provided more evidence that an effective vaccination programme is the only way through this pandemic. Short, sharp lockdowns have been good tools, but it seems they’re starting to lose their power.
Authorities have already been struggling to contain this new variant, which Jacinda Ardern says has a different lag time for infection – that’s why this new lockdown is longer than the last. There have been difficulties, too, in ensuring the compliance of people who were meant to be isolating.
The dearth of commonsense leadership doesn’t help. Alerted to the impending lockdown at the Joseph Parker fight night on Saturday, leaders from both sides of Parliament stayed to watch the final bout. Yet with about 8000 people there (and presumably many from South Auckland like the two fighters) it had every potential to be a super-spreader event.
It took the University of Auckland’s Pro-Vice-Chancellor for the Pacific, Dr Damon Ieremia Salesa, to show what it means to make the tough calls. When he learned that a lockdown was coming into force, he left his seat just a few tables back from the boxing ring, and left the venue.
His disappointment was clear – but unlike the politicians, he understood the importance. “Sigh. Be safe Auckland,” he tweeted, as he left.
Watching Aucklanders playing it fast and loose with level 3 rules this week, it’s clear that repeated lockdowns aren’t a sustainable answer. Our hope – for our health, and for our economy – lies in vaccination.
