Covid-19: Mike Munro - the straitjacket comes off but we're not out of the woods

Opinion

OPINION:

In the lead-up to her departure for London this week, Jacinda Ardern had two important announcements to attend to.

You could say that both were "proclamation" ceremonies, of sorts.

The first, on the steps of Parliament last Sunday, was about recognising the newly installed King. It had to happen in order to make Charles III officially our Head of State.

The second, in the Beehive theatre on Monday, was about casting off the Covid-19 straitjacket. It had to happen, too — to give New Zealanders and business a dose of certainty in these Covid-clouded times.

The latter event might not have been graced with trumpeters, military pomp or anthem-singing, but in terms of moving the political dial it was the one that really mattered. The PM's handlers would have spent many hours toiling over what to say, and how to say it.
Tone was as crucial as content.

When Ardern and her infectious diseases ace Ayesha Verrall took to a stage backdropped by New Zealand flags to proclaim the end of the pandemic's protection framework and to signal changes to other settings, you could, for the most part, sense a collective sigh of relief across the land.

From midnight that evening, the so-called traffic light system was being switched off.
Some aren't comfortable, understandably so. Anxiety levels about the virus remain high among a sizeable chunk of the population.

Jacinda Ardern and Ayesha Verrall deliver the news about switching off the traffic light system. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Nobody is suggesting we're out of the woods yet. There was some unease in the Beehive that Monday's announcement might be seen as an end point, which it clearly isn't.

As the PM said, it's more a milestone along the way.

The virus is still here and both Ardern and Verrall were at pains to caution that there will be bumps in the road ahead. A public health response continues in the background and Verrall stressed the importance of maintaining a high level of preparedness. Mask-wearing is still encouraged, but is no longer a government requirement.

However, the measures that have helped insulate us from the worst of Covid's ravages have been largely consigned to the dustbin of history.

Clearly, it was a decision taken as soon as it was deemed safe to do so. A month ago the hospitalisation number was 550, but it is now less than half that. Verrall pointed out that overall case numbers have fallen to about a tenth of what they were earlier in the year.

The PM's message was that we are returning to something resembling our pre-Covid world, characterising it as "taking back control". That comment, as RNZ's political editor Jane Paterson observed, spoke to the psyche of the nation. People have been wondering when, if ever, they'd get their old lives back.

The comforting and empathetic language was quintessential Ardern. She invoked the upcoming summer and talked of moving forward with confidence, of a return to certainty, of anxiety starting to heal, and she acknowledged the work and sacrifices that people had made.

It was apparent that the PM was being careful not to sound too celebratory.

To do so might have jarred at a time of public melancholy following the Queen's death, but also because many people continue to be impacted by the pandemic through the loss of loved ones, family illness and disruption to workplaces.

The Government should take a bow, though.

What has become clear is that by any objective measure, its response to the pandemic has been the equal of, or better than, nearly all other countries.

Death rates almost everywhere else have been far worse, and our economy continues to be in a stronger position than most.

The Johns Hopkins University of Medicine in Baltimore has kept tabs on Covid-related deaths in 228 countries and territories, and New Zealand's rate of 0.1 deaths per 100,000 people puts it in the top tier, alongside Singapore and Australia.

That isn't to say that the politics of managing the pandemic haven't always been challenging, which is unsurprising given the extent to which opinion has fragmented.

There is a rule of thumb that points to three similarly sized camps among the population: those who are anxious and favour restrictive measures to protect us all; those who carp, often loudly and irrationally, at any loss of freedoms, real or perceived; and those who sit in the middle.

The Government has endeavoured to learn as much as it can about Covid impacts through Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet-commissioned surveys that inform the faintly Orwellian-sounding Behaviour and Sentiment Report.

It points to much higher levels of compliance in New Zealand than in other countries, which says something about the fairness of the measures the Government has taken.

The latest findings, compiled in July, will be published shortly. While they are said to show a slight drop in willingness to comply with health behaviour measures, the proportion of people still willing to wear a facemask is still high, at nearly 70 per cent.

In May, soon after the anarchic protest at Parliament's grounds, there was an uptick — from 44 to 47 per cent — in the proportion of people saying the Covid response was "moving in the right direction". Those choosing "wrong direction" fell from 30 to 26 per cent.

While faith in authority in New Zealand has not dwindled at anything like the rates seen elsewhere, our Government has obviously copped some flak.

Any infringement of liberties, regardless of how necessary it might be, is never good for a government.

So proclaiming an end to such infringements can only have political upside.

- Mike Munro is a former chief of staff for Jacinda Ardern and was chief press secretary for Helen Clark.