Facts have changed, balderdash hasn’t

A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.

Concerns over Covid-19 have dialled back considerably as the pandemic has changed to something more like what many who opposed vaccination and mandates were claiming back when it was a much more serious threat to public health.

They might like to think that proves them right. It doesn’t.

Last month the World Health Organisation director general said he expected the organisation would declare an end to the Covid-19 pandemic later this year because statistics of the virus keep declining.

The more mild Omicron outcompeting other strains of the virus since it appeared in late 2021 is a key factor, along with the global population developing immunity through exposure and vaccination.

In New Zealand a level of immunity was achieved in the first instance mostly by vaccination and that helped save thousands of lives here. Last month a Bloomberg study of excess mortality since the pandemic began found that this country had fared the best in the world — still in negative territory, ie fewer people have died than would normally have been expected.

For comparison, the Economist’s daily estimate of excess deaths around the world titled “The pandemic’s true death toll” now stands at a central estimate of

22 million, 3.2 times the official Covid-19 death toll of 6.9m.

Our columnist today might remain sceptical of the effectiveness of Covid vaccines and the fact new messenger RNA technology was already developed and ready to prove its worth in fast-tracking vaccine design, but he is arguing against the evidence. These mRNA vaccines in particular have proved highly effective at protecting people from serious illness, and the new bivalent booster is more effective still — about 37 percent more so than older booster shots at reducing the risk of severe Covid-19.

The vaccination status of people hospitalised with Covid-19 in New Zealand is readily available: 2961 of 27,566 patients or 10.7 percent had no vaccine doses prior; that rises to 18.8 percent for people requiring ICU care (144 of 765 cases).

A huge factor in these numbers and the Covid response in general is that it is the frail elderly and people with health conditions who are most at risk of severe illness or death from a Covid infection. Most of the nation rightly pulled together to protect them, and so have they through protections such as getting vaccinated. Our vulnerable people are among our most vaccinated, but their vulnerabilities can far outweigh the risk reduction from vaccination.