Crew members on board the Viking Bay which carried crew infected with Covid-19. The vessel arrived in Wellington on Tuesday. Photo / NZME
Crew members on board the Viking Bay which carried crew infected with Covid-19. The vessel arrived in Wellington on Tuesday. Photo / NZME
LIFE AND POLITICS
We're at that moment again when we can't avoid talking about Covid. Before doing so, I want to first differentiate between strategy and tactics.
Strategy is the big picture idea you have for achieving a goal. Tactics are how you try to put that strategy into place.
Tactics need tobe flexible. You've got to react to what's happening on the ground. Tactics that don't work need to be ditched for new ones. This doesn't mean that the overall strategy changes.
New Zealand's big strategy idea for countering Covid has been to pursue the elimination of Covid from our shores.
Our Covid elimination strategy has been the democratic fusion of government leadership and the peoples' will. That's why a large majority continue to support the Government's handling of Covid.
Our tactics, that is, how we go about achieving the strategic goal of keeping Covid out, have not always been on point. There have been failings of policy and implementation. But the overall success is evident today.
Despite this, there's been criticism that the Government doesn't have a plan. Escalating since the Australian national government released a four-stage outline (July 2) of how it hopes to get the majority of the population vaccinated, open the borders and end lockdowns. The aim, in the words of Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, is to eventually manage Covid in a way similar to the seasonal flu.
Contrary to the criticism, our Government does have a plan. It's to continue to keep Covid out. I've seen no evidence that this has changed or that a majority of us want it to change.
A shipment of Pfizer vaccines arrives in New Zealand. It is unclear if the current vaccines will remain successful against mutations of the virus. Photo / Ministry of Health
The success of that plan (you can call it a strategy) has had consequences, like being bumped down the queue for vaccines as other countries screamed louder.
Understandably, countries that manufacture vaccines, and where Covid also happens to be raging, have been reluctant to see too many vaccine doses leaving their borders. Major power games are going on behind the scenes, and New Zealand isn't a major power.
So let's reiterate again, the Government has a plan: it's to keep Covid out. The details of that plan are a matter of tactics and responding foremost to what Covid is doing.
Because Covid is not a static enemy. There is real concern within the scientific community about how the virus is mutating into more transmissible and potentially more lethal variants.
At this stage, we can't know if the current vaccines will remain successful against mutations of the virus.
In calling for a plan (when we already have one), some people are simply voicing dissatisfaction with the current strategy.
What they want from a plan is some kind of timeline for opening up borders. Allowing more workers in then could ever be accommodated by MIQ facilities. Letting in overseas students and tourists. Some even want the impossible, like some kind of guarantee of returning to normal.
The Ibis Hotel in Rotorua, one of about 30 managed isolation and quarantine facilities (MIQ) in NZ. Photo / NZME
The kind of plan some media commentators and business groups want (out of self-interest for their industry) actually means a higher risk of Covid escaping into the community.
Then we could be put into a position of having to live with Covid and accepting that thousands each year die and thousands more deal with the debilitating effects of long Covid (still not well understood by doctors).
That's the reality we're looking at if a significant portion of the population refuses to be vaccinated and global variants start to defy the current batch of vaccines.
Given the uncertainty, a timeline for opening our borders and returning to "normal" is impossible.
The Government needs the tactical flexibility to respond to the Covid threat as required and avoid giving mixed messages to the public. The Australian national government is being criticised for announcing its "re-opening plan" in the middle of a major Covid outbreak in New South Wales.
All this is a round-about way of saying that we're still where we've been since the beginning. The choice is over different strategies.
Elimination through tight restrictions at the border and quickly implemented lockdowns. Or living with Covid and tolerating deaths, wearing masks in public and restricting our contact with people.
The success of the current plan means we still have a choice.
• Northern Advocate columnist Vaughan Gunson writes about life and politics.
