New Zealand Covid inquiry finds vaccine mandates were ‘reasonable’
New Zealand Covid inquiry finds vaccine mandates were ‘reasonable’
Commissioners also say the vaccine requirements eroded public trust and call for investment to plan for the next pandemic
Summary
New Zealand’s royal commission into its Covid-19 response found vaccine mandates were reasonable based on available data but acknowledged they harmed social cohesion.
The report praised the country’s elimination strategy for achieving one of the lowest Covid death rates among developed nations while preventing healthcare system collapse.
However, it criticized prolonged lockdowns, weak health system preparedness, and a lack of planning for future crises.
Commissioners urged broad investment in pandemic readiness and emphasized the importance of both frontline and planning staff.
A second phase of the inquiry will review vaccine harms and conclude in 2026.
I’ll never forget watching NZ come out of lockdown and seeing people hug each other while I was still sanitizing groceries.
102Yikes. Do vaccines reduce the likelihood of getting Long Covid?
-13Yes.. Vaccines reduce the risk of more serious Covid infections, which is linked to Long Covid.
25I think it reduces both infection and severity, from what I remember.
16
Reasonable is great when it comes to this kind of thing.
76I feel that this is when social media really showed how much harm it could do to spread misinformation. Good on NZ.
60Information on all sides was described as misinformation.
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By contrast USA had over 600,000 preventable deaths due to their utter lack of response... So is this what you would have preferred???
46"Grandma and Grandpa have to die for the economy." -Texas
44Yeah, probably the same Texans who were shouting about death panels and "don't pull the plug on Grandma" when Obama tried to fix healthcare.
5Wasn't it New York's Cuomo who killed all the elderly?
2Nevermind the vaccines were giving 20 year old healthy men heart attacks. And for what? The literature regarding the vaccines stated they didn't prevent the spread, they just reduced the symptoms. So Grandma and Grandpa got COVID anyway.
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"And I encourage it to be released soon … the next pandemic may not be far away. We need to get on and prepare.”
Yeah, it'll probably come from the US due to some vaccines becoming illegal in some States. Let's just hope it doesnt spread through mouth rain like covid does.
32Excuse me... "mouth rain"?
8Sneezes, I believe, specifically the spittle of a sneeze.
5Basically small droplets of water that are emitted from your mouth as you speak. They can't be seen with the naked eye, and they float on the air. Its how covid is spread so fast in indoor settings.
I first heard it referred to as "mouth rain" on a Radio Lab podcast episode early in the pandemic
3
“Those who think that Dr Blakely is a patsy for the previous government … you’ll get a huge surprise when you open that report,” he told NZ media outlet Stuff.
Can someone translate this to English?
4In this thread, many people making judgements based on incorrect facts and ignoring that New Zealand's biggest city had about a years worth of strict lockdown over the 2 year period from 2020-2021. In this thread you'll also find New Zealanders from outside of Auckland commenting about their personal experience on behalf of everyone from the country.
2Is this the non-evil version of "We investigated ourselves and found we did nothing wrong?"
-7Well, in the sense that they found that they did do many things wrong in hindsight but that the overall concept was not wrong... no?
11
We've investigated ourselves and found no wrongdoing.
-22More like we followed facts, science, and common sense, and found no wrongdoing. We also now have examples for how to do better mext time.
18
Patting themselves on the back?
-73There's a new government and a complete shift in power. The enquiry is neutral. Nobody's patting themselves on the back.
69
I moved to NZ about 7 years ago and lived through this. I supported the earlier lockdowns and got the vaccine before it became mandated.
Having said that, the mandates that the government pursued were absolutely ruthless, and put in place at a time where efficacy was already reduced due to new variants. It did a lot of harm to society, and we still live with those consequences today.
-91a lot of harm to society
You mean one of the lowest per capita death rates of any country with transparent reporting? Explain to me how saving tens of thousands of lives in New Zealand was bad without sounding like a dickhead...
70From the report:
Contentious public health measures like vaccine mandates wore away at what had initially been a united wall of public support for the pandemic response; along with the rising tide of misinformation and disinformation, this created social fissures that have not entirely been repaired.
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Having said that, the mandates that the government pursued were absolutely ruthless
Good.
and put in place at a time where efficacy was already reduced due to new variants.
"Reduced" is not the same as "safe."
It did a lot of harm to society, and we still live with those consequences today.
Like what? What horrible burden are you living with in New Zealand because of this?
55Thank. You.
Ez upvote holy fuck I'd trade places in a second as an anti-authoritarian, high-covid-risk person ill absolutely take that deal vs living in the land of the walking small pox blankets where the Small Business ™️ must flow.
The absolute fucking gall of comparing that to the 14 characteristics of fascism. Must be nice to be so insulated.
7Of course the biggot is against those mean antivaxxer. The dude is a xerox copy of a human lmao
-2Why is it good they were ruthless? Did you live here? Do you know what happened? Is it based on science to force mandates on a population that's already 95 percent vaccinated? Because it was definitely not what our Ministry of Health recommended...
At the time the mandates were active, Auckland was 95 percent vaxed and rife with covid. At that stage, was it worth it telling five percent of the population they were not allowed to be anywhere but in a supermarket? Was it reasonable taking their jobs away from them? Did the costs outweigh the benefits?
The government's covid response did a lot of damage to NZ. My wife is a therapist and works with victims of sexual and domestic abuse. Turns out that locking people up with their abusers for months on end is... Very bad for people too.
Vax mandates lead to a huge division in society, including racial and political divides. It will take a long time to recover from that.
I'm not saying all lockdowns are bad, I'm not saying vaccines are bad, I'm saying there's a cost benefit analysis to be made, and NZ definitely went above and beyond what was reasonable. Towards the end, cabinet kept going against ministry recommendations. Their covid response had become a political tool, not a response based on reason.
-8
We had less deaths than we would have had normally. We also saved a bucket load of jobs by supporting businesses. We, objectively, did better than pretty much anyone else. What seems to continually escape people's attention is that the NZ health system is shit. We have fuck all hospital beds and fuck all staff. Letting the virus run free would have overrun our system in days. A better health system that ours might have more options than we did, but as it was, we did bloody well.
44I also lived through this, as did everybody i know and care about.
29Everyone wants to talk about fascism these days, but give covid restrictions a complete pass. I've never seen anything like that in my lifetime, where you actually couldn't go to restaurants without a pass, and had to have papers in order to justify being out in public. Even if you think it was justified, you have to acknowledge that it was extreme authoritarianism.
-18I saw people lose their jobs and get excluded from society in a city that was 95 percent vaccinated, while somehow all my vaccinated friends and myself were sick of covid.
The level of punitive damage done by the mandates was beyond scientific reason. It also went against ministry of health recommendations.
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