New Zealand: The Elimination State By Bruce Bennett
New Zealand seems like it is happy with whatever comes their way from the government re Covid. Hopefully, when New Zealand collapses in a few years’ time from everything eating away at its social foundations, its natural environment will not be too polluted, for the remnant to start over, and maybe get things right this time.
“As countries look for a post-pandemic pathway back to “normal”, New Zealand is making no promises – and its population seems startlingly happy with that.
Around the world, some governments are hitting full throttle with rhetoric about a “return to normal” and the freedoms of a pre-pandemic world. New Zealand’s approach has been cautious by contrast. The government has made no assurances of a return to normal anytime soon, announced no multi-step “pathway out”, and put forward no timeline for re-opening borders even to vaccinated travellers.
For the population, that messaging seems to have sunk in: the vast majority of New Zealanders – 91% – do not expect life to return to normal, even once they are vaccinated.
In recent speeches and media interviews, prime minister Jacinda Ardern has likened the Covid-19 pandemic to the 9/11 terror attacks in the US – in the sense that even after the immediate damage was cleared, the experience continued to transform the way countries approached security, travel and immigration. “After 9/11 our borders changed forever, and our borders are likely to change quite permanently as a result of Covid-19,” Ardern said.
This week, the deputy prime minister, Grant Robertson, told a business audience: “I appreciate we all want certainty – precise dates and times for things being normal again.”
That is not easy in a fast moving pandemic, and we do not want to mislead you or send signals that see you make decisions we will all regret,” he said. The deputy prime minister admitted that the question mark hovering over the country’s future took a toll of its own. “The continued uncertainty produces its own sort of fatigue,” he said.
Business leaders and newspaper editorials have called for a clear pathway out of the pandemic. But while many nations have committed full tilt to a “return to normal”, most New Zealanders are both happy with the country’s direction and resigned to a different way of life after the pandemic. This month, the government released research commissioned by the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet (DPMC) to measure New Zealanders’ response to both the pandemic and the government’s response. More than 90% do not expect life to return to normal after they are vaccinated. The report concluded that overall, New Zealanders’ feelings toward Covid 19 were “passive”. Almost half – or 44% – felt neutral emotions around Covid 19, and three-quarters felt the country was going in the right direction.
The human cost of closed borders – including separated families and the distress of stranded expats – seems to have had less of an impact. Throughout last year, around 75-80% supported keeping the border closed. According to the DPMC’s more recent research, 84% of people were “OK with stopping travel from very high-risk countries”, and 53% were worried about opening up travel bubbles beyond Australia and the Cook Islands.
Even overseas, however, the embrace of normalcy has often faltered, marked by retractions and backward steps. In the UK, prime minister Boris Johnston has announced that all Covid restrictions will be lifted, and is expected to confirm England’s “freedom day” on 19 July – but the removal of restrictions has already been delayed once, pushing the date back from 21 June. In California, as the highly-contagious Delta variant spreads, Los Angeles has announced it will require masks indoors regardless of vaccination status. In Australia, prime minister Scott Morrison has outlined a four-stage “pathway out of the pandemic” – at phase 3, he said the country would treat Covid “like the flu”, with no lockdowns, no cap on returning vaccinated travellers, and no domestic restrictions for vaccinated residents. In the weeks since, New South Wales and Victoria have been plunged back into lockdown, as cases balloon.
Epidemiologist and public health professor Michael Baker said for some countries, there is a deeper divide between the rhetoric and the reality of government policy. While the Australian government had been talking about a return to normal, its policies did not yet reflect that: “Actually, for the foreseeable future it’s fortress Australia – they’re actually taking a more intense elimination approach than even New Zealanders, for the foreseeable future, right into next year,” he said. New Zealand’s talk matches more closely to its reality.
The country is aiming to complete its vaccine rollout by end of year, but there is still a long slog ahead. As of this week, about 13.5% of the adult population is fully vaccinated, and 20% have had one dose. Experts including Baker have warned for some time that even after that rollout is complete, many countries may not return to “normal”.
Without 100% vaccination, outbreaks will continue, and for countries that want to minimise death and illness, it’s likely that other public health measures like mask-wearing or brief lockdowns will be needed in future. “You could get to a point where we’d have quarantine free entry into New Zealand from other countries that are managing the pandemic well, countries with high vaccine coverage. Almost certainly the world will require vaccine passports to travel, and you may have pre departure testing,” he says.
“The roadmap for New Zealand might well be towards a long-term elimination state,” says Baker.”
The “elimination state,” could define much of the West.
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