Mandates are great, but individuals will need courage to ask
Melanie was phoning to let me know that a tradie was coming to my house. He would be wearing his mask and, if he wasn’t, she said very firmly, I had to remind him – he could be absentminded. She seemed friendly but vigilant, so I asked the question, feeling nervous.
‘‘Er . . . I have to ask. Is he double vaxxed?’’
‘‘Oh yes!’’ sang Melanie. ‘‘We all are. We are very proud of ourselves!’’
‘‘Well, you can tell him that we are double vaxxed too,’’ I said, feeling relieved.
I was impressed enough to leave a sunny post on the Waiheke Community Facebook page, singing Melanie’s praises and the care that this company was taking with the health of its customers.
I expected pushback. This is social media, after all. But I was overwhelmed by the torrent of little blue ‘‘thumbs up’’ and red hearts – it’s by far the most popular thing I have ever posted there.
Normally, it is true, I would be as interested in a visitor’s vaccination status as I would be in the colour of their socks; and one or two self-appointed experts took the trouble to tell me that I had no right to request ‘‘medical information’’.
‘‘Just did, my friend, and I will do it again,’’ I remarked, more gleefully than strictly necessary. This earned me one or two empurpled faces, and a lot more little blue ‘‘thumbs up’’.
One mother, explaining that her children have respiratory problems, agreed with my stake in the sand. ‘‘I’d really like to be able to ask, for their sake. I don’t know why that’s unreasonable? I’d like to know if, in relevant situations, someone is vaccinated. Not to pass judgment, but to make an informed decision as to whether or not an environment is suitable for them until they’re old enough to be vaccinated and have that extra protection.’’
The vaccine certificate at the heart of the new Covid-19 Protection Framework, outlined yesterday, should be widely acceptable, judging by vaccination rates, once the logistics are ironed out. But getting up the courage to ask if visitors are double vaxxed will be important.
Although it feels strange, we have to normalise this. In a pandemic, we all feel at the whim of events – like a sock in the laundromat of pandemic life, to misquote a pre-Covid wag. But nudging others to get vaccinated is something we can all do. If it helps one more person to protect themselves, it helps everyone.
Covid-19 is now spreading exponentially a few miles from my front door. Once Auckland flips to the Red Light system, vaccine mandates will be part of our everyday life.
Living on Waiheke, I have seen calls for the passenger ferry to bring in a mandate for passengers.
While I’m a fan of vaccine certificates and mandates, I can’t see how this would be possible, for reasons skilfully outlined by Dr Matheson Russell, an associate professor of philosophy at Auckland University. (There is nothing like a pandemic to show us what public health experts, disease modellers, ICU staff, and moral philosophers do all day.)
Russell asks in The Conversation whether it is justified to use vaccine mandates while staring down the barrel of scary hospital caseloads. We should aim, he explains, ‘‘to ensure those who refuse vaccination still have as full a range of opportunities for employment and inclusion in social life as possible’’.
This was echoed yesterday by the prime minister. ‘‘There are some areas,’’ she said, ‘‘where we would want to be very explicit, that you should never withhold services that are essential; food, access to health services, pharmacies and so on.’’
The Waiheke ferry doesn’t only transport wallets from Auckland to the cafes and vineyards of Waiheke – it also ferries children between parents, essential workers to their jobs, and islanders to medical treatment in town. A vaccine mandate could never work on the ferry, no matter how much we might yearn for one.
The considerable downside: one day very soon, the virus will shuffle on board and will find a happy hunting ground. As passengers are decanted from crowded ferries, they cram close together; it is impossible to self-isolate.
Because of this, the local board begged the Government to declare Waiheke a no-go zone for nonresidents under Step 1 alert level 3. The resulting edict brought howls of outrage from Aucklanders with baches on the island, and a few Waiheke businesses. But it is a nobrainer. So are vaccine certificates.
The infamous Waiheke Covid-positive case self-isolated in his car on the vehicle ferry. He’s as popular here as a cat on Tiritiri Matangi – islanders were outraged to learn he doesn’t usually live here, which means he’s breaking the rules by coming. But the empty baches are going to attract more Covid cases from Auckland wanting to self-isolate, especially if immuno-compromised family members want them gone until they recover.
When Covid reaches the island, it will find a community with exceptional healthcare staff, but no hospital and a shortage of equipment, from ambulances to oxygen concentrators and pulse oximeters. Like many more remote and disadvantaged communities, we lack fast ways of getting to hospital for more than a few people at once. Bring on the vaccine certificates.
‘‘No principle of justice,’’ concludes Russell, ‘‘requires society to guarantee the quality of life of those who refuse medicines is as good as others enjoy. If one’s convictions entail exclusion from certain activities in life, sometimes that’s just the price of sticking to one’s convictions.’’