You can’t argue with a truly good idea

It’s exactly a year since Dr Ash confirmed Aotearoa-New Zealand’s first positive test for Covid-19. The spaghettification of this one year, which looking back seems like at least five years, just proves how stretchy time can feel when the world is navigating the crisis of a generation.

Think of what we’ve learned in that time. The illness caused by the virus is much more complex than anyone imagined in those first months; the early known symptoms of a persistent dry cough, a fever and, in bad cases, difficulty breathing were gradually joined by more unexpected ones.

We learned to look for a loss of smell and taste, gastrointestinal problems in children, and discovered the luckyunlucky (those who got Covid-19 and did not die, but continue to suffer for months) living with ‘‘Long Covid’’ ailments like extreme fatigue and brain fog.

Perhaps most alarmingly for the wider consequences, we learned you can have Covid-19 and be completely asymptomatic.

It’s been a scary time, made even more so by seeing even the experts learning on the run as well.

There have been some very good ideas – sometimes they came a bit later than they could have, looking back, and some have failed to take proper root, often for legal reasons, long after science proved their worth, like widespread maskwearing (other than on public transport, where it is now mandated nationwide).

Some traded heavily on Kiwis’ willingness to paddle our collective waka in beautiful symmetry for the common good; and some underestimated how strongly the other thing we’re known for – that ‘‘she’ll be right’’ attitude, the unruffled insouciance thing – would pull us in the other direction, meaning we can’t be ‘‘effed’’ even pulling our phones out to scan in at the supermarket unless community cases have jumped into double figures.

And always the ideas, even the very good ideas, have attracted some kind of controversy here at home. Internationally, we’ve been the golden child, held up as ideal by top dogs in multiple fields (the World Health Organisation praised us for our health response, Bloomberg for our political and economic response.)

But while the world admired our perfect decor, under the duvet and out of sight we wriggled and scratched and poked at each other as we tried to get comfortable in this new way of operating.

Much of this is political, some of it is driven by the economic pain of entire sectors – whatever, you can usually count on most ideas having the eyes picked out like hawks on roadkill.

So it was both a surprise and a delight to hear an idea – potentially a controversial idea – land without that fuss this week. And what an idea it is; that South Auckland should be next off the rank for vaccinations when the government is done with border, health and care workers.

There are just so many reasons to do this. Our border is effectively in their backyard (Auckland International Airport, Ma¯ ngere, is where most of the Covid-19 cases enter Aotearoa) and so are several of the major managed isolation hotels.

Large parts of the South Auckland population live, either by dint of New Zealand’s chronic housing squeeze or by cultural preference, in large multigenerational family units in often overcrowded houses.

Multiple family members might be on casual contracts in insecure work, and cannot just ‘‘isolate at home’’ without paying an immediate financial penalty that could mean they can’t eat.

As Pasifika Network chair Dr Api Talemaitoga put it, a casual worker who has to miss a day of work while they wait for a 24 test turn-around might not know what financial hit they’ll be taking until the pay cycle rolls around in two weeks’ time.

Mostly, experts on the ground say, they’re complying with the short lockdowns we’ve seen recently but they’re also paying high rents, visiting foodbanks and are in constant fear of losing the job(s) they have.

And on the health side of the ledger you have a population with high rates of co-morbidities which alone would make sense to push them to the top of the vaccination list.

I’m sure there’ll be someone who’ll want to argue, but I cannot think what reasons they could advance that would outweigh all this. South Auckland leaders insist their people are ready and willing to get the vaccination and it’s easy to work out why. And there’s been remarkably little pushback to this idea, at least that I can find.

Finally, finally, I’ve had the chance to write about an issue that should bring nary a single example of the abusive emails that usually fill my inbox of a Monday morning.

I’ve probably just put the mockas on myself.

I guess we’ll see.