Pandemic response is a marathon, not a sprint

When Covid-19 hit, we in former foreign minister Winston Peters’ office watched the world shrink at an alarming rate. Air routes were closing fast and on March 18 the boss told New Zealanders: ‘‘If you can get home, get home now’’.

So began the largest consular effort in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s storied 77-year history. Just over a week later the country went into full lockdown.

The daily demands faced inside the Beehive and the public service were mind-blowing as the government began mobilising on an unprecedented scale in conditions of maximum uncertainty.

During this period the boss and I talked a lot about history, looking for an analogy for a global pandemic. Why? History is a useful guide when facing a novel situation, helping to reduce uncertainty.

We found two. The first was Franklin D. Roosevelt’s response to the Great Depression. At their heart, FDR’s ‘‘fireside chats’’ were a balm against fear.

He said his government would experiment. That it wouldn’t always get it right, but would keep trying until it did. They would get through it together. Just hold on.

He also laid down signposts of progress, to give people hope. Experiential learning was the relevant lesson. With no playbook, FDR’s government learnt as it went.

The second lesson was from Rob Muldoon’s ‘‘Wage and Price’’ freeze in 1982. Muldoon’s advisors knew from the minute it came into effect their real challenge was going to be how to get out of it. They agonised over this problem for two years until the change in 1984.

The lesson drawn was that whatever the crisis demands of the moment, we needed to start thinking about post-Covid foreign policy recovery. There was a strategic arc to the pandemic, and we needed to better understand and anticipate it.

By April’s end the minister received an excellent analysis about our forwardlooking foreign policy from already stretched public servants at the ministry. That work helped us through the crisis response grind because it gave wider context for our day-to-day decisions.

For a year Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern replicated FDR: clear communication, projection of empathy, and shared sacrifice. Experimentation to protect us. Humility to say we wouldn’t get everything right, but we would keep trying until we did. Clear signposts of progress.

For a marathon like this cursed pandemic, it was superior public leadership and New Zealanders basked in our freedoms and being in the lead pack of nations racing towards the finishing line; herd immunity after vaccination.

Now, with a fourth lockdown quickly following a third, we seem, like marathon runners, to have hit the wall, because the tone changed this week, and the psychology with it.

The PM seemed dislocated from what previously worked so well. She sounded more epidemiologist than FDR. Not the usual empathy. Defensive. Signposts were vague, lost in an epidemiological alphabet of case notes.

However irresponsible Case M, the focal point of the lockdown, he’s not the government’s risk, which is that the public psychology sours as (to return to our marathon metaphor) more countries run us down in the home straight.

Nations are catching or rapidly overtaking us as their vaccination programmes advance at pace.

It’s not our position at mid-race that will matter, but where we finish.

It feels like we’ve hit a wall because people are tired, cranky and lethargic and because the government has become defensive. Additionally, new language about contact-types, add-ons to alert-level rules, and all that epidemiological jargon, is creating confusion and frustration.

My older friends wonder if they’ll ever travel again. Younger ones are gagging to leave. South Islanders are shaking their heads. Business friends are frustrated at the yo-yo that wasn’t meant to be. Patience is being tested.

Once vaccine passports allow crossborder travel elsewhere the restlessness here will become palpable. The strategic arc of the pandemic has shifted, and suppressed pressures are building.

If this week felt like hitting the wall, we collectively need to grind it out, which is also one way gritty marathon runners survive it. In the Beehive we used to talk about the grind. It could last for weeks, sometimes months. Cumulative tiredness takes grip, held at bay only by the daily adrenaline rush.

My guys got through the grind by doing basics well. Get all the daily stuff right, pay attention to the details that matter, help each other, and have each other’s backs. We lived by one of Hunter Thompson’s mantras: when the going gets tough, the tough get professional.

My office also used to gather whenever the boss was finished and do the quiz. It was healthy to switch off, albeit for a brief moment.

The PM, her finance minister, successive Cabinets, and great swathes of the public service have performed at sustained levels of commitment and unsustainable levels of endurance. It’s easy to forget that.

We’re in the grinding phase of the Covid-19 marathon, but need to push through it. The Government needs our collective forbearance. We need better signposting from our Government that shows what the run home looks like.