Covid vaccines: Has one DHB shot itself in the foot?
We’ve been celebrating a few anniversaries recently, as a nation – not many of them very welcome ones. Six weeks ago, it was exactly one year since the first confirmed Covid-19 case on New Zealand soil; this Friday, a year since (almost) everyone entering the country faced spending two weeks watching YouTube videos and modifying their fitness routine to fit inside a managed isolation hotel room.
The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment celebrated with a press release on Friday that, rightly, paid homage to the thousands of frontline workers who’ve helped keep the rest of us safe.
It also reminded us of the eye-popping size of the challenge – 4000 workers on any given day have looked after a total of 130,000 thousand returnees spread over 32 MIQ hotels in five regions; 6200 people isolated in any 14-day period, 9.1 millions meals and snacks served.
Brigadier Jim Bliss is not kidding when he says: ‘‘Looking back on where we were on this day one year ago to where we are now defies belief.’’
What’s less fun to examine, is the place we currently hold internationally in the race to get our population vaccinated. There are various ways to examine those numbers, but none of them look particularly good.
National has been presenting them in terms of vaccination rates in OECD countries; a table on which we are second to last, a nose in front of Japan. Zooming out a bit – for example, comparing New Zealand as a highincome country with vaccination rates in upper-middle and middle income countries – does not improve the picture.
The New York Times’ Covid vaccination tracker shows less wealthy countries like Ecuador, Peru, Indonesia, Colombia, Bulgaria and Albania ahead of us, some by quite a long way.
Both the prime minister and Dr Ashley Bloomfield say this is because we have done so well – better than almost any other country – in preventing the spread of Covid-19 in our communities. We can be more ‘‘steady’’ with vaccinations as we have no rampant spread of disease to get out in front of.
I agree that the argument on its face has considerable merit. But it’s undermined by confusion over whether our vaccine roll-out is even meeting the Government’s own targets.
National’s Chris Bishop has been brandishing internal Ministry of Health documents from late January, which he says show almost 400,000 Kiwis should have had the jab by now, but only 90,000 actually have – less than a third of the target.
The Government says Bishop’s figures are out of date.
It is nevertheless scrambling to address a shortfall, with vaccination centres opening in recent days and more promised. How we’re doing it, for whom, and when, will dominate the headlines for quite some time yet.
Which makes the decision of the Auckland District Health Board’s Board of Directors last week, to get vaccinated several months ahead of their eligibility, a very strange one indeed.
According to board chair Pat Snedden, the opportunity arose coincidentally at their most recent board meeting.
There was a discussion, he says, in which some directors wondered if they shouldn’t wait their turn. Those people were overruled when the board was told by clinicians that no frontline worker would miss out if the board decided to go ahead.
In a media interview, Snedden was adamant this decision was a sign of good leadership, a way of convincing anyone who might be nervous about the vaccine to go ahead and trust the science.
‘‘I’m saying really clearly we are confident that… this is the safe and right thing to do. We are prepared to demonstrate that,’’ Snedden said.
I’m not trying to teach you how to suck linguistic eggs, but the very definition of the verb demonstrate is to ‘‘clearly show the existence or truth of (something) by giving proof or evidence’’.
The board was not ‘‘demonstrating’’ anything of the kind. Or, in fact, demonstrating anything at all.
A demonstration in any context (and Snedden implores us repeatedly to ‘‘understand the context’’) would mean actually telling people about what you had decided to do.
The ADHB board did not do that. News the board had been offered vaccinations so conveniently on the day of their latest board meeting, came to the Sunday Star-Times through private channels.
Not from the ADHB communications people. Not from the ADHB staff intranet. Not from a picture taken to ‘‘show leadership’’, or a video recorded and released to boost public confidence.
Matthew Tukaki, leader of the National Ma¯ ori Authority, told RNZ it does not even appear to have been included in the board meeting’s minutes.
The reason you know about it, I know about it, and most of the frontline workers at the ADHB know about it, is because someone was pissed-off enough to tell a journalist, which blasts a big hole through Snedden’s entire rationale.
It’s hard to see how it could have been any more hush-hush if it were deliberately concealed (and I’m not suggesting it was), and it’s also hard to see how Tukaki is wrong when he says Snedden has been caught telling ‘‘porkies’’.
Whatever the high-horse motivation behind it (and even Snedden has had to admit it is privilege that got him the vaccine) it’s a bad look, based perhaps on some very bad advice – no matter what way they try to spin it.
This is a strange misstep for Snedden, who – while his public profile is not nearly as big as he seems to think it is – has a long history of public service in the health sector and has spoken repeatedly in the past about the importance of equity in health.
Given that record, I don’t know whether Pat Snedden should step down. But if he did decide to do so, it would at least be a real demonstration of the ‘‘leadership’’ he’s used as his shield this week.
It’s a bad look, based perhaps on some very bad advice – no matter what way they try to spin it.