Speaker 1: Hielda.
Speaker 2: I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a
Speaker 2: daily podcast presented by the New Zealand Herald. At eleven
Speaker 2: fifty nine pm on March twenty fifth, twenty twenty, New
Speaker 2: Zealand entered its first Level four COVID nineteen lockdown. To many,
Speaker 2: that moment may feel like it happened just yesterday, while
Speaker 2: others are glad it's firmly in the past. Whatever your
Speaker 2: feelings are about New Zealand's response to the COVID pandemic,
Speaker 2: that first lockdown was a life altering event for many
Speaker 2: of us.
Speaker 1: Five years on.
Speaker 2: Did it change us for the better? Or did it
Speaker 2: kickstart something else?
Speaker 1: Entirely?
Speaker 2: University of Otago epidemiologist Michael Baker became a household name
Speaker 2: overnight for his commentary during the pandemic. He joins us
Speaker 2: today on the Front Page to look back at the
Speaker 2: start of the pandemic and forward towards potentially the next one. So, Michael,
Speaker 2: it's been five years since the first lockdown started.
Speaker 1: Can you believe it's been that long?
Speaker 3: Some days it seems longer, some days it seems like yesterday.
Speaker 2: I mean, I feel like I know what your answer
Speaker 2: will be already. But do you think that a call
Speaker 2: for a nationwide lockdown was the right one?
Speaker 3: Yes. But one of the things about lockdown is that
Speaker 3: the term is used very differently if you're trying to
Speaker 3: stamp out the virus, if you're going for elimination, versus
Speaker 3: how the term was used in most countries that were
Speaker 3: not trying to get rid of the virus. They were
Speaker 3: just suppressing it to stop it overwhelming the system. And
Speaker 3: that's how old influenza plan, which is about flattening the
Speaker 3: curve and trying not to overwhelm the health system, it
Speaker 3: took I think a radical approach and said we want
Speaker 3: to get rid of the virus entirely. And that is
Speaker 3: a very different use of lockdown because it's for a
Speaker 3: much shorter period. I think with lockdowns we've got a
Speaker 3: real problem with the terminology and that in much of
Speaker 3: the world they were used to flatten the curve, and
Speaker 3: that's the old approach to influenza in our pandemic plan,
Speaker 3: whereas in New Zealand we had a much more radical approach,
Speaker 3: which was to eliminate the virus entirely. We went alone.
Speaker 3: I mean China had led the way and then countries
Speaker 3: like Australia, Taiwan, Singapore and actually quite a few countries
Speaker 3: in Southeast Asia adopted the same approach and in that
Speaker 3: situation using lockdowns hopefully for a short period of time
Speaker 3: to stamp out the virus and then you can go
Speaker 3: back to life as usual.
Speaker 2: Do you think if we had our time again, we
Speaker 2: would take the same approach.
Speaker 3: I think so, and for good reason. I mean, we've
Speaker 3: had the raw Commission of Inquiry into the COVID response
Speaker 3: that produced a very large, comprehensive report that was released
Speaker 3: in November last year, and they concluded that this was
Speaker 3: the optimal approach. We've also done a lot of research
Speaker 3: on this, comparing countries that took elimination approaches with those
Speaker 3: that use suppression and mitigation, which is a reduced level
Speaker 3: of control, and the outcomes were so much better for
Speaker 3: countries that took elimination. I think it should be the
Speaker 3: default choice in future. Ever pandemic has sufficient severity, and
Speaker 3: we're talking about with COVID nineteen a case fatality risk
Speaker 3: of getting up towards one percent. Initially before we had vaccines,
Speaker 3: and if you think back to nineteen well none of
Speaker 3: us can think back to nineteen eighteen. But we can
Speaker 3: look at that pandemic, which was the worst natural disaster
Speaker 3: in our history, and that flu pandemic came through and
Speaker 3: it killed about one percent of the useualm population in
Speaker 3: just six weeks, So that was about nine thousand people died,
Speaker 3: and so we know that that level of impact is
Speaker 3: totally unacceptable. So if we had a pandemic that was
Speaker 3: coming at us that we thought might be as severe
Speaker 3: as that, I think everyone would want us to share
Speaker 3: our borders until we knew what we were dealing with
Speaker 3: and can work out how to manage it. So I
Speaker 3: think that's a huge lesson we have learned, and I
Speaker 3: think it's now going to be built into I think
Speaker 3: our pandemic planning.
Speaker 2: The one PM press conferences, they were such a key
Speaker 2: part of daily life for close to two years for
Speaker 2: the majority of the country. It was the only way
Speaker 2: of knowing how many cases there were on any given day.
Speaker 2: Now most of us wouldn't have a clue how many
Speaker 2: cases there were last week, or deaths or hospitalizations or
Speaker 2: anything like that. So where are things at currently with COVID? Michael,
Speaker 2: How serious is of a threat is it?
Speaker 3: Well, we've recently looked at the last five years and
Speaker 3: we're COVID as now and it's still our most important
Speaker 3: single infectures to these I mean, last year it put
Speaker 3: nine thousand people in hospital, it killed around six hundred
Speaker 3: and sixty people, and also it caused a large number
Speaker 3: of cases long COVID. We think somewhere around six to
Speaker 3: seven percent of the population and now living with longe COVID,
Speaker 3: which has a huge economic cost, perhaps around two billion
Speaker 3: dollars a year. So it's certainly a major health problem.
Speaker 3: But of course people don't want to think about it.
Speaker 3: They want to imagine they've moved on from COVID, and
Speaker 3: many ways we have. We don't need an emergency response,
Speaker 3: of course to COVID nineteen, but we still need to
Speaker 3: prevent it and manage it.
Speaker 4: Over the past few weeks, the world has changed, and
Speaker 4: it has changed very quickly. In February, it would have
Speaker 4: seemed unimaginable to close New Zealand's borders to the world,
Speaker 4: and now it has been an obvious step as we
Speaker 4: fight COVID nineteen. This is because we are experiencing an
Speaker 4: unprecedented event, a global pandemic that in New Zealand we
Speaker 4: have moved to fight by going hard and going early.
Speaker 2: Five years on social distancing. My q QR codes everywhere
Speaker 2: you go, vaccine mandates, rushing to buy toilet paper, and
Speaker 2: hunting for teddy bears all feels.
Speaker 1: Just like relics.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, If people have adopted any lessons from that time
Speaker 2: in lockdown, what would you hope those were?
Speaker 3: Well, one of the big lessons is around how viruses
Speaker 3: get transmitted, and prior to COVID, I think the conventional
Speaker 3: wisdom was they were transmitted in droplets which have a
Speaker 3: range of up to about two meters, or from touching
Speaker 3: surfaces contaminating them. That's called fomite transmission. And the thing
Speaker 3: we learned from COVID nineteen is something we should have
Speaker 3: known for a long time, is that actually aerosols are
Speaker 3: really important. These these very fine droplet nuclei that we
Speaker 3: breathe out and cough out, and they can linger in
Speaker 3: the air for long periods, and they can also waft
Speaker 3: over great distances. And one of the benefits of the
Speaker 3: really good science that we had during this period was
Speaker 3: it just identified the fact that this was really important.
Speaker 3: So this means designing our indoor environments differently improving ventilation,
Speaker 3: thinking more about controlling infictions and hospitals and wearing masks
Speaker 3: and situations where the ventilation is very poor, like public transport.
Speaker 3: So I think it's one of the main lessons at
Speaker 3: the medical or epidemiological level. I think another one, of course,
Speaker 3: is just how effective vaccines can be. I mean, they
Speaker 3: really did transform the environment once we could vaccinate, and
Speaker 3: unfortunately we were able to vaccinate at a high level before
Speaker 3: we got infected with this virus, and that gave us
Speaker 3: extremely low mortality from this infection compared with most countries.
Speaker 2: The first part of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into
Speaker 2: COVID came out last December, and I'll read out one
Speaker 2: quote from it to you. Contentious public health measures like
Speaker 2: vaccine mandates wore away at what had initially been a
Speaker 2: united wall of public support for the pandemic response.
Speaker 1: Would you agree with that.
Speaker 3: I think that there was some overuse of mandates, and
Speaker 3: I think they were well intentioned. One of the effects
Speaker 3: of putting pressure on people we'd some people would say
Speaker 3: nudging them to get vaccinated, but in fact it was
Speaker 3: stronger than a nudge, was that we did achieve very
Speaker 3: high vaccine coverage, but I think we did pay a
Speaker 3: price in terms of cohesion and trust in what we
Speaker 3: were doing, and I think I hope that we would
Speaker 3: do things differently next time, if there was a next time,
Speaker 3: which is very likely.
Speaker 2: When did you first notice the mood starting to turn?
Speaker 2: Because we were so united there for probably the first
Speaker 2: year of this and then things really started to shift.
Speaker 3: Hey, yes, So I think midway through year two there
Speaker 3: were a whole lot of pressures building up. I mean,
Speaker 3: there were pressures around obviously vaccination, but I think one
Speaker 3: of the other pressures was just New Zealanders wanted to
Speaker 3: return to New Zealand more easily, and we realized that
Speaker 3: the quarantine system was absolutely capacity. It couldn't take any
Speaker 3: more people. So that created rationing and I think quite
Speaker 3: a bit of ill will towards the response. So that's
Speaker 3: the problem. And I think one of the great difficulties
Speaker 3: with elimination is exiting for this strategy, because it is
Speaker 3: quite binary. You know, you've got no transmission or you've
Speaker 3: got ongoing transmission. You know, there isn't really a middle ground,
Speaker 3: and I think that was a difficulty and you could
Speaker 3: see by the end of year two we had reached
Speaker 3: a really critical point and obviously it progressed to the
Speaker 3: parliamentary occupation and very visible protests. So that was the
Speaker 3: very difficult time for the government working on this exit strategy.
Speaker 2: Now, just from doing this episode and speaking with you, Michael,
Speaker 2: I know that I'm going to receive emails about this.
Speaker 2: People are still angry about COVID. There are it's misinformation
Speaker 2: disinformation online. Still how much do you get even five
Speaker 2: years on now, Well it.
Speaker 3: Has decreased a lot, But basically every time I write
Speaker 3: something or are on COVID or talk to the media
Speaker 3: or talk about vaccination, I will get very unpleasant emails.
Speaker 3: And there are still people. Most of the people I meet,
Speaker 3: you know, out socially are very positive about New Zealm response,
Speaker 3: and I think, thank me and others who contributed to that.
Speaker 3: But then you occasionally meet someone who is mainly about
Speaker 3: vaccination who is very verbally abusive and unpleasant. You know.
Speaker 3: I've had a few encounters where I felt physically threatened,
Speaker 3: but I haven't been assaulted, And I think that overall
Speaker 3: the level of risk is actually much higher for other
Speaker 3: groups who have to interact with the public during this period.
Speaker 3: I think journalists I know did get assaulted, politicians got assaulted,
Speaker 3: and I think frontline staffs, police and people were emergency departments.
Speaker 3: So I think it has been very negative, some of
Speaker 3: the disinformation and attacks. But I've got quite used to
Speaker 3: them now, and I know in many ways it's not
Speaker 3: really personal. It's just that people are getting so bombarded
Speaker 3: with so much disinformation now, I think they are quite confused.
Speaker 2: I think people in your position probably hoped that the
Speaker 2: pandemic would have united US and prepared us for the
Speaker 2: next one. But instead we've got the likes of the
Speaker 2: USA and other countries pulling out of the World Health Organization.
Speaker 2: We've got that dis and misinformation being baked into public policy.
Speaker 2: A lot of young people seem to be quite affected
Speaker 2: by the pandemic, interfering with their.
Speaker 1: Childhoods as well.
Speaker 2: If Christopher Luxen got a call next month telling them that,
Speaker 2: you know, bird flu cases is skyrocketing and we need
Speaker 2: to go into a lockdown again, you'd have to agree
Speaker 2: that the public sentiment and support that was present five
Speaker 2: years ago simply isn't there anymore.
Speaker 3: Well, I think it's decreased. The surveys that we have
Speaker 3: done and also read about show that there's still a
Speaker 3: high level of trust, and scientists and health professionals also
Speaker 3: that most people supported the museum response. That's the elimination strategy.
Speaker 3: So if we get it right, if there are future
Speaker 3: pandemics of this scale or larger, there should be much
Speaker 3: more reliance on rapid productive measures like closing borders and
Speaker 3: switching to quarantine. And the good thing, or one of
Speaker 3: the good things about those measures is they mean that
Speaker 3: life in museum would carry on more or less as
Speaker 3: it did during the good phases of the pandemic response.
Speaker 3: That is that you could still have people attending mass
Speaker 3: sporting events and going about their lives. And after all,
Speaker 3: domestic tourism is always a larger contribution to our economy
Speaker 3: than overseas tourism, so we can actually get by quite
Speaker 3: well if we have to do that that response. Now,
Speaker 3: I think lockdowns are a different measure. They do require
Speaker 3: a lot of public support to work, and many of
Speaker 3: us would say we need to actually use other approaches
Speaker 3: much more. And one of the most effective ways is
Speaker 3: it still requires public engagement, is mask use. And the
Speaker 3: evidence and I've been involved in some very large international
Speaker 3: reviews that show masks are highly effective. They can stop
Speaker 3: any virus, and while you're waiting for a vaccine that
Speaker 3: for fluid might take six months before it arrives. Masks
Speaker 3: are very effective if we get local outbreaks, for instance,
Speaker 3: if our border controls don't work. So I'm optimistic. We've
Speaker 3: got a lot of good tools and really lockdowns should
Speaker 3: be a last resort, but certainly if you had a
Speaker 3: very severe outbreak that was spreading across the country, you'd
Speaker 3: need to look at something like that.
Speaker 5: A few thousand anti lockdown protesters have gathered in the
Speaker 5: Auckland domain for the third time since the Delta outbreak began.
Speaker 5: It's been called Freedom Day and is being led by
Speaker 5: Destiny Church leader Brian Tomicki. The card have also marched
Speaker 5: through a new market and farmers have also joined. They've
Speaker 5: set up some vegetable stands in front of tractors with
Speaker 5: some signs reading no farms, no food. Although organizers have
Speaker 5: encouraged it, little masks are being worn, nor is social
Speaker 5: distancing being observed, and there is a strong police presence.
Speaker 2: What's the likelihood of us seeing another COVID level pandemic
Speaker 2: in our lifetimes?
Speaker 3: Well, there have been several modeling efforts that have looked
Speaker 3: at this level of risk understandably, and the risk is rising.
Speaker 3: And currently the estimate is around twenty percent of seeing
Speaker 3: another COVID magnitude pandemic within the next ten years, so
Speaker 3: it's maybe around two to three percent a year. That's
Speaker 3: the risk. And it's like earthquakes. You can look at
Speaker 3: the overall level of risk, but it doesn't tell you
Speaker 3: exactly when and where it will happen. I mean, if
Speaker 3: it did, that would be fantastic, but modeling can't do that.
Speaker 3: It can just look at an average level of risk,
Speaker 3: and that risk is rising, and it's for a number
Speaker 3: of reasons. Partly just that a massive humanity our contact
Speaker 3: with animal reservoirs that might be the source of the
Speaker 3: next pandemic agent. But actually my biggest worry now is
Speaker 3: for engineered pathogens. And we have a growing list of
Speaker 3: laboratories it's now approaching a thousand across the globe that
Speaker 3: are called a level four lab and they have the
Speaker 3: ability to work on very dangerous pathogens, and of course
Speaker 3: a lot of them as farther know, all of them
Speaker 3: are doing this for the right reasons, to plan better
Speaker 3: defenses for pathogens, better anti virals, and so on. But
Speaker 3: we have the technology to edit genomes now and alter pathogens.
Speaker 3: And the worry is that this can happen if people
Speaker 3: are radicalized or have personality disorders, and there are still
Speaker 3: bad actors who may be doing things that are not
Speaker 3: known these at a state level. So I think that
Speaker 3: is an increasing concern for the future that I think
Speaker 3: raises the risk level several degrees.
Speaker 2: And I mentioned before about bird flu or the H
Speaker 2: five and one virus. Now that's been spreading over the
Speaker 2: last year globally, but notably in the US. So, Michael,
Speaker 2: how can we go about making people pay attention again
Speaker 2: and prepare or even be interested in another pandemic threat.
Speaker 3: One of the best things we can do now is
Speaker 3: to actually get people used to using basic measures with
Speaker 3: the winter peak of respiratory and fictions we get every year,
Speaker 3: particularly influenza, which is still Before COVID nineteen it was
Speaker 3: our number one infectures disease killer and it's still a
Speaker 3: very significant virus. So, for example, we could introduce measures
Speaker 3: such as encouraging people to wear masks on public transport
Speaker 3: when we're in the middle of the flu season every
Speaker 3: year as a protective measure that would get us used
Speaker 3: to the fact that that masks are actually quite comfortable
Speaker 3: once you're used to using them. And these are the
Speaker 3: N ninety five masks that actually filter out small particles.
Speaker 3: It's not the the basic surgical masks. So that's one
Speaker 3: thing we can do. We need to get much better
Speaker 3: at infection control in our healthcare system. There's some evidence
Speaker 3: that about fifteen percent of COVID deaths in Australia, for instance,
Speaker 3: came from transmission and hospitals, and we have many reports
Speaker 3: in New Zealand, but we're not even counting these cases here.
Speaker 3: This is people who are very vulnerable, they earned hospital
Speaker 3: for some reason, and then someone else gives them COVID
Speaker 3: in that environment, and we really should be stopping this.
Speaker 3: So these are practical ways of getting better at infection control.
Speaker 3: The other area, of course, is vaccination. We obviously have
Speaker 3: We're not hearing much about COVID vaccine, but it's still
Speaker 3: very good at protecting us from serious illness. And also
Speaker 3: one of its big benefits is reducing the risk of
Speaker 3: long COVID and that's why I think we should lower
Speaker 3: the age of eligibility for boosters down to eighteen, because
Speaker 3: currently it's at thirty and that's different from other countries
Speaker 3: like Australia, so that all these things we can be
Speaker 3: doing now. I think we just need to have this
Speaker 3: public communication about these respiratory infections and the fact that
Speaker 3: we don't have to put up with them. There are
Speaker 3: things we can do and all of that better understanding
Speaker 3: would mean we're much better able to respond to future
Speaker 3: pandemics that will probably be other respiratory infections. And at
Speaker 3: the moment we're not really seeing this conversation happening. But
Speaker 3: if you look at Asian countries which went through the
Speaker 3: original SARS and then now COVID, they are a mass
Speaker 3: wearing societies and public transport and so on, and of
Speaker 3: course it's one of the things you really see is
Speaker 3: quite striking when you go to those countries, and it
Speaker 3: meant that places like Japan South Korea avoided largely avoided
Speaker 3: lockdowns and they did have border management, but not the
Speaker 3: intensity of New Zealand, so that seemed to have been
Speaker 3: one of the big benefits for those societies. But one
Speaker 3: of the other areas that I think is so important
Speaker 3: is to have a strong voice for public health in
Speaker 3: New Zealand, just to keep reminding us that we can
Speaker 3: make our populations healthier and safer and give people longer
Speaker 3: lives without suffering from some of these avoidable threats. And
Speaker 3: I'm quite concerned at the moment that we're seeing this
Speaker 3: as some effor it's to muzzle the voice of public
Speaker 3: health in New Zealand. I think this is sending a
Speaker 3: chilling effect through the system. So some of the voices
Speaker 3: in New Zealand I can no longer speak out on
Speaker 3: public health concerns, particularly the local medical officers of health,
Speaker 3: and I think it's a missed opportunity because the best
Speaker 3: way to really get people prepared for these future threats
Speaker 3: is to keep them in the public eye, and so
Speaker 3: I think it's a negative step to actually reduce the
Speaker 3: public discussion about public health concerns. So I hope that's
Speaker 3: something we can learn from our experience with the pandemic
Speaker 3: and the period since that we need to have. We
Speaker 3: need to encourage these voices in these conversations.
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us, Michael.
Speaker 3: Great to talk. Thank you.
Speaker 2: That's it for this episode of the Front Page. You
Speaker 2: can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage
Speaker 2: at enzdherld dot co dot MZ. The Front Page is
Speaker 2: produced by Ethan Sills and Richard Martin, who is also
Speaker 2: a sound engineer.
Speaker 1: I'm Chelsea Daniels.
Speaker 2: Subscribe to the front page on iHeartRadio or wherever you
Speaker 2: get your podcasts, and tune in tomorrow for another look
Speaker 2: behind the headlines.