I think about those sacrifices all the time - and the fact that my child likely wouldn’t have survived Covid in its original form and without a vaccine. I hated anti vaxxers and Covid conspiracy theorists then but I have softened over time - I recognise how targeted the conspiracy theories were toward those who were afraid and gullible and in need of a certainty that couldn’t be given at the time. I won’t forgive the death threats against people trying to save lives or the intentional spreading of Covid but I can see more clearly now how conspiracy theorists were victims too. I read a book called Quiet Damage about how Qanon destroyed so many lives - it was a humbling and devastating read.
Same - Jess Berentson-Shaw's work helped me a lot. And I became a lot more aware of the malicious role of social media platforms and the alt right. I came to understand that if life had gone in another direction for me, I could easily have thought differently about these issues too.
I think Jess tried to help me a lot but I just wasn't ready to hear it back then. I really struggled with how personal it felt - like these people were genuinely saying my child's life didn't matter. I realise now that they had been brainwashed by a really sophisticated campaign designed to make them devalue human life.
Beautifully expressed, thank you. As someone who still masks and watches the waste water levels, it has been important for me to say publically that I think there was overreach and delay in setting changes, at the same time as saying that I wouldn't have wanted to have been anywhere else in the world. Things are seldom one thing, and the wisdom sits in the complexity...
You've captured it perfectly. I want us to have exactly that kind of kōrero - understanding what could have been better, while also acknowledging we got things more right than wrong. Nothing that complex and unprecedented goes without a hitch, and as always everyone's an expert after the fact. Making decisions in the eye of the storm is really hard, which frankly is why most of us don't put ourselves forward to do it.
Yours is a balanced and generous response Anna. We were so grateful then to those who had to make the hard calls without the information we have now. And proud that it was a world-beating lifesaving response. At every juncture choices had to be made of course, and reflection is essential, but for me the excellence of our country’s response stands. Total respect and gratitude to you and all who worked to the absolute limits to keep us safe.
I really appreciate that. I understand why we all want to move on (it was terrible) but some of my colleagues went through absolute hell, and I don't want them to be forgotten. Like you say, for all we got wrong, we got an awful lot right.
They were shitty paternalistic decisions made by shitty people in power who had not enough evidence to make such harmful (evidently obvious at the time and proven by history) decisions. The harm to our young people especially will be felt for generations to come and is unforgivable.
There should never have been even a considerable of vaccine mandates, we knew at the time the vaccine was poor for the strains that were prevalent at the time but still went ahead for political and authoritivative reasons. This has irreparably harmed childhood vaccine uptake potentially for generations to come, and may have an impact on a par with the MMR Wakefield scam. Children have and will continue die because of this. We should never have made our kids pay the price, they are our future and should have been shielded at all costs. Yes, even at the cost of increased death in our elderly. I make no apologies for prioritising our kids.
We knew early on this virus was not nearly as bad as feared, especially for young people. Closing of schools and outdoor places harmed long-term physical and mental health for thousands with justification.
It was insane.
We should have never closed our borders, especially to citizens, this was an unjustifiable violation of our obligations to fellow Kiwis. We should have never closed our hospitals, families should have been allowed to say goodbye to their loved ones, who instead died isolated and alone.
I couldn't be more angry at the poor response by people who should have known and could have done much better.
Sorry for the rant, but we can't let the opportunity for learning from this pass. Quite simply, the government did not make the best decisions with the evidence they had at the time and should not be forgiven.
I don’t doubt either your credentials or that poor MMR vaccine uptake is a disaster. But I'm wary that your citation is a YouTube clip.
There wasn't much evidence to draw on at the beginning of the pandemic - acting without incomplete information was unavoidable.
Effectiveness of vaccines varies, but I can't find any credible organisation from governments to the WHO to medical practitioners' professional bodies who don’t support vaccination.
I can certainly accept that vaccine mandates have increased people’s unwillingness to vaccinate their kids. I don’t follow the logic that letting old people die would help childhood vaccination. I've had a quick look, and there's a large public health literature with evidence-based ways to improve vaccination. I haven't delved deeply, but I can't see a basis in evidence for a strategy of letting one demographic group die to preserve another.
I'm going to say I'm a bit uncomfortable with what you've said from an ethical perspective. Putting out a deterministic message that a generation of children has been lost doesn’t do anything to encourage immunisation and doesn’t seem to take into account evidence on overcoming vaccine hesitancy. Whatever you might think of the people who ran the pandemic response, many were medical professionals and therefore your colleagues. Calling them 'shitty' undermines the collegiality and trust that underpins conventions like peer review and professional standards. People like me rely on people like you to uphold those trust-based conventions to keep us safe.
Shitty is as shitty does - I'm mainly referring to political decisions made later in the pandemic without good rationale when we knew better - perhaps I could have been less judgmental with my wording, but I make no excuses for being angry about the damage done to our kids. We should have protected them at all costs, prioritising their future. We have to balance risks with every public health decision, I'm arguing as a society we have it backwards, our kids shouldn't be sacrificing their futures for our adults.
There's ample evidence of the psychological impacts on our kids for the lockdowns, with more coming. The vaccine hesitancy has been self evident. It was clear at the time of vaccine mandates that we didn't have a good vaccine for the strains going around. I'm arguing that making whole population vaccine mandates has done harm to childhood vaccine mandates, we are seeing kids die from vaccine preventable diseases now directly as a result of these decisions.
I'm suprised you aware of the YouTuber Medlife Crisis, it's not a reference but a more nuanced argument than my own 🤪 He's as good a reference as a substack article at least. He's a brittish Cardiologist and award winning science communicator with a very nuanced approach. Please do consider having a quick watch of the video, I think you'll find he's closer to your position, and might learn something.
I was happy with just frontline health worker mandates at the time, but we needed to be more responsive. When it became clear it wasn't nearly as bad, and the vaccines didn't work for the new strains, we should have been quicker to repeal mandates and lockdowns.
What is crazy to me is we closed down our door spaces at the same time as schools. There was practically zero chance of contracting it outdoors, and in fact going outside probably reduced the chance of infection 🫣 so instead we created socially isolated zombies who had nothing better than to doom scroll on tiktok.
This is a good literature review, but it's not about whether lockdowns should have happened, or their value as a public health measure - it's about mental health impacts, how to deal with them, and the need for longitudinal studies. No one whatsoever is arguing lockdowns had no ill effects, for children or anyone else. It's obvious they did. But making that point without considering the counterfactual doesn't really lead anywhere.
One of the countries picked up in this review is India. I remember watching on the news how there were no materials left to create funeral pyres, so bodies were simply piled up. That had consequences for children's wellbeing too. Any public health measure happens in a broader context that has to be taken into account.
I would ask you to reflect whether calling kids zombies is helpful or consistent with a strengths-based approach. It's quite possible to talk in neutral language about what kids are experiencing without making out that they are personally flawed or deficient. They're human beings getting by under the circumstances like the rest of us.
I think about those sacrifices all the time - and the fact that my child likely wouldn’t have survived Covid in its original form and without a vaccine. I hated anti vaxxers and Covid conspiracy theorists then but I have softened over time - I recognise how targeted the conspiracy theories were toward those who were afraid and gullible and in need of a certainty that couldn’t be given at the time. I won’t forgive the death threats against people trying to save lives or the intentional spreading of Covid but I can see more clearly now how conspiracy theorists were victims too. I read a book called Quiet Damage about how Qanon destroyed so many lives - it was a humbling and devastating read.
Same - Jess Berentson-Shaw's work helped me a lot. And I became a lot more aware of the malicious role of social media platforms and the alt right. I came to understand that if life had gone in another direction for me, I could easily have thought differently about these issues too.
I think Jess tried to help me a lot but I just wasn't ready to hear it back then. I really struggled with how personal it felt - like these people were genuinely saying my child's life didn't matter. I realise now that they had been brainwashed by a really sophisticated campaign designed to make them devalue human life.
Beautifully expressed, thank you. As someone who still masks and watches the waste water levels, it has been important for me to say publically that I think there was overreach and delay in setting changes, at the same time as saying that I wouldn't have wanted to have been anywhere else in the world. Things are seldom one thing, and the wisdom sits in the complexity...
You've captured it perfectly. I want us to have exactly that kind of kōrero - understanding what could have been better, while also acknowledging we got things more right than wrong. Nothing that complex and unprecedented goes without a hitch, and as always everyone's an expert after the fact. Making decisions in the eye of the storm is really hard, which frankly is why most of us don't put ourselves forward to do it.
Yours is a balanced and generous response Anna. We were so grateful then to those who had to make the hard calls without the information we have now. And proud that it was a world-beating lifesaving response. At every juncture choices had to be made of course, and reflection is essential, but for me the excellence of our country’s response stands. Total respect and gratitude to you and all who worked to the absolute limits to keep us safe.
I really appreciate that. I understand why we all want to move on (it was terrible) but some of my colleagues went through absolute hell, and I don't want them to be forgotten. Like you say, for all we got wrong, we got an awful lot right.
Couldn't disagree more. (Paediatrician here)
They were shitty paternalistic decisions made by shitty people in power who had not enough evidence to make such harmful (evidently obvious at the time and proven by history) decisions. The harm to our young people especially will be felt for generations to come and is unforgivable.
There should never have been even a considerable of vaccine mandates, we knew at the time the vaccine was poor for the strains that were prevalent at the time but still went ahead for political and authoritivative reasons. This has irreparably harmed childhood vaccine uptake potentially for generations to come, and may have an impact on a par with the MMR Wakefield scam. Children have and will continue die because of this. We should never have made our kids pay the price, they are our future and should have been shielded at all costs. Yes, even at the cost of increased death in our elderly. I make no apologies for prioritising our kids.
We knew early on this virus was not nearly as bad as feared, especially for young people. Closing of schools and outdoor places harmed long-term physical and mental health for thousands with justification.
It was insane.
We should have never closed our borders, especially to citizens, this was an unjustifiable violation of our obligations to fellow Kiwis. We should have never closed our hospitals, families should have been allowed to say goodbye to their loved ones, who instead died isolated and alone.
I couldn't be more angry at the poor response by people who should have known and could have done much better.
Sorry for the rant, but we can't let the opportunity for learning from this pass. Quite simply, the government did not make the best decisions with the evidence they had at the time and should not be forgiven.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1diXKxuoDOQ check out my bro Medlife Crisis who puts it far more eloquently than me (from around 11mins in).
Hi Matt
I don’t doubt either your credentials or that poor MMR vaccine uptake is a disaster. But I'm wary that your citation is a YouTube clip.
There wasn't much evidence to draw on at the beginning of the pandemic - acting without incomplete information was unavoidable.
Effectiveness of vaccines varies, but I can't find any credible organisation from governments to the WHO to medical practitioners' professional bodies who don’t support vaccination.
I can certainly accept that vaccine mandates have increased people’s unwillingness to vaccinate their kids. I don’t follow the logic that letting old people die would help childhood vaccination. I've had a quick look, and there's a large public health literature with evidence-based ways to improve vaccination. I haven't delved deeply, but I can't see a basis in evidence for a strategy of letting one demographic group die to preserve another.
I'm going to say I'm a bit uncomfortable with what you've said from an ethical perspective. Putting out a deterministic message that a generation of children has been lost doesn’t do anything to encourage immunisation and doesn’t seem to take into account evidence on overcoming vaccine hesitancy. Whatever you might think of the people who ran the pandemic response, many were medical professionals and therefore your colleagues. Calling them 'shitty' undermines the collegiality and trust that underpins conventions like peer review and professional standards. People like me rely on people like you to uphold those trust-based conventions to keep us safe.
Anna
Shitty is as shitty does - I'm mainly referring to political decisions made later in the pandemic without good rationale when we knew better - perhaps I could have been less judgmental with my wording, but I make no excuses for being angry about the damage done to our kids. We should have protected them at all costs, prioritising their future. We have to balance risks with every public health decision, I'm arguing as a society we have it backwards, our kids shouldn't be sacrificing their futures for our adults.
There's ample evidence of the psychological impacts on our kids for the lockdowns, with more coming. The vaccine hesitancy has been self evident. It was clear at the time of vaccine mandates that we didn't have a good vaccine for the strains going around. I'm arguing that making whole population vaccine mandates has done harm to childhood vaccine mandates, we are seeing kids die from vaccine preventable diseases now directly as a result of these decisions.
I'm suprised you aware of the YouTuber Medlife Crisis, it's not a reference but a more nuanced argument than my own 🤪 He's as good a reference as a substack article at least. He's a brittish Cardiologist and award winning science communicator with a very nuanced approach. Please do consider having a quick watch of the video, I think you'll find he's closer to your position, and might learn something.
*childhood vaccine uptake not mandates.
We knew as early as 2020 that we were harming children with lockdowns, yet persisted with this increasingly ineffective approach long into 2021/2022:
'Impact of COVID-19 and lockdown on mental health of children and adolescents: A narrative review with recommendations'
PMCID: PMC7444649 PMID: 32882598
I was happy with just frontline health worker mandates at the time, but we needed to be more responsive. When it became clear it wasn't nearly as bad, and the vaccines didn't work for the new strains, we should have been quicker to repeal mandates and lockdowns.
What is crazy to me is we closed down our door spaces at the same time as schools. There was practically zero chance of contracting it outdoors, and in fact going outside probably reduced the chance of infection 🫣 so instead we created socially isolated zombies who had nothing better than to doom scroll on tiktok.
This is a good literature review, but it's not about whether lockdowns should have happened, or their value as a public health measure - it's about mental health impacts, how to deal with them, and the need for longitudinal studies. No one whatsoever is arguing lockdowns had no ill effects, for children or anyone else. It's obvious they did. But making that point without considering the counterfactual doesn't really lead anywhere.
One of the countries picked up in this review is India. I remember watching on the news how there were no materials left to create funeral pyres, so bodies were simply piled up. That had consequences for children's wellbeing too. Any public health measure happens in a broader context that has to be taken into account.
I would ask you to reflect whether calling kids zombies is helpful or consistent with a strengths-based approach. It's quite possible to talk in neutral language about what kids are experiencing without making out that they are personally flawed or deficient. They're human beings getting by under the circumstances like the rest of us.