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