Returnees from India are the latest casualty of outdated government thinking
This is a joint article with my collaborator Simon Thorley of the University of Auckland Medical School. Simon's twitter handle is @simonthornley30 if you want to check him out.
The recent ban to prevent New Zealand citizens returning from India is yet another example of the government’s elimination strategy justifying infringement of basic human rights; in this instance, the right of return, a human right guaranteed under international law. The government’s strategy has justified the internment of the healthy, led to the greatest rate of government spending seen in our lifetimes, and effectively decimated parts of the tourist economy, with tacit acceptance from the majority of New Zealanders.
Border policies have split families across borders, creating severe psychological stress. However, the latest bizarre infringement smacks of racial discrimination, since it is applied only to one country, with little justification. According to Our World in Data, case numbers per million are about the same as India in the UK, twice as high in USA, Germany and Canada and four times as high in France. Yet none of these countries are facing similar restrictions.
The government’s extreme cautiousness around border policy is out of step with many other countries, including Europe. In the continent, quarantine and testing of travellers across borders are not recommended.
Yes, observed numbers of covid cases arriving across the border from India are high. The main question is whether this action is justified given the low risk of fatality from the virus. Let’s remember the big picture here. Initially, the goal was to prevent our hospitals and intensive care units from being overwhelmed. It has now turned into a game of no covid-19 being tolerated. The goal-posts have shifted considerably. Fundamental human rights of NZ citizens are being sacrificed because of positive test results. Not hospitalisations, not symptoms, not deaths, just a positive PCR test.
Remember this test has been regarded as unreliable by Portuguese judges. In their ruling they stated: “In view of current scientific evidence, this test shows itself to be unable to determine beyond reasonable doubt that such positivity corresponds, in fact, to the infection of a person by the SARS-CoV-2 virus”. This case has received little attention in New Zealand, yet the results of these tests are now the basis for denying returnees from India their basic human rights.
It is also important to understand the serious limitations of the mathematical models that are guiding such decision making. These “toy” models are essentially a set of mathematical equations that track the path of infections over time. The results are crucially dependent on the underlying assumptions as well as the starting values.
This is partly why such modelling suggested that New Zealand will have 80,000 deaths even with stringent lockdowns in place. Till now New Zealand has had 26 deaths. In order for New Zealand to have 80,000 deaths our population would have to be magnitudes larger. This is not because we have saved all these lives via locking down. The models were incorrect and have come in for serious criticism in recent times. These models are crude and the results need to be
interpreted with caution; not as incontrovertible truth.
In spite of the claims regarding the unprecedented nature of Covid-19, the disease remains less deadly than the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic and is comparable to the 1957-58 Asian Flu, which had a reproduction rate of 1.65 and killed somewhere between 1 and 4 million people with an infection fatality rate of 0.2% to 0.67%. Needless to mention no one talks much about the Asian Flu and evidence suggests that Kiwis at the time were unperturbed by it.
What is astounding now is that even the Prime Minister seems to understand this, and is trying to dial back the fear she initially created related to covid-19. According to press reports, her view now is: “Our goal has to be to get the management of Covid-19 to a similar place as we do seasonally with the flu. It won't be a disease that we see simply disappear after one round of vaccinations across the population." And her “goal was to put Covid-19 in a place where a vaccine programme can be rolled out every year – much like is the case with the flu.”
Recently, England’s Chief Medical Officer Chris Witty, the architect of Britain’s lockdowns, has reiterated the same message: society will have to learn to live with covid in similar way to flu and that it is unrealistic to think border policy can stop new variants entering.
While the rest of the world is re-engaging; we are hell-bent upon hunkering further into fortress New Zealand. The drop in national output, bankrupt businesses, job losses, growing government debt, psychological trauma and other such malaise are of little consequence. Returnees from India are the latest casualties from a government that refuses to dial back the fear and panic that now simply has no scientific justification. If it is not science, then what is it?