Vaccine passes are no longer required, but that won't change people's spending habits, writes Sonya Bateson. Photo / Getty Images
Vaccine passes are no longer required, but that won't change people's spending habits, writes Sonya Bateson. Photo / Getty Images
OPINION
It's been 84 years. Or so says Rose in Titanic, her voice quivering dramatically as she recounts the tragic story of her youth.
Really, it's been just over two years since I left my job as a journalist to go on parental leave. It's a strange feeling to pick up the (metaphorical) pen again after a long hiatus in writing.
I say metaphorical because it's 2022 and am obviously sitting at a computer desk rather than literally putting pen to paper as my journalist forebears would once have done.
Those were the days. Now, everything is digital. Weather forecasts, power bills, library book reservations - and vaccine passes.
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Relevant businesses are reportedly over the moon at the end of the requirements for proof of vaccination and who can blame them? There's the obvious hit to the pocket the business owners have taken both through reduced customer numbers and catering for public health measures.
Plus, as a retail worker in a past life, I can only imagine how intimidating it must have been asking people for their passes, not knowing how the customer will react - will they happily oblige, rant about their "freedoms", or spit on someone? Minimum-wage jobs are hard enough already without that added stress.
I'm sure we've all seen the videos of bolshy aspiring victims going out of their way to make customer service people's lives miserable. As if anyone working behind a checkout or stacking a shelf has any say in company policy!
Ditching vaccine passes will no doubt make these people's lives a bit easier - in theory, anyway. In reality – how many of you actually had your passes checked in recent weeks? I know mine wasn't.
Vaccine passes are no longer a requirement, but it won't magically change people's habits, writes Sonya Bateson. Photo / NZME
In the fortnight leading up to scrapping the passes, I was asked once to present mine; at the library.
And I'd visited four different cafes. A super scientific sample, I know. But it does show that it wasn't a one-off fluke.
I think some businesses realised that not many people cared if they didn't ask, so didn't push the issue.
As time has passed and the virus spreads through our formerly unaffected country, the requirements for proof of vaccination felt kind of ... pointless.
They weren't, of course. Slowing the spread is important, even if we know we're all going to come into contact with it one day. But that doesn't change the feeling, nay the knowledge, of inevitability.
In my opinion, much of the apathy was due to both Covid fatigue and New Zealand's high vaccination rates.
I mean, with 94 per cent of the population fully vaccinated, the chance of encountering an unvaccinated person is relatively low regardless of whether or not a vaccine pass is required. And the vaccination, as we all know, is not perfect.
But that is also the exact reason why it's important to keep some stricter measures in place.
We've long past the point of no return in keeping Covid out of our country. That's not what the regulations are about. Rather, it is about managing how many people at a time are fighting the virus.
Our medical staff is a finite resource. We have a set pool of people we can draw from – and that's it. If we use up that pool, we are up a certain creek without a paddle.
What happens when there aren't enough doctors and nurses to treat sick people?
I remember reading a story about a family in the United States who took their child to hospital with suspected appendicitis.
The hospital was so overrun with Covid patients that the little boy couldn't be seen by a doctor, let alone get treatment.
They waited and waited, for hours on end, in a busy waiting room with the child in tremendous pain.
Eventually, his appendix ruptured right there while they were still waiting to be seen. The Covid outbreak stopped a child from accessing emergency care, even though neither he nor his family members had the virus.
If you have a heart attack or a stroke, will you be able to access medical care in a timely fashion? What if your child or grandchild is left sitting in a waiting room with appendicitis? What if there are no surgeons available to perform emergency c-sections?
There is a reason we're still in red. It's to protect our most vulnerable people and to do what we can to limit the burnout of our already stressed and overworked medical staff, both for their good and ours.
Anyone who needs any form of medical care is in danger of not being able to access it in a timely fashion if our medical system collapses.
Maybe it feels like it's been 84 years since we last experienced "normality", whatever that is.
But equating lower alert levels with normality isn't correct either. People's spending behaviour has changed, maybe permanently.
Dropping alert levels before we're ready isn't going to magically keep businesses open - it may even further hinder consumer confidence if customers don't feel safe while shopping.
- Sonya Bateson is a writer, reader, and crafter raising her family in Tauranga. She is a millennial who enjoys eating avocado on toast, drinking lattes and defying stereotypes. As a sceptic, she reserves the right to change her mind when presented with new evidence.
