Craig Cooper: Sometimes the truth doesn't need exaggerating

Do your hospo worker a favour and don't wait to be asked to present your vaccination pass. Photo / NZME

The anti-vax brigade were out again this week.

These particular members were those that stand silently on the roadside, with propaganda signs held aloft.

Their numbers seem to have dwindled. Perhaps some have decided to get vaccinated. Or were sick and couldn't make it.

Percentage wise, just on 96 per cent of the eligible vax population in our region have a single dose.

That's still about 6000 people in Hawke's Bay who have opted to not get vaccinated. Or less than 1/10.

Sadly, there will be a percentage of those people who have been influenced by the idiots dropping bogus 'health' pamphlets in people's letterboxes.

They were told where to go in our street, a week or two back, after a neighbour confronted them.

They copied the colours and style of official Covid-19 pamphlets.

They were marked 'satire', which supposedly justifies confusing elderly people or folk who have challenges interpreting this sort of information.

Healthy activism: Nannies against P are uniting once again to address low Covid vaccination rates among Maori. Photo / Supplied

It's not funny. Hawke's Bay's DHB has reached the point where it doesn't justify the existence of this sort of thing by commenting.

Most people can muster respect for anti-vax views, if they aren't forced upon you like a door-knocking evangelist.

But when they are potentially hurtful, confusing or of the 'your body will become magnetised' ilk, tolerance erodes.

One area where we should maintain tolerance and patience is with our hospitality workers.

Show me a cafe or restaurant worker who took up the job so they could also police people entering the cafe, and question their right to be there by asking for a vaccine pass?

It's not fair on them but life under Covid is full of head-scratching anomalies and contradictions, not least of all a liberal government dictating how we live our lives.
Still, we have no right to feel affronted at being asked for a vaccine pass.

No matter how many times you frequent a hospitality venue, flash your pass so it makes your hospo worker's life a little easier.

It's also good practice for when we enter the 'red' traffic light level. It's days, maybe weeks away if we look at the signs currently before us.

A) Omicron is now in the community and is highly contagious
B) Labour is sending not-so-subtle 'get ready' warning signs now.

Under the red level, if you can, you are advised to work from home. For many of us, working from home equals lockdown. Yet again, we need to shift our mindset on this one.

Under 'red'. we live with Covid, we don't run from it.

Working from home in an Omicron outbreak is essentially an extreme form of social distancing so that businesses aren't faced with staff simultaneously getting sick.

In 2021, modelling suggested there could be close to 15,000 cases of Covid in Hawke's Bay.

When we ran the story, a reader complained we were being irresponsible by publishing the story and exaggerating the situation.

Unlike lies, sometimes the truth doesn't need exaggerating.