NZ Herald
  • Home
  • Latest news
  • Video
  • New Zealand
  • Sport
  • World
  • Business
  • Entertainment
  • Podcasts
  • Quizzes
  • Opinion
  • Lifestyle
  • Travel
  • Viva
  • Weather forecasts

Subscriptions

  • Herald Premium
  • Viva Premium
  • The Listener
  • BusinessDesk

Sections

  • Latest news
  • New Zealand
    • All New Zealand
    • Crime
    • Politics
    • Education
    • Open Justice
    • Scam Update
  • Budget 2025
  • On The Up
  • World
    • All World
    • Australia
    • Asia
    • UK
    • United States
    • Middle East
    • Europe
    • Pacific
  • Business
    • All Business
    • MarketsSharesCurrencyCommoditiesStock TakesCrypto
    • Markets with Madison
    • Media Insider
    • Business analysis
    • Personal financeKiwiSaverInterest ratesTaxInvestment
    • EconomyInflationGDPOfficial cash rateEmployment
    • Small business
    • Business reportsMood of the BoardroomProject AucklandSustainable business and financeCapital markets reportAgribusiness reportInfrastructure reportDynamic business
    • Deloitte Top 200 Awards
    • CompaniesAged CareAgribusinessAirlinesBanking and financeConstructionEnergyFreight and logisticsHealthcareManufacturingMedia and MarketingRetailTelecommunicationsTourism
  • Opinion
    • All Opinion
    • Analysis
    • Editorials
    • Business analysis
    • Premium opinion
    • Letters to the editor
  • Sport
    • All Sport
    • OlympicsParalympics
    • RugbySuper RugbyNPCAll BlacksBlack FernsRugby sevensSchool rugby
    • CricketBlack CapsWhite Ferns
    • Racing
    • NetballSilver Ferns
    • LeagueWarriorsNRL
    • FootballWellington PhoenixAuckland FCAll WhitesFootball FernsEnglish Premier League
    • GolfNZ Open
    • MotorsportFormula 1
    • Boxing
    • UFC
    • BasketballNBABreakersTall BlacksTall Ferns
    • Tennis
    • Cycling
    • Athletics
    • SailingAmerica's CupSailGP
    • Rowing
  • Lifestyle
    • All Lifestyle
    • Viva - Food, fashion & beauty
    • Society Insider
    • Royals
    • Sex & relationships
    • Food & drinkRecipesRecipe collectionsRestaurant reviewsRestaurant bookings
    • Health & wellbeing
    • Fashion & beauty
    • Pets & animals
    • The Selection - Shop the trendsShop fashionShop beautyShop entertainmentShop giftsShop home & living
    • Milford's Investing Place
  • Entertainment
    • All Entertainment
    • TV
    • MoviesMovie reviews
    • MusicMusic reviews
    • BooksBook reviews
    • Culture
    • ReviewsBook reviewsMovie reviewsMusic reviewsRestaurant reviews
  • Travel
    • All Travel
    • News
    • New ZealandNorthlandAucklandWellingtonCanterburyOtago / QueenstownNelson-TasmanBest NZ beaches
    • International travelAustraliaPacific IslandsEuropeUKUSAAfricaAsia
    • Rail holidays
    • Cruise holidays
    • Ski holidays
    • Luxury travel
    • Adventure travel
  • Kāhu Māori news
  • Environment
    • All Environment
    • Our Green Future
  • Talanoa Pacific news
  • Property
    • All Property
    • Property Insider
    • Interest rates tracker
    • Residential property listings
    • Commercial property listings
  • Health
  • Technology
    • All Technology
    • AI
    • Social media
  • Rural
    • All Rural
    • Dairy farming
    • Sheep & beef farming
    • Horticulture
    • Animal health
    • Rural business
    • Rural life
    • Rural technology
    • Opinion
    • Audio & podcasts
  • Weather forecasts
    • All Weather forecasts
    • Kaitaia
    • Whangārei
    • Dargaville
    • Auckland
    • Thames
    • Tauranga
    • Hamilton
    • Whakatāne
    • Rotorua
    • Tokoroa
    • Te Kuiti
    • Taumaranui
    • Taupō
    • Gisborne
    • New Plymouth
    • Napier
    • Hastings
    • Dannevirke
    • Whanganui
    • Palmerston North
    • Levin
    • Paraparaumu
    • Masterton
    • Wellington
    • Motueka
    • Nelson
    • Blenheim
    • Westport
    • Reefton
    • Kaikōura
    • Greymouth
    • Hokitika
    • Christchurch
    • Ashburton
    • Timaru
    • Wānaka
    • Oamaru
    • Queenstown
    • Dunedin
    • Gore
    • Invercargill
  • Meet the journalists
  • Promotions & competitions
  • OneRoof property listings
  • Driven car news

Puzzles & Quizzes

  • Puzzles
    • All Puzzles
    • Sudoku
    • Code Cracker
    • Crosswords
    • Cryptic crossword
    • Wordsearch
  • Quizzes
    • All Quizzes
    • Morning quiz
    • Afternoon quiz
    • Sports quiz

Regions

  • Northland
    • All Northland
    • Far North
    • Kaitaia
    • Kerikeri
    • Kaikohe
    • Bay of Islands
    • Whangarei
    • Dargaville
    • Kaipara
    • Mangawhai
  • Auckland
  • Waikato
    • All Waikato
    • Hamilton
    • Coromandel & Hauraki
    • Matamata & Piako
    • Cambridge
    • Te Awamutu
    • Tokoroa & South Waikato
    • Taupō & Tūrangi
  • Bay of Plenty
    • All Bay of Plenty
    • Katikati
    • Tauranga
    • Mount Maunganui
    • Pāpāmoa
    • Te Puke
    • Whakatāne
  • Rotorua
  • Hawke's Bay
    • All Hawke's Bay
    • Napier
    • Hastings
    • Havelock North
    • Central Hawke's Bay
    • Wairoa
  • Taranaki
    • All Taranaki
    • Stratford
    • New Plymouth
    • Hāwera
  • Manawatū - Whanganui
    • All Manawatū - Whanganui
    • Whanganui
    • Palmerston North
    • Manawatū
    • Tararua
    • Horowhenua
  • Wellington
    • All Wellington
    • Kapiti
    • Wairarapa
    • Upper Hutt
    • Lower Hutt
  • Nelson & Tasman
    • All Nelson & Tasman
    • Motueka
    • Nelson
    • Tasman
  • Marlborough
  • West Coast
  • Canterbury
    • All Canterbury
    • Kaikōura
    • Christchurch
    • Ashburton
    • Timaru
  • Otago
    • All Otago
    • Oamaru
    • Dunedin
    • Balclutha
    • Alexandra
    • Queenstown
    • Wanaka
  • Southland
    • All Southland
    • Invercargill
    • Gore
    • Stewart Island
  • Gisborne

Media

  • Video
    • All Video
    • NZ news video
    • Business news video
    • Politics news video
    • Sport video
    • World news video
    • Lifestyle video
    • Entertainment video
    • Travel video
    • Markets with Madison
    • Kea Kids news
  • Podcasts
    • All Podcasts
    • The Front Page
    • On the Tiles
    • Ask me Anything
    • The Little Things
    • Cooking the Books
  • Cartoons
  • Photo galleries
  • Today's Paper - E-editions
  • Photo sales
  • Classifieds

NZME Network

  • Advertise with NZME
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • BusinessDesk
  • Newstalk ZB
  • What the Actual
  • Sunlive
  • ZM
  • The Hits
  • Coast
  • Radio Hauraki
  • The Alternative Commentary Collective
  • Gold
  • Flava
  • iHeart Radio
  • Hokonui
  • Radio Wanaka
  • iHeartCountry New Zealand
  • Restaurant Hub
  • NZME Events

SubscribeSign In
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Home / New Zealand

Claire Trevett: The next Covid-19 monster the PM will have to wrangle is fear itself

Claire Trevett
By Claire Trevett
Political Editor, NZ Herald·NZ Herald·
24 Sep, 2021 05:00 PM5 mins to read

Subscribe to listen

Access to Herald Premium articles require a Premium subscription. Subscribe now to listen.
Already a subscriber?  Sign in here

Listening to articles is free for open-access content—explore other articles or learn more about text-to-speech.
‌
Save

    Share this article

    Reminder, this is a Premium article and requires a subscription to read.

The 90% Project is an NZ Herald initiative that aims to reach all New Zealanders to get the word out about vaccination so we can save lives and restore freedoms. Video / NZ Herald
Claire Trevett
Opinion by Claire Trevett
Claire Trevett is the New Zealand Herald’s Political Editor, based at Parliament in Wellington.
Learn more

OPINION:

PM Jacinda Ardern's biggest future Covid-19 challenge will not be stamping out this Delta outbreak or getting the vaccination rate high enough to start to reopen the borders.

It will be stamping out the fear that New Zealanders now have of Covid-19 so that she can reopen the borders.

The trickiest decision Ardern will have to make over this pandemic will be when to do that – a move that will end the elimination goal and leave us relying on vaccinations and needing a nimble health response rather than lockdowns.

Ardern's biggest challenge in delivering on it is to make people not scared of Covid-19 anymore.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Once fear is there, it is very hard to get rid of.

We have been told a high vaccination rate will dispense with the need for lockdowns in future: that it is a choice of vaccinations or lockdowns.

That has been the main message to try to push along those vaccination rates in the last six weeks.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

However, Ardern has so far chosen not to put much emphasis on the other potential outcome of high vaccination rates: the borders reopening.

She has also refused to set a vaccination level at which the borders might reopen, although it is becoming increasingly obvious that 90 per cent is not so much a target as a bare minimum.

Discover more

New Zealand

The Herald launches The 90% Project, major campaign to get Kiwis vaccinated

16 Sep 11:50 PM
Opinion

The 90% Project: Phil Goff - Why Aucklanders should get vaccinated today

22 Sep 05:00 PM
Opinion

Bruce Cotterill: Pushing for 90% vaccination rate and our 'freedom'

24 Sep 11:00 PM
New Zealand|politics

Exclusive: No jab, no entry - PM outlines likely benefits for the vaccinated

24 Sep 05:00 PM
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Just before the Delta lockdown, Ardern released a cautious roadmap for that.

It was responded to with trepidation by some. Polls continued to show strong support for elimination, and opening the borders would be the end to elimination.

The Australian bubble was also greeted with wariness even at a time both countries were Covid-free.

That will be an obstacle for the Government when the time comes to reopen the borders.

There will inevitably be significant, but not universal, resistance to it – much of it because of that long-entrenched fear of Covid.

Ardern has made much of New Zealand's success so far hinging on taking the best scientific and health advice and turning it into action.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

She has used that advice to reassure people, and, yes, sometimes it has also had the effect of scaring people.

To reopen borders, she will need to convert the fear that has been invaluable in keeping Covid-19 out into an acceptance that the trade-offs for having Covid-19 here once we are vaccinated are worth it.

That will be no easy task and this week will not have helped.

The fear of Covid-19 is a fear of death. No politician in this country has been brave enough to say what death rate for Covid-19 would be acceptable to them.

However, let us assume the best-case scenario would be similar mortality rates as the flu: about 500 a year.

The headline figure from Shaun Hendy's modelling forecasting 7000 deaths a year at an 80 per cent vaccination rate has been accused of being alarmist by some.

Modelling is an attempt to predict some certainty out of uncertainty – and the 7000 figure was if the vaccine being used was only moderately effective against a variant.

The highlighting of that figure will do little to assist Ardern in dampening the fear of Covid-19, even among the vaccinated.

That was already going to be a very tough job because until now Ardern had relied on fear of Covid-19 to secure compliance with the restrictions she was imposing on people.

Illustration / Rod Emmerson
Illustration / Rod Emmerson

Hendy's modelling was released partly to prompt people to go and get vaccinated. Ardern has also pointed to the need to get vaccinated to help protect children, for whom vaccines are yet to be approved.

She has also highlighted the higher number of children infected in the Delta outbreak and the more severe health impacts compared to the first variants of Covid-19.

I am not arguing it was an unjustified fear or that Ardern was fearmongering: it was a valid response to the threat posed by Covid-19. However, it comes at a cost in the longer term.

While the latest Delta outbreak has increased fear, it could also end up being a critical factor in changing public attitudes to reopening New Zealand.

Seven weeks of lockdown in Auckland have given people a taste of the reality most of the world had already been bitten by, but which New Zealand was spared from.

It was a bitter medicine, but it was a medicine.

Last summer, unvaccinated and unmasked Aucklanders were crowding at the Viaduct watching the America's Cup, while many Northern Hemisphere cities were masked and closed down.

This month, the streets of Auckland were deserted while the vaccinated and unmasked residents of New York were squashing in to watch the US Open Tennis Championships.

They'd been through the worst.

It showed not an unsustainable, safe Covid-19-free life but a vaccinated life with Covid-19.

Many people – experts, politicians, business people, those stranded overseas, migrants, and armchair critics such as myself – have given their reckons on the right time to reopen.

The only one whose reckons actually count for much is the Prime Minister's.

Unlike all those commentators, Ardern is the one who has to make it happen and persuade the public that it will be okay.

Critically, it is also she who will then be held accountable for it.

If she waits too long, she risks losing the goodwill of people who got vaccinated on the basis of promises of a golden future. The pressure will build and build.

If she goes too early and the modellers' worst scenarios come true, it is she who will be blamed.

Save

    Share this article

    Reminder, this is a Premium article and requires a subscription to read.

Latest from New Zealand

New Zealand|politicsUpdated

Watch: PM tightlipped on borrowing blueprint to fund expenditure days out from Budget

18 May 08:21 PM
New ZealandUpdated

Joe Biden diagnosed with ‘aggressive’ prostate cancer

18 May 08:19 PM
New Zealand

Proposed urgent care services and Te Kura enrolments increase | NZ Herald News Update

The Hire A Hubby hero turning handyman stereotypes on their head

sponsored
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Latest from New Zealand

Watch: PM tightlipped on borrowing blueprint to fund expenditure days out from Budget

Watch: PM tightlipped on borrowing blueprint to fund expenditure days out from Budget

18 May 08:21 PM

Christopher Luxon unveiled $164m for new 24/7 urgent care clinics.

Joe Biden diagnosed with ‘aggressive’ prostate cancer

Joe Biden diagnosed with ‘aggressive’ prostate cancer

18 May 08:19 PM
Proposed urgent care services and Te Kura enrolments increase | NZ Herald News Update

Proposed urgent care services and Te Kura enrolments increase | NZ Herald News Update

One person injured after Timaru fire

One person injured after Timaru fire

18 May 07:24 PM
Gold demand soars amid global turmoil
sponsored

Gold demand soars amid global turmoil

NZ Herald
  • About NZ Herald
  • Meet the journalists
  • Newsletters
  • Classifieds
  • Help & support
  • Contact us
  • House rules
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of use
  • Competition terms & conditions
  • Our use of AI
Subscriber Services
  • NZ Herald e-editions
  • Daily puzzles & quizzes
  • Manage your digital subscription
  • Manage your print subscription
  • Subscribe to the NZ Herald newspaper
  • Subscribe to Herald Premium
  • Gift a subscription
  • Subscriber FAQs
  • Subscription terms & conditions
  • Promotions and subscriber benefits
NZME Network
  • The New Zealand Herald
  • The Northland Age
  • The Northern Advocate
  • Waikato Herald
  • Bay of Plenty Times
  • Rotorua Daily Post
  • Hawke's Bay Today
  • Whanganui Chronicle
  • Viva
  • NZ Listener
  • What the Actual
  • Newstalk ZB
  • BusinessDesk
  • OneRoof
  • Driven CarGuide
  • iHeart Radio
  • Restaurant Hub
NZME
  • About NZME
  • NZME careers
  • Advertise with NZME
  • Digital self-service advertising
  • Book your classified ad
  • Photo sales
  • NZME Events
  • © Copyright 2025 NZME Publishing Limited
TOP