Is our rising Covid death toll taking the humanity of the living too?

There are more of them than populate the northern South Island town of Tākaka, but we don't speak their names. Two and a half years into a pandemic which has taken 1529 Kiwi lives, have we lost our humanity? Or are we fighting to hold on to it? Cherie Howie reports.

They'd just said 11 more people had died, so Mary Robinson opened Twitter.

'What's happening?', the social network asked the 59-year-old, a flashing cursor silently signalling the Auckland teacher to replace the automated text with words of her own.

Robinson was more concerned with what wasn't happening.

"I can't quite get over how blase we seem to have become over Covid deaths", she wrote on her @MaryWomble account, seven minutes after the Ministry of Health's daily Covid-19 update - including 11 new fatalities - was released.

"If this were car accidents 11ish [dead] per day, there would be a call for changes to speed limits, road improvements and so on. We just seem to be accepting these numbers!

"I don't like it."

Those numbers show 1529 have died with Covid-19 in New Zealand since March 29, 2020, four days after the country went into its strictest level of lockdown to stop the spread of a virus already killing thousands around the world.

While death tolls soared overseas - more than 6.33 million are known to have died with Covid-19 worldwide since the pandemic began - closed borders, managed quarantine, mask mandates, strict lockdowns, and, later, vaccinations, tempered the new virus' first blows in Aotearoa.

Once, we were united against Covid-19 - is that still the case? Photo / Dean Purcell

Then, Omicron.

Most survive their encounter with the less virulent but highly contagious variant (and its subsequent sub-variants) first detected in the community on January 22, when New Zealand's Covid-19 death toll was 52.

But the unvaccinated, elderly and those with health conditions making them more vulnerable to illness have been at higher risk of death.

As of Thursday, when the most recent ministry data on Covid-19 deaths in New Zealand was available, 675 deaths had been officially coded as due to Covid-19, and the virus had been found to have contributed to 362 more.

Three-hundred-and-two deaths have been ruled as not related to the virus and 165 are yet to be classified.

The figures in the ministry's Covid-19 deaths data differ from the total deaths announced in the daily update because, to follow international practice, all deaths that occur within 28 days of a positive Covid-19 test are now reported.

Later investigation then confirms whether the virus was responsible, or contributed, to the death.

Compared to the magnitude of loss overseas, including more than a million dead in the US alone, our toll can seem minuscule.

But one is a mountain of a number for the bereaved.

Humanity lost?

For every Covid-19 death in the US, approximately nine close family members are left to grieve, a National Academy of Sciences study found last year.

No calculation was made of those with other emotional connections, such as friendship, and the study also didn't consider the impact outside the US.

But if Kiwi whānau sizes or dynamics are similar, more than 13,000 of us are mourning a close family member lost to the virus.

It's as many as call Te Awamutu home, and barely quarter of a per cent of how many of us have made New Zealand home.

For most, the daily deaths - if noticed at all - are numbers, not the memory of a warm smile, or touch.

"I can still feel his hand in mine", Christchurch man Bill told Newstalk ZB listeners the day after his friend Paul Brown was killed in one of our worst road crashes.

Brown and six members of his family died when their van collided with a truck near Picton, a few hours after leaving Bill's home early on June 19.

"I've been listening to the news reports", the grieving friend said to Canterbury Mornings host John MacDonald, "and it's such a colourless way of describing the people who died.

"This was a vibrant family."

Seven people died when their van crashed into a truck south of Picton last month. Within a day, their names were known to the public. Photo / George Heard

Almost two weeks on, much has been written about Brown and the three generations of family who died with him.

For Robinson, the Auckland teacher mourning names unknown, it only highlights how invisible the individual tragedies of Covid-19 have become, and a growing complacency toward the virus responsible.

"We've heard a lot about the seven people [killed near Picton] and, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that isn't awful," says Robinson, speaking on a day 18 new Covid-19 deaths are announced.

"But equally there are 18 families today who are mourning the deaths of their family members, and nothing. I haven't even known anybody who's gone to hospital with Covid, but I just feel sad."

She understands the desire to "move on". But pandemics don't follow schedules.

"There was something in the paper the other day about the Black Death, and it went on for seven years and 70 million people died.

"And it just seems to me that we've lost that humanity in the whole thing, whereas I think we had it here in New Zealand in 2020 and 2021, and it just feels like we haven't got it now."

'He was going to live to 100'

We know how Covid-19 kills.

If the infection spreads to the lungs it can cause them to fill with inflammatory fluid, which makes it harder to breathe and stops oxygen reaching the blood, says Dr Mark Thomas, an associate professor of infectious diseases at the University of Auckland.

Medical reasons can mean potentially life-saving intervention, such as mechanical ventilation, isn't always possible.

"They die of lack of oxygen in their blood."

The relevant district health board then tells the Ministry of Health a person has died within 28 days of being reported as a Covid-19 case, or a public health unit records the same in the national notifiable diseases data, and the death is announced in the daily update.

That's the official stuff.

In homes around the country, families are left to begin the sad task of saying goodbye, and laying their loved ones to rest.

For Karin Williams, whose father Dr Joe Williams, a highly-respected South Auckland GP and former Cook Islands Prime Minister who died of Covid-19 on September 4 2020, that process was complicated by measures introduced to stop the spread of the outbreak that had taken Williams' life.

Only 50 distanced and masked mourners were allowed to farewell the 85-year-old, his coffin draped in the turquoise blue tivaevae quilt that would carry the colours of the Pacific into his grave at Auckland's Purewa Cemetery.

Dr Joe Williams spent time in his garden every day, and told family he'd live to a 100, his daughter Karin Williams says. Photo / Courtesy of the Williams family

The restricted turnout didn't reflect her father's impact on the community, Karin Williams says.

His medical and political careers were known by many.

The Aitutaki boy who'd taken the opportunity of a scholarship to Northland College and turned it into a vocation helping thousands across the South Pacific had always been guided by service to others.

"That's what Dad's big gift was really."

But the grandfather-of-six also loved kids and dogs, planted veges across every spare inch of yard and bought a big-screen telly for watching sci-fi and sport.

Before he caught Covid, he was working four days a week and planning to follow his Master of Public Health with a PhD in eczema research, an area he'd previously pioneered successful treatment, Karin Williams says.

"He told us he was going to live to 100 and he had lots of big plans."

'Humans ... don't connect to numbers'

You're reading about Williams' life, and death, because his daughter agreed to speak to the Weekend Herald about her dad.

Over several weeks, the Weekend Herald contacted dozens of families of those who, like Williams, didn't survive infection with Covid-19.

We wanted to publish a story about Covid-19 deaths in New Zealand that wasn't about numbers, but people - their joys, their hopes and, most importantly, their names.

Only Karin Williams agreed to an interview.

The decision of others not to speak publicly is understandable, and their right.

But when most of us are sheltered from Covid-19's cruellest outcome, is it easier to decide it doesn't matter anymore?

It's a disconnect she's seen first-hand, Dr Kathryn Rollo says.

The Far North GP was stunned when a friend expressed surprise that her family's large birthday party had turned into a superspreader event.

"We've been talking about Covid since it came out, and she said to me 'Gosh, it really spreads quickly, doesn't it?' And I thought, 'What the bloody?!'

"She just didn't think it would affect them because they were young and had no
co-morbidities, even though they live in a predominantly Māori community."

It requires little effort to dismiss Covid-19's threat when those dying are only numbers dispatched daily from the machinery of government hundreds of kilometres away.

"If you can't identify with the people it's affecting, you won't [identify with it] at all", Rollo says.

"Humans connect better to stories, they don't connect to numbers."

Co-morbidities are like embers in a burned-down fire, but a Covid-19 "is adding petrol to it", Dr Kathryn Rollo says. Photo / Tania Whyte

Stigma keeps some whānau quiet in their grief, with fears of criticism over vaccination status, the chain of infection "blame game", or judgment of those elderly or with
co-morbidities, Rollo says.

"I see the fallout afterwards, and the real mamae [hurt] around that. A friend who lost her mum, there was a lot of ageism," Rollo says, of the stereotyping of elderly Covid-19 victims as being close to death anyway.

"My friend, she didn't want to say what happened to her mum."

As of Monday, almost 90 per cent of Covid-19 deaths in New Zealand were people aged over 60, with the age group accounting for 11.4 per cent of confirmed infections.

Others didn't understand that people with co-morbidities can "live happily" with them for years, and would likely still be alive if they hadn't crossed paths with Covid-19.

"Having a co-morbidity is like having a fire that's burnt down and is just embers. But Covid is adding petrol to it."

In September 2020, when Covid-19 deaths in the US officially passed 200,000, American magazine The Atlantic spotlighted the increasing "compassion fade" setting in as the enormity of the death toll overwhelmed the public's ability to see victims as anything other than statistics.

In particular, 80 per cent of US deaths in the pandemic's first six months were in over-65s, and the rest were disproportionately Black, The Atlantic's Olga Khazan wrote.

"It's hard for anyone to comprehend the sheer horror of mass death … but there's an additional explanation for this empathy deficit - part of the reason this majority white, majority non-elderly country has been so blase about Covid-19 deaths is that mostly Black people and old people are dying."

The empty chair

In this part of the world, the impact of Covid-19 on Māori and Pacific people is outlined weekly by the Ministry of Health.

The findings show Pacific people carry a heavy load of death from the virus, despite accounting for just 8.1 per cent of the population.

The most recent available figures showed 130 - or 10.2 per cent - of Pacific people had died from a nationwide total of 1267 Covid-19 deaths, with the virus the underlying cause in 66 cases.

The Manatū Hauora Whānau Māori report for June 19 showed a lower impact on Māori, who comprise 16.5 per cent of New Zealand's population.

Of the 1337 deaths within 28 days of a Covid-19 diagnosis, 177 - or 13.2 per cent - were Māori,

The virus was found to be the underlying cause in 82 deaths.

However, Ministry of Health data showed as of May 4 the average age of Māori who have died with Covid-19 was 65, a decade younger than their average life expectancy at birth.

In New Zealanders of European ethnicity, the average age of those who've died with the virus was, as of May 4, 82, almost unchanged from the average life expectancy.

More than 217,000 Māori and 131,250 Pacific people have tested positive for Covid-19 since the pandemic began, from more than 1.32 million known to have been infected nationwide.

She's not sure racism is to blame for attention turning away from the ongoing Covid-19 deaths, at least not overtly, says Rollo, who is Ngāti Kahu, Te Rarawa, Ngāpuhi and Te Aupōuri.

"It's almost like, 'it's not going to happen to me' … because racism to me is where you prevent the potential of someone based on their skin colour.

"There might be covert racism though, in that you don't even think about it."

Patients who tell her they had Covid and it was "nothing" get a gentle rebuke.

"I say to them, 'well, I'm really glad it was nothing, because there are still people out there dying because of it'."

Her message was for all whose compassion was fading in the long slog of pandemic.

"Look around you, everything you've got, and then just imagine who of you aren't here.
If you're able to put someone physically on the chair, and then they're gone, then you can remember these people who are dying are someone's son, daughter, father, mother, sister, brother.

"They're someone who is loved in the whānau, and if you can remember that then maybe you won't get so [compassion] fatigued."

The human response

We've been able to show we care all the way through the pandemic, and there was no reason for that to change, Kyle MacDonald says.

Collectively doing the right thing - masking, keeping gatherings small and staying home when sick - had helped so far, and would continue to.

But it's also okay to act like the humans we are, especially as the number of people infected and dying soared this year, the Mind Matters psychotherapist says.

"The normal, unavoidable human response is to detach, because we can all cope with only so much distress.

"The 'we're losing our humanity, no one cares' [fears], obviously that's distress as well but I think it's really unhelpful to be judging en masse if we are detaching from the horror."

The finish line of the Covid-19 pandemic is unknown and so, often, are the names of those whose lives its taken. Photo / Brett Phibbs

The changemakers who advocate for others, or those who manage distress by staying close to the most tragic outcomes of the pandemic, didn't need to change their coping strategies, but most people were "just struggling to put one foot in front of the other".

"That's not anti our humanity, that's actually how humans cope."

And may have to for some time yet.

The most likely of three possible Covid-19 scenarios over the next five years is that by 2027 the virus will be endemic worldwide and still driving seasonal surges requiring updated vaccines and boosters, a major new scientific analysis released in May showed.

The echoes of the pandemic were likely to ring on years longer because governments hadn't worked together, found the International Science Council, led by New Zealand's former chief scientist, Professor Sir Peter Gluckman.

Like a marathon runner, we have to pace ourselves to deal with a longer race than anyone imagined in early 2020, MacDonald says.

"We're not getting to a finish line anymore and we don't know when we will."

Karin Williams says she understands the fatigue but still challenges those saying we have to live with the virus to remember that some, like her dad, won't.

"There are things we can do to prevent [the spread], so let's just not be so cavalier."

Dr Joe Williams, with his sister Manuae Williams, was living a full, active life when he fell ill with Covid-19, dying of the virus in September 2020. Photo / Courtesy of the Williams family

Almost two years on from the loss of her father, every new Covid-19 death is still "a stab through the heart", she says.

"It just takes you right back, and you feel for all those families that are going through what you went through."

Even in the collective silence, the rituals of death her own family endured go on.

Telling friends and family the sad news, organising a funeral director to collect the body, choosing a burial outfit, and arranging the service to celebrate their loved one's life.

And when mourners arrive for the final goodbye, the order of service placed in their hands won't have a number on the front.

It will have a name.

STAY IN THE KNOW. SIGN UP TO OUR DAILY NEWSLETTERS HERE.