My response to New Zealand’s covid inquiry

Question 1: Looking back – what would you like the Inquiry to know about your experiences of the pandemic?

Oh, where to start?, it’s been a rollercoaster 3 years..
At one point I was an essential worker (hero), then I was a (zero) for not electing to get vaccinated against what I think was an essentially harmless disease (unless you have one foot in the grave already)

My kids school got shut down several times, and the school then had a drastic shortage of teachers, resulting in my youngest getting maybe one days teaching a week. Their school didn’t seem capable of running online classes well.
We eventually pulled our kids out of public school as we lost faith in the public education system.

The kids soccer got ‘cancelled’, partly because the coaches wife works as a nurse and effectively ‘nudged’ out any unvaccinated kids.
A similar thing happened to my oldest daughters netball
Both my kids were in a band that performed at public events (Xmas / Anzac parades, etc). They got the same treatment there, so rather than deal any peer pressure to get vaccinated, the kids just gave up, and haven’t gone back.

At one point my job was under threat via a ‘survey’ about working with unvaccinated. I believe this threat evaporated when they realised I wasn’t going to comply.

In effect it felt like we were ostracised from society for simply deciding that we were perfectly healthy and didn’t need a vaccination.

Overall, there was enormous peer pressure to comply ‘or else’. This came from the media, TV, radio, ‘friends’, etc.
It was like everyone had lost their minds and ‘so called professionals’ seem to be the worst because they did what they were told without question, as did any corporation (Fonterra, Mitre 10, etc)

NZ’s original pandemic plan, the bill of rights, medical rights, even any past experience with dealing with ‘pandemics’ were all cast aside in a wave of hysteria.

It seems that most people, including most institutions got carried away with mass hysteria, except for a sceptical few.

In the end, it’s had a dramatic effect on our trust and faith in all things ‘Government’
That includes any organisation that depends on Government funds, eg Sport NZ was ‘nudging’ kids sports teams and other youth organisations to be all vaccinated.

It’s left us with a reluctance to engage or deal with large organisations in general, because how do we know this won’t happen again? (the Government still has the power to enforce mandates, lockdowns, etc.

Question 2: Moving forward – what lessons should we learn from your experiences so we can be as prepared as possible for a future pandemic?

I think several things enabled the ‘scamdemic’ to occur

• A gullible public who tend to believe the media without question
• Irresponsibility of the media who ‘gaslight’ everything to sell a story
• A government that ran on ‘feelz’ rather than cold hearted facts
• A Government that was less than honest
• The media that simply said what the Government wanted them to say.

In conclusion the Government failed in it’s responsibilities to uphold the laws that it helps to create in the first place, and simply did knee jerk reactions to appease public opinion, rather than react in a professional and confident manner.

It can also be concluded from the reaction and lack of communication with the Wellington anti-mandate protesters, that nationwide politics’ can’t necessarily provide the answers we need.
I think we need to move towards a culture that doesn’t have the key ingredients for mass hysteria, which are…

1. Many socially isolated people living in the absence of community and social ties.
2. A large number of people experiencing a lack of meaning in their lives.
3. Many waves of free-flowing anxiety washing over society.
4. Widespread psychological and social dissatisfaction.