Follow New Zealand model

THE EDITOR: Covid19 rages the world over despite the best efforts to combat it, the delta variant is threatening universal “havoc,” but the New Zealand situation gives us hope that this enemy can be subdued, even conquered.

Reports suggest that New Zealand is back to “normal,” which presumes a maximisation of its vaccine drive and other protocols, together with an absolute stringency about visitors to the country, the only relief on the latter being a distant March 2022 when visitors can enter, but with the same stringency as before.

If we are to survive in this country and elsewhere, we’ve just got to follow the New Zealand model. In this, there will always be talk of the rights and freedom of the individual in any democratic society and some New Zealanders, according to the reports, did “question whether it’s feasible for New Zealand to maintain a zero-tolerance approach to the virus once international travel resumes.”

But the Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, would insist that “while the pandemic continues to rage overseas…the best we can do is to lock in the gains achieved to date while keeping our options open.”

My take is that legally you can talk about rights but morally yours is a right only when such right does not trespass on the rights of others. And as such the right to survive and live cannot be jeopardised by those who refuse to provide a safe environment for others, whatever the rationale for their choice.

And so, following the New Zealand model, we must act on two fronts:

1. Securing our borders and ensuring that all incoming travellers are subject to absolute covid19 scrutiny.

2. Maximisation of our own protocols as citizens, including vaccination.

As to the first, all visitors at airports must be properly vaccinated with measures for children medically justified, and those who are not should be properly quarantined and monitored after their release, with special scrutiny and provision for the infected as with the recent delta variants, with the accompanying contact tracing. The call for rights which compromise the above should likely be dealt with under the emergency regulations.

As regards the coastline, especially the southwestern, the problem of illegal entry for profit is almost endemic, and since this is a certain source for covid19 transmission, it has to be rooted out. This can be done by first tackling the issue of corrupt officers who are allegedly involved and dismantling the many such dens of iniquity in seaside communities such as Moruga, Morne Diablo, Los Iros, Cedros, Icacos and Granville et al, using a force of well-trained dedicated individuals, properly incentivised so as to not compromise this important function, and this backed up by regular patrols onshore and offshore.

As to the second, the maximisation of anti-covid19 efforts among citizens, a less persuasive and persecutorial approach must manifest itself in a language of persuasion, but in this matter of life and death, enforcement of the law is a necessity. About vaccines, even as mechanisms to disseminate information about covid19 must be put in place to mitigate the problem of sceptics arising out of misinformation etc, a measure such as vaccination being a requirement for the work place should be instituted, but in such a way as for workers to see it as obligatory to become vaccinated in the interest of their fellow workers and those whom they serve in the public at large.

Information-based attempts at persuading workers to take the vaccine is key for them to understand that the niceties of their right not to take jab to the detriment of their fellow workers should not be an option. The opportunists may see this as dictatorship or some such, but when the lives of a nation’s citizens are involved, and I mean “lives” literally, it is a sacrifice every citizen must be willing to make.

If the New Zealanders are doing it to save their country, why can’t we?

DR ERROL N BENJAMIN

via e-mail