Emergency Powers: [3] COVID-19 & The Democracy Deficit
Extract from my April 2022 paper COVID-19 Emergency Powers: The New Zealand State, Medical Capture & the Role of Strategic Ignorance.
Chapter 3.
Aotearoa New Zealand’s legacy failure to provide a safe place for critical research and public debate was demonstrably brought to life in the Covid-19 pandemic. From the earliest, most pregnant women, children and young people were not at risk (see also here and here. Yet there were systemic barriers to groups who sought to express any doubt relating to the safety and efficacy of this novel entity – the novel mRNA vaccine. There was no safe space to articulate the differential risk to children and young people from exposure to a technology in New Zealand media.
Modelling and communications avoided important research concerning vaccine efficacy and safety and the differential and very personal risk for those struggling with immunosuppression and persistent inflammation. After age and infirmity, profound multimorbidity – presence of multiple health conditions (see also here and here and associated with inequality here and here and obesity here) and associated polypharmacy (and here) - is the biggest risk factor for hospitalisation and death and this was known in 2020,as well as immunosuppression and vaccine failure. From 2020, scientists recognised that morbidity status of individuals with COVID-19 was an important factor when defining patient triage for hospitalization.
The Pfizer clinical trial reports had also acknowledged that multimorbid and immunosuppressed groups were not accurately reflected in trial participants, and therefore the response to these groups from mRNA vaccination was less understood.
No local research or analysis was undertaken to assess the scientific literature pointing to the role of early, ambulatory multitarget treatment in promoting autonomy and preventing hospitalisation and death. Early ambulatory multitarget treatment was identified as important for groups with less robust immune systems. It was identified as important in addressing the cascading effects, the cytokine storm that could be set off in vulnerable people. Early treatments as a pathway for pregnant women, children and young people and for Māori and Pasifika were never publicly discussed. An important consideration was the potential for early treatment to have an effect as the vaccine waned or failed against newer variants. The vaccine was likely to have less effect as the coronavirus (naturally) evolved, as the variants mutated away from the genetic material in the increasingly out-of-date novel mRNA vaccine, and while the population formed immunity to circulating variants. This sort of data was never modelled, and science was never produced.
Somewhat startlingly, policies were never established to improve access to nutrition, nor confront the obesogenic environment low socio-economic groups are confronted with, despite diet being the major driver of multimorbidity. For a Wellbeing Labour government with a parliamentary majority, to not take action to reduce obesity – a risk for communicable and non-communicable disease, and a condition commonly burdened by multiple associated health conditions, - was a staggering moral failure. Exercise could also have a strong protective effect in preventing severe COVID-19 outcomes. Anecdotal reports told of how immunovulnerable patients with health conditions were unable to access gyms or public swimming pools, because they did not have a vaccine pass.
In New Zealand medical equity, rather than health equity drives health policy, and the voice of nutrition is ‘alarmingly quiet’. In New Zealand, it is more common to have multiple conditions than a single condition. Social factors, including inequality and racism drive multimorbidity risk (see here and here and here and here and here and here). New Zealand’s food environment is obesogenic. New Zealand adults have the third highest rate of obesity and children the second highest prevalence of obesity within OECD and EU countries. For decades (and here), governments have failed to address the drivers of non-communicable disease. Regulation of social, economic and structural drivers of disease have been kept outside government policy agendas for decades (and here and here and here). Food banks have become busier, yet do not fill a nutrition gap, and people experiencing food insecurity and food banks experience even more deficient diets (and here). The presence of multiple health conditions escalate health care costs.
While modelling recognised the risk to Māori and Pasifika, subsequent communications and paid advertising directed all people towards vaccination, continuing through February and March. Vaccinate all strategies ignored the potential for harm to those not at risk to Covid-19 and inferred that the booster wouldbe protective against Omicron (though there was no transparency as to how long this protection would last). Even as benefits from boostering in Omicron grew increasingly doubtful, no information concerning optional early ambulatory treatment to protect individuals from hospitalisation and death were promoted or discussed by the Unite Against Covid Campaign.
This democracy deficit has been social, political, and it’s distinctly cultural. The governance culture directed government modelling, communications and public rhetoric in such a way as to systematically absent itself from acknowledging real risk to healthy pregnant women, children and young people from the novel mRNA genetic vaccine. It absented itself from a space to consider that vaccine failure was highly likely when faced with a rapidly transitioning variant, as was expected. Welfare-oriented democratic socialist nations, such as the Nordic nation-states, may have adopted more nuanced approaches to risk. Sweden moved swiftly to signal COVID-19 injections are not required for young children and Norway’s cautious stance on adolescent vaccination takes account of adverse event risk.
THE UNACCOUNTABLE LEGAL FRAMEWORK
Data analysis and modelling for the pandemic was located in an institution that was directly funded and overseen by first the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment and later, the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. The institutions with oversight were the very institutions dedicated to a vaccine roll out. There was no separate, extensively resourced institution with a mandate to explore and report on the science on COVID-19.
There were not only fundamental problems with how research and science was undertaken, but with how the legal framework was set in place. The COVID-19 Public Health Response Bill, the over-riding legislation granting the government to set in place rules and orders throughout the pandemic was introduced on the 12 th of May and received Royal Assent on the 13 th of May 2020. The Bill, approved overnight, becoming the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act, denied civil society the moment to consider what risk was and how risk should be navigated.
The hastily produced legislation produced after the government had decided on the elimination strategy, prioritised infection rates over public health norms. The legislative purposes established in the COVID-19 Public Health Response Bill, did not demand that public health was protected proportionately across all groups. This removed any government obligation to monitor and report on whether the interventions – lockdowns, mandates, masking and mRNA vaccination, disproportionately harmed a significant part of the population who were not at risk from Sars-Cov-2.
Unlike the 1956 Health Act, here was no requirement under the elimination legislation to protect health. The ongoing and sweeping rules and orders that continue to be rolled out, are largely taken under the powers conferred by this Act.
Legislation passed under emergency powers in the latter half of 2021 and throughout 2022 was never accompanied by policy or data that demonstrated that the government had reviewed the published literature on stratification of risk in COVID-19.
The New Zealand public, denied the opportunity to submit earlier, were granted 10 days to Public Health Response Amendment Bill (No 2) in October 2021. The legislation emphasised the prevention of cases over the prevention of hospitalisation and disease. It was evident then that waning was an issue and that there were safety and efficacy problems with the mRNA vaccine. The supporting documents (in the Bills Digest) did not show in any way that the Ardern Government had any grasp of the state of science published in the peer reviewed literature in October 2021. The Ardern Government was dedicated to a public focus on case numbers, and modelling that came from it’s own contracted institution, to manufacture consent for ongoing vaccination, regardless of the evidence in the scientific literature.
The Bills Digest demonstrates that supporting data was at best, severely deficient when the political, social and economic consequences of increasingly hard-line mandates were taken into account. The Regulatory Impact Statement contained no analysis of local or global infection fatality rate, as of September 2021; nor age stratified risk; nor analysis of hospitalisation by case rate in New Zealand; nor analysis of herd immunity present in the population. It was largely ignorant of the state of science at that point in time. There was no analysis of the increasing evidence that adverse events from mRNA genetic vaccines produced disproportionate harm in individuals who were not at risk from COVID-19.
The Attorney General stated that the Bill was consistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990. However, the Attorney General, David Parker was also the Minister in charge of the parent/original legislation, the COVID-19 Public Health Response Bill. 76 This was a significant conflict of interest that the New Zealand media should have drawn attention to.
The capacity for conflicts of interest to arise across the machinery of government, and for power to be consolidated in relatively few hands, has been recognised in New Zealand for some time.
The courts may have been influenced by the powerful ‘case rate’ narrative. Uncertainty in judicial decisions veered in support of mandates.
Sept 2021 GF v Minister of COVID-19 Response & Ors
Oct 2021 Between four aviation security service employees (applicants) and the Minister for COVID-19 Response, Associate Minister of Health and the Attorney-General.
Nov 2021 Between (applicants) four midwives and the Minister for COVID-19 Response and the Attorney General (respondents).
In judgements, it appeared that the safety of the novel mRNA technology was inferred, possibly viewed as a similar risk to well established childhood vaccines.
One judgement later shifted to accept a greater appreciation of the risk profile. A February 2022 decision found that the termination of police and defence force personnel for not accepting vaccines was ‘not a reasonable limit on their rights demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society in accordance with s5 of the Bill of Rights.’ This sort of decision-making had not appeared possible earlier.
Mandates, which required the withholding of rights to unvaccinated citizens would always be a polarizing issue. The curtailment of fundamental human rights and freedoms through the imposition of mandates required that the rules were accepted by the population.
At time of writing, early April 2022 the vaccine pass has been removed and vaccine mandates dropped for the majority of the population, with the exception of health and care workers, prison staff, and border workers.
Data from the Ministry of Health appears to demonstrate that at the end of March, hospitalisations in vaccinated and boosted groups were exceeding hospitalisations from unvaccinated groups (stratified to risk per 100,000).
MEDIA CAPTURE
Rights limiting legislation was made possible due to the absence of a safe, robust scientific environment to critic the governments tactics, and was possibly aided by the enormous financial gift provided to New Zealand media from advertising which effectively captured New Zealand media to the COVID-19 campaign narrative. Between 1 March 2021 and 28 February 2022, the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet’s (DPMC) expenditure on vaccine campaign advertising was $35,097,479. The media’s major role was reporting on cases; identifying locations of interest; and reiterating messages from the press briefings, including vaccine and vaccination information. Media capture
‘can be defined as a phenomenon in which ‘government or vested interests networked with politics’ or ‘the rich, special interest groups, political parties, governments, or any actors other than consumers’ violate media independence.’
Creeping authoritarianism threatens journalism, and New Zealand’s media landscape was already unstable and financially vulnerable. It’s well established that advertising expenditure produces a chilling effect on investigatory content that deviates from the advertisers’ priorities. In this environment of unprecedented expenditure (the DPMC’s total spend between 2014-2019 was under $7 million) the media were unlikely to divert from thegovernment campaign message.
The facts suggest that consent for lockdowns and mandates were manufactured through the constant repetitive promotion of case locations, and the promotion of ongoing societal ignorance regarding age and health stratified risk.
All citizens over the age of 12 were required to accept an injection with a novel mRNA technology in order to participate in economic and social life. The implications of the legislation were to dispense with the historic principle of informed consent. The principle of ‘first do no harm’ is intimately tied to the principle of informed consent, which recognises patients’ rights to personal autonomy and freedom of choice. In order to protect the individual and ensure the patient-doctor relationship is not abused, medical practitioners have a professional and ethical responsibility to ensure patients can ‘realistically and objectively balance the risks and benefits of a proposed course of care’.
Informed consent allows for the fact that all medication carries some risk, and this ensures that those who may be more at risk from a side effect from a medication than a benefit from that medication, will not be exposed to it.
Situating a single medicine as the single most important individual action similarly violated the longstanding principles of infectious disease enshrined in the Health Act, including proportionality (Part 3a 92A Principles to be taken into account).
The science and modelling trajectory simply didn’t make a space to permit unwelcome data which might draw attention to the fact that the mRNA technology was not required by most members of the population, and that it might instead harm those who were not at risk. This was not a conventionally safe medication, it was a novel technology that had skipped most of its clinical trial requirements, and for which no genotoxicity or carcinogenicity data was required to be produced. The human rights issues that arise from the deficient policies and laws, are directly related to the narrow focus of experts who were picked to participate in the COVID-19 campaign.
The actors that sought to challenge the narrative, interdisciplinary groups such as Plan B 93 , New Zealand Doctors Speaking Out with Science (NZDSOS) and Voices for Freedom and Guy Hatchard have had to rely on their own websites, small independent news sites and sharing on social media. The line dividing what Prime Minister Ardern has referred to as the ‘accredited media’ and the news sites that carry content from these groups - who have struggled to provide a counter-narrative to claims about vaccine safety and efficacy, and the role of natural or herd immunity, and the legitimacy of mandates - may be the degree of funding from the New Zealand state.
THE VACCINE WAS NEVER A SILVER BULLET
The post-October 2021 onwards enforcement measures, were implemented to increase vaccine take-up at the very time the scientific literature was robustly questioning the safety and efficacy of the mRNA vaccine. From mid-2021 it had become evident that the New Zealand Government’s approach was ethically unjustified because it could not reflect age and health status stratified risk. However, these issues were never publicly discussed and attempts to open dialogue about these issues were subjected to heavy censorship on multiple mainstream and social media platforms.
Public understanding of risk is distinctly embedded in historical and cultural contexts. And
‘public ignorance is not simply a passive neglect of science. Rather, it is an active social construction used to deal with potentially dangerous, conflicting, or uncertain knowledge.’
In April 2021 scientists were drawing attention to the limited efficacy of the BNT162b2 against new variants. The literature suggesting that mRNA vaccines would have limited efficacy against Omicron (and here) is, at time of writing, over 2 months old. The heavily mutated Omicron variant contained over 30 mutations on the spike protein, and as the spike protein is the key protein in the mRNA genetic vaccines, it was likely the variant would evade vaccine induced immunity. It is increasingly clear that mRNA vaccination produces a short protective effect for Omicron and its variants (sub-lineages) (and here and here). Omicron appears less harmful, has a milder course in most people, doesn’t appear to bind to the lungs, as was seen with Delta, and does not result in the same level of clotting (see here and here).
Yet still the healthy population have been urged to get boostered.
Coronaviruses mutate readily, and early treatment protocols would enable the health sector to navigate around an out-of-date vaccine. As Omicron replicates in the nasal passage, preventative treatments targeting nasal replication may be more effective. Boosters remain targeted to the 2020 virus.
On the 23 rd of March Prime Minister Ardern announced that requirements for outdoor gathering limits, QR codes would cease. Vaccine mandates would cease for police, education, defence and businesses that currently use vaccine passes. This decision was taken as 20,000 new community cases were recorded.
Therefore, until April 4, 2022 New Zealanders rights remained restricted, and behaviour monitored. All students in secondary and tertiary institutions were required to wear a mask for all learning activities despite Omicron having travelled through all schools and universities at speed from the start of the new term.
Without science to legitimate controversies, questions of an acceptable level of risk are brought into debates, and the claims can remain at large, unless addressed by the courts. Yet if officials wait for the courts to decide all our controversies, Aotearoa New Zealand will eternally lag in health and in regulation. It often takes years to prove a ‘harm’. Jonathan Boston has ‘argued that the inputs into advice need to be open and transparent and allow for points of difference and disagreement.’
This is of course the issue – science is subject to all the vagaries of power, culture and predeterminism – we must make a safe space for controversy in discussion, in science policy – as with public policy.
Civil society cannot leave science to the scientists, particularly when policies deflect science away from uncomfortable knowledge critical for informed policy. Current policies have left research and science precarious and short term, this is the opposite of what is required in the Anthropocene. Risk governance cannot be simple as technocratic government messaging urging the population to blindly accept a novel entity - because risk governance is multifactorial, involving the intersection of institutional (political and financial) power and human, environmental and democratic health.
Human and environmental health will always be uncertain and controversial because risk for situation or person A is endlessly different than risk for situation or person B. In such a place, the public requires values and judgement, rather than dictatorship.
The democratic deficits have been observed in overseas jurisdictions. many of whom the have been relied on.
The safety and efficacy claims of powerful offshore institutions, have increasingly been found to have concerning conflicts of interest. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has stated:
‘The shockingly low quality of virtually all relevant data pertinent to COVID-19, and the quackery, obfuscation, the cherry picking and blatant perversion would have scandalized, offended and humiliated every prior generation of American public health officials. Too often, Dr. Fauci was at the centre of these systemic deceptions. The ‘mistakes’ were always in the same direction – inflating the risks of coronavirus and the safety and efficacy of vaccines in order to stoke public fear of COVID and provoke mass compliance.’ The Real Antony Fauci. P.5
Good science should not have financial conflicts of interest, and as Jeffares et al. (2019) have noted
‘Science should be open to scrutiny and review, and a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for robust science is transparency, which enables the detection of errors: methodological errors, unwarranted assumptions, bias and straightforward mistakes. Science might not be free of bias, but the culture of practice within science, at its best, is one of verification and robust critique of the claims of others. The need for scrutiny by others motivates the practice of peer review, but the need for scrutiny does not end with a scientist’s peers; it requires diverse views to be brought to bear from different standpoints and positions. Viewing a problem through different lenses sheds light on new solutions.’
Going on to add
‘Therefore, in the policy context, in order to ensure that science advice is based on robust science there is a need to ensure scrutiny of this science, via peer review and more, from diverse perspectives.’
Health equity and pandemic resilience beyond 2022 will not be achieved by routine global vaccination which rests on some sort of utilitarian techno-utopian ideology.
There must be a safe space to critique the COVID-19 campaign, as the campaign may have resulted in more deaths than a strategy of focussed protection. From March until October 2021, when the bulk of the mRNA genetic vaccine rollout occurred, all-cause mortality rose in New Zealand. All-cause mortality has been an important signalling device for population level risk, providing an estimate of population-level harm (and here) particularly as, in the clinical trials, deaths in the mRNA vaccinated group were higher than in the placebo group. A cohort of Canadian doctors have drawn attention to the fact that the clinical trials did not have a clinical end point of prevention of illness and death (and here). The under-reporting of medicine-related (iatrogenic) harm or death is an unfortunate legacy of voluntary reporting systems. Of course, all-cause mortality does not solely arise from vaccine-related harm, it is associated with isolation and lockdown policies, and socially vulnerable, and economically precarious groups are most likely to be at risk.
Continue Reading: [4] In a Controversy, who controls the Science? (AKA the modelling) here
References in full are on the original PDF at TalkingRisk.NZ