The missing review & underlying dishonesty of domestic vaccine passes
The confusing purpose of vaccine passes and the planned review of their use in March 2022 that was never done.
I’ve now covered as best I ever can the entire history of domestic vaccine passes in New Zealand, including their harmful effects on children.
What I hadn’t been able to do is bookmark that history with the feedback government agencies provided under urgency on the initial proposal to use domestic vaccine passes - and a planned review that the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (DPMC) would lead a few months after they were implemented.
In June 2021, the Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor Juliet Gerrard briefed then Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on Israel’s pandemic restrictions - including their green pass, as part of their own traffic light system (that it appears New Zealand later copied).
Gerrard didn’t note anything about the Israeli green pass at actually stopping infection, but rather referred to it as ‘incentivising’ vaccination. Gerrard also included a summary in the same briefing of a 4 month observational study in Israel which estimated the effect of vaccination on transmission at, “…around 95% effective at preventing SARS-CoV-2 infection.” Gerrard failed to reference that observational studies can be useful, but their quality and hence reliability can be very poor - the month after that briefing to Ardern, Israel launched a booster campaign - due to the waves of infection that kept happening.
Vaccine passes had been worked on since late 2020, with their use intended for travel.
A 30th of July 2021 memo to then Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins that was also signed by then Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield, on the use of travel vaccine certificates, says:
2 paragraphs down, the same above memo was telling Hipkins:
This sentence has no reference but even with the uncertain language, when talking to a politician about ‘absolute’ risk and then with bold numbers, like less than 0.5% of vaccinated people would catch Covid, I suspect the uncertain language wouldn’t be what was remembered.
A Ministry of Health memo on the 17th of August 2021 to the COVID-19 Immunisation Implementation Advisory Group shows that policy advisors were aware travel certificates could be used for other purposes and noted they, “…will be undertaking policy work to explore the ethical, legal, equity and public health considerations regarding domestic use of vaccination certificates.”
Between Gerrard’s briefing and the above vague reference on domestic vaccine passes, by mid-September they were front of mind for officials who were now clearly planning to implement domestic vaccine passes.
Government agency feedback on the proposal to use domestic vaccine passes
Just before 6pm on the 15th of September 2021, DPMC sought urgent feedback from other government agencies on their draft briefing on domestic vaccine passes. The feedback was due by 5pm the following day.
The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment queried if vaccine passes would be required all the time or only at certain Alert Levels and suggested, “And of course legislation is always the safer option when BORA issues are at play because it is not vulnerable to legal challenge in the way an order is.”
The Ministry of Social Development noted the potential impacts on social cohesion and that mandating passes was a ‘divisive’ way of driving vaccine uptake and noted their use would impact, “… religious and/or cultural settings as they relate to Pacific, Māori, and other ethnic communities. The interaction with social cohesion and social licence can not be underestimated here for these groups as well given fragile trust relationships with government.”
The Ministry of Social Development had been tasked out of a recommendation from the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Christchurch terror attack on strengthening social cohesion. They developed a strategy and administered a $2 million fund for community based projects to support that goal. So on 1 hand - government funds them to strengthen social cohesion and on the other hand - knowingly and widely chips away at social cohesion.
The Ministry of Culture and Heritage said, “…there is a strong feeling of Govt not engaging and then not getting things quite right in the response space, including from our Crown Entities” and offered to set up a group to review it, as if it allowed events and activities it may also mean hospitality could finally open up further. They also noted certainty from Government was important rather than allowing places to set their own rules.
Treasury queried how it would impact economic activity. Treasury also asked (the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade was tasked to summarise other countries’ use of domestic passes), whether use of these passes actually did prompt more vaccination and reduce the risk of transmission - as the draft report they’d been provided said that using passes must be linked to benefiting public health.
The draft report that agencies were providing feedback on was withheld in full in the OIA response that contained this feedback.
Treasury also added, “If we were at a very high rate of vaccination, presumably the public health benefit is much smaller, and then compliance costs may outweigh the benefit. In addition, it is possibly more acceptable from a social licence/equity perspective to have some people not be able to fully access some locations for a short period, but much less acceptable if it is permanent/long‐term.”
Te Arawhiti (Office of Māori-Crown Relations) asked similar questions to Treasury, “The paper notes that similar schemes have been used or are about to be rolled out in other countries, but provides no evidence about how impactful they have been.”
The Ministry of Pacific People didn’t provide a response - due to an error in the email address they didn’t get DPMC’s request and so did not apparently provide feedback.
Te Puni Kōkiri did receive the request but submitted their response in a Word document that wasn’t released within the OIA.
The Ministry of Justice stated, “We would need a clearer idea of what the public health imperative was before we could comment on the justification. For example, the public health imperative for alert levels is based on how widespread COVID-19 is within our community, and this is how we evaluate whether the restrictions are justified. We think similar considerations would be relevant to the use of vaccination certificates."
They also commented on issues with equity, “However, it may be worth noting equity concerns regarding the currently low Māori vaccination rates, which in turn could lead to decreased rates of Māori obtaining a CVC [Covid Vaccination Certificate]. If being able to obtain a CVC was more difficult for Māori, this would inhibit ability to access certain places, which we consider has equity implications under Te Tiriti.” This is exactly what came up repeatedly in later equity reviews.
The Ministry of Education, “We continue to come up against the public perception that schools, for example are high risk environments for COVID, and we had some very good scientific evidence to support schools early in the COVID response in 2020, but are missing that in light of Delta in 2021.”
If it’s what I found when discussing masking in schools, the Ministry of Health advice was that children and young people were at low risk in 2020, and this continued to be true with the Delta variant - yet in August 2021, education officials considered removing that advice from the Ministry of Health from documents when they were preparing to go back to school.
This feedback from agencies appears to have been smoothed over to finalise this 17th of September briefing called initial advice on the domestic use of Covid-19 vaccination certificates on their potential use at high risk events and venues, and lists what other countries are doing (but still with little indication of the outcomes of using said domestic vaccine certificates).
What was the purpose or outcome of the passes?
Reading thorough documents and news media from when they were announced, the use of domestic vaccine passes see-sawed between a coercive incentive towards vaccination, to publicly misleading people that the use of passes was designed to reduce transmission.
While the Pfizer vaccine was approved for use with limited knowledge of its effect on transmission, and this was confirmed by overseas experience, somehow all that was initially quietly acknowledged yet then completely lost in a sea of…what? Confusion? Hubris? Magical thinking?
And I’ll be charitable: if an un-curious politician’s best advice from officials in June and July 2021 was seeing that vaccination looked like it would reduce transmission - the advice itself appears to see-saw between officials telling politicians what they wanted to hear to just flawed advice to the point of dishonesty.
The ‘reduce transmission’ schtick seems to have won out after they were introduced.
Just before domestic vaccine passes were introduced in 2021, Ardern made the claim during a Facebook live that passes would in fact keep the “unvaccinated safe.”
Later, a February 2022 parliamentary question to Hipkins saw him respond that the passes were, “…vital to reducing infection and transmission in the wider community."
Another March 2022 parliamentary question to Hipkins had him answer again, not about incentivising vaccination, but that the passes were justified, “… in order to limit the potentially very serious health impacts of COVID-19 in the community, due to the reduced risk presented by vaccinated people.”
So did it reduce infection and transmission?
The missing review & the end of domestic vaccine passes
Cabinet did not go with the Ministry of Health’s initial recommendation that domestic vaccine passes only be applied to large events of over 1,000 people - instead Cabinet agreed to a much wider application.
Domestic vaccine passes were introduced in early December 2021 for all close contact places from hairdressers, gyms, cafes and restaurants to workplaces and events and venues and beyond. Their use was even extended to staying in Department of Conservation huts on remote hiking trails, to sit a driving test, and by local councils to guard entry into their facilities like museums, libraries, pools and even outdoor gardens to public bathrooms.
The same month they were introduced a parliamentary question to Hipkins had him say that in early 2022 officials would report back to Cabinet, “…in order to monitor the effectiveness and wider impacts of the policy.”
By the end of January 2022, officials were considering adding boosters to keep the passes valid, and both Ardern and Hipkins claimed they were open to the idea, Hipkins even called it ‘likely’.
However the booster briefing to Hipkins made no ultimate recommendation on whether or not to include boosters, and instead deferred to a review DPMC would lead on the usage of domestic vaccine passes that far.
Here is the review being mentioned in the booster briefing:
A review might even have outcomes which were completely missing from their implementation documents - if it was to to reduce transmission, did it? If it was in fact to incentivise vaccination, did it?
After an extension, DPMC finally responded to an OIA request - and they came up empty. Although these documents, and Hipkins, reference a review - no review was done on the use of domestic vaccine passes.
DPMC did do the broader review contained in a Cabinet paper into the traffic light system that was for a ‘post-Omicron peak’. On domestic vaccine passes it said:
So they admit it was to ‘incentivise’ vaccination, yet also say the passes were to replace lockdowns to ‘reduce the spread of the virus’? And ‘served their purpose once the current peak subsides’?
The Cabinet paper was dated the 21st of March 2022. This is also when New Zealand had the highest transmission rate in the world. So how can vaccine passes be claimed to reduce transmission - while in the next paragraph admit that Covid infections are the highest (the ‘peak’) they can possibly be?
Prior to this Cabinet paper, in late February, Ardern was saying, “We will move to be less restrictive, but not because they demand it, [but] because it will be safe for our population to do so.”
The ‘they’ Ardern referred to was everyone involved in the February 2022 Parliament protest against mandates and continuing restrictions.
We all see what really happened.
With no review done on domestic vaccine passes as planned, but ample feedback initially on both their potential and then realised (through the Parliament protest) issues during their use, it seems dishonest and cruel to say words to the effect that they served their purpose and past an excusatory ‘peak’ they were no longer needed. I sincerely wonder how Ardern got away with it.
I guess when you have no exit criteria and no firm idea of outcomes - any policy can be moulded to be what you want at any time. Which also means there’s no accountability.
A note to readers - I have a full history of vaccine passes here.
I also have a full history of masking in New Zealand, a series on misinformation as well as how made up the 90% vaccination target was and more in the archives. If you’re making a submission to oh a Royal Commission of Inquiry or just need to bring receipts - I hope the references and links in the posts will help you. Thanks for reading
I have only just discovered your Substack and want to say how much I appreciate your posts - so good to get all this researched and documented, thank you for all your exhaustive work!
It all makes.for sick reading but section “… religious and/or cultural settings as they relate to Pacific, Māori, and other ethnic communities." is a perfect example of critical race theory. Clearly Pakeha and Asians aren't affected as much.
It's like the feminist meme: Asteroid destroys earth, women most affected.
I have to wonder how much division was also created by obsessing over racial politics rather then actual cohesion.