Many anti-vaxxers choose to frame the question of “to vaccinate or not to vaccinate” in terms of personal rights and freedom. The decision they take on that issue is, they claim, for them and them alone.

We should first register that they need approach the question in that way only because they have first rejected the medical and scientific advice in favour of vaccination. If they had accepted that advice, they would presumably have had no qualms about following it.

But having decided that the virus does not exist, or that the vaccination does not work, or that the vaccination causes unwelcome consequences – or, perhaps, because they simply have an entirely different agenda in mind – they then claim the right, as individuals, to refuse a treatment that most of us (around 90%) believe to be the key to saving lives, ending lockdowns and other restrictions, and restoring normality to businesses and citizens alike.

They claim that the right of dissent is an essential element of what it means to live in a free and democratic society. But should we not pause for a moment to consider the individual rights of the rest of us as well?

For me, too, as someone committed to freedom and democracy, there is an important issue of individual rights embedded in the refusal of some of my fellow-citizens to be vaccinated. I decided, after assessing the evidence, to be vaccinated; and for me and others like me, those who refuse vaccination have turned themselves into agents of oppression – of me and of the rest of society.

They threaten me and my loved ones with the increased risk of potentially fatal illness – certainly one that could require hospitalisation and could, even if survival is achieved, have damaging long-term consequences for those who contract the illness.

They threaten the possibility of continued restrictions on my freedom of movement, and on my ability to run a successful business and to pursue many other of my individual interests. They threaten me with the loss of loved ones and the blighting of their life chances.

Am I, as an individual, not entitled to protect my rights and freedoms, when they are threatened in this way? If I am threatened with harm by the actions or inaction of others, am I not entitled to ask my fellow citizens to join with me in defending ourselves?

I have, of course, limited ability as an individual to protect myself and others similarly placed.
But, like so many others in our society, I had foreseen this problem, not just in relation to the delta virus, but also – as history shows – in relation to other existential threats (such as world wars and depressions) to our way of life.

I had taken the precaution, with many others, of helping to develop a democratic form of government which could – through advancing the general interest – protect me against such threats, even when I could not, acting alone, do so myself. It has usually succeeded in the past (though it sometimes, as in the case today of global warming, struggles to recognise and deal with challenges quickly and effectively enough).

But it remains in place – a democratic government that we have elected for the purpose, standing ready to protect me and all others against the tyranny of others – both individual and collective. If it were unable and unwilling, for any reason, to protect me against the sheer ignorance and cussedness of those who now threaten to hold us hostage to the virus, I would feel betrayed, not only as a member of society but also as an individual. Individual rights and freedoms accrue to all of us in a democracy, but they avail us little if we cannot protect ourselves, especially when we should be able to rely on our elected government to do so. It is one thing for a single individual to claim that their individual right is more important than mine; it is taking it a good deal further to say that it must also prevail over the rights of all of us, both individually and collectively.

I claim my rights and freedom to be protected and delivered to me by the government that I and a majority of others have elected for the purpose. Those who claim that they can act to my detriment simply because their individual interests take precedence over mine do not know what it means to live in a democracy.

Those Kiwis (plus a ragtag of others) who have seen fit to protest over recent days against lockdowns and vaccination requirements have actually done us all a favour, though not quite in the way they intended.

They have revealed themselves to us, and reminded us that they exist. The picture of themselves they have painted for us is not a pretty one.

We need to have it demonstrated that there are those in our midst who are so – literally – anti-social. Some of those who demonstrated are innocents, simply – and simple-mindedly – duped and exploited by others pursuing their own, and more nefarious, political and religious purposes.

They have been duped into believing a variety of far-fetched conspiracy theories – such as Q Anon, or that the virus is not real, or that the vaccine will make you magnetic or change your DNA.

But there are also those who are perhaps a little more able to think for themselves – though their thinking is strongly conditioned by an unusual view of how a modern and functioning society must necessarily operate.

These are the people who seem genuinely to believe that to recognise any obligation to other members of the same society is somehow to diminish themselves, that cooperation for a common purpose necessarily prejudices the individual, and that any restraint or accommodation of the interests of others accepted in the general interest must be resisted in the name of “individual freedom” and “rights”. These are the “libertarians” who exist and have always existed in most societies, and who are opposed to the very concept of government or to any attempt to work together for the common good.

These are the people who opposed seat belts and child restraints in cars – “it’s my (and my child’s) body and I can do what I like with it”. They agree with Margaret Thatcher that “there is no such thing as society’’, that we are all just an agglomeration of atomised individuals, and that there is no role for, or benefit to be gained from, working together and cooperation – no shared interest or purpose that can best be furthered or achieved together rather than alone.

In economic matters, they are content to “let the dice lie where they fall’ – “the market will decide” and there is no role or need for measures designed to provide a safety net for the less fortunate.

They seem to be unfazed by the degree to which their beliefs are at odds with the Kiwi way – and with the Maori view of the world. To them, the very concept of a team, of any size, let alone “a team of five million”, is anathema. The only “team” they recognise, it seems, is one assembled for the purpose of disrupting the rest of us. As the demonstrations showed, they are not only prepared to withhold their cooperation, but to go further and actively to frustrate the efforts that the rest of us are making.

By coming out of the woodwork, they have at least shown us who they are.

How to explain the All Blacks’ disappointing performance in Dublin overnight?

Was it brought about by a defective game plan or a lack of skill or effort?

No – there was a much more obvious factor at work. The players were simply exhausted.

Consider the past three or four months. The All Blacks have spent months away from home – initially in Australia, because of covid – playing Bledisloe Cup and Rugby Championship matches on successive weekends against the southern hemisphere’s top teams.

They then travelled, via a stopover in the USA to play a money-making match against the Eagles, to the northern hemisphere where they have played and are to play matches against the top teams in that neck of the woods; even the win against Italy, comfortable though it was, was energy-sapping, as was the match against Wales, impressive though that performance was.

Throughout this period the All Blacks were away from home, with the emotional strain that that brings and putting up with the wearying toll that travel and constantly moving accommodation can take. Little wonder that by the time they got to Dublin, they were running on empty.

The Irish defeat, in other words, can be laid at the door, not of the players or even the coaches, but of those who sanctioned the killing schedule they have had to endure. And there is still another new country and another top team to take on next week!

Barry Soper in today’s Herald is in “top” form. Who would have thought that the Prime Minister’s trip to Auckland could arouse such hostility? His piece so reeks of snide bile that it is almost impossible to read. Why does the Herald publish such ill-tempered, and bitter and twisted, bilge? To ask the question is to provide the answer.

Bryan Gould
11 November 2021

Richard Prebble is described in the Herald as “a former leader of the Act Party and former member of the Labour Party”.

It might be thought that, with a track record like that, it might be difficult to predict what might come out of his mouth at any particular moment or on any particular subject. He is nevertheless engaged by the Herald as one of those contributors who can be relied on to take pot shots at the government on one topic or another.

In today’s Herald, however, he highlights an issue that deserves attention. He points to the fact that our criminal courts are totally clogged up with cases, with the result that many of those charged – and many of them young people – are spending time in jail, on remand, without ever having been convicted of any crime.

The damage caused by this state of affairs is incalculable. Many of those caught in this bind are young Maori, and many of them are charged with minor drug-related offences which are offences only because we (that is, the general populace) refused to decriminalise the use of cannabis.

The last thing these young offenders need – and, for that matter, the last thing we as a society needs – is that this particular section of society should quite unnecessarily and unjustifiably spend time in jail. There could be no surer recipe for ensuring that they are introduced to a life of crime from which they will never escape.

Like so many of the problems that government has to deal with, the congestion in our courts system no doubt has more complex causes than is immediately apparent. But the issue identified by Richard Prebble on this occasion certainly demands immediate attention.

Bryan Gould
10 November 2021