We wear seatbelts regardless of whether we’ve had a crash.
We require bakeries to get food safety processes certified regardless of whether anyone’s ever got food poisoning from their pies. We ensure doctors get medical licences before they’re allowed to perform surgery. We do these things because we know these things carry risk, even if that risk might not become a reality.
We’ve known the Covid-19 Omicron variant has been on the horizon for a while. Now it’s here, it’s time to use the systems and support we’ve been building – and you bet the Greens will be working to ensure they’re available to all who need them.
Life at ‘Red’ means thinking about how we’re all connected and acting to protect ourselves and our communities. Double vaccination rates in Ponsonby and our surrounding Bays are at a world-leading 95%, meaning we’re already utilising some of the best armour available in our fight against the virus. Other critical tools include well-fitted masks, physical distancing and good ventilation.
While the Government’s Covid-19 Protection Framework (or, ‘the traffic light’) provides some important ground rules on the implementation of these things, the Greens have been working since this pandemic first hit our shores to ensure these defences are genuinely available to everyone. For some, that looks like proper financial support, to enable doing the right thing to be the obvious and least stressful thing.
Within Auckland Central, it’s looked like regular contact with you, my constituents, with schools, authorities and business associations to coordinate creative solutions for large numbers of people, like a pop-up, walk-in vaccination or testing centres, official self isolation guidance for those in apartments, or rent relief for small businesses.
Other times it’s looked like individual support, like helping folks get their groceries or freelancers access the income support they deserve.
Some have, rightly, raised concern about mental wellbeing. Unfortunately, the Mental Health Foundation was forced to put out public statements near the end of 2021 pushing back against some of the more over-simplified rhetoric that was beginning to get uncritically reported. The organisation’s point was that while mental health can absolutely be impacted by lockdowns and pandemic restrictions, there’s a gross logical fallacy in arguing that mental health would be perfect if Covid-19 were allowed to tear through our communities.
Contemplating all of this, and being utterly frank, I must admit that I myself and people I know experienced difficult times through 2021. It can be true that it was hard and it can also be true that those restrictions were necessary to get us to a place where many experienced an effectively Covid-free summer.
We know from crucial studies and reports like the Government’s own commissioned He Ara Oranga: Mental Health and Addiction Inquiry that all of us inherit parts of our mental health from our parents and grandparents, as we do with our physical health. The fascinating part is that it’s our environments that can either aggravate or mitigate the good or bad stuff. These things can be whittled down to choices – that may be peer-pressured or not – like drinking or smoking, or more ‘systemic’ things, like the quality of our housing.
It turns out that among the most important things we can do for mental wellbeing is ensure all of us have a sense of self, a sense of connection to others and a sense of purpose. These are built on access to some resources, like enough money to have a stable home, but they’re also developed in our shared values, which help all of us know we are part of something bigger than ourselves.
As we look out for each other in this next battle with the morphing Covid-19 adversary, we know we’re on the same team. If you need any help at all from your local MP, please don’t hesitate to drop my office a line about anything at all. (Chlöe Swarbrick)
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Published 4 February 2022