Among the personal traits I’m most proud of is that I believe I’m impervious to advertising.
Actually that’s not completely true. I still buy too much crap through Facebook but despite being bombarded daily by Harvey Norman wraparounds in the Otago Daily Times, I haven’t bought anything there in at least a decade.
However amidst the clutter of Newstalk ZB’s incessant commercial schedule this morning a couple of spots did find their way into my mindfulness.
One was for the shingles vaccine. It told us how people of my age were vulnerable and that one should be jabbed. But what caught my attention was the quickly spoken final line tag: “Medicines have risks and benefits.”
As it turns out I had a shingles jab when I turned 65. It was the day I played pin cushion at the GP as he gave me a flu shot, a tetanus injection and the shingles vaccine in the space of 2 minutes.
At the time (it was 2019 and pre-covid) vaccine hesitancy wasn’t an issue in society. Our trust in the medical profession was implicit and we took those needles because we’d been told the potions they injected were good for us.
For what it’s worth, I still got the flu that winter but I’ve never been affected by tetanus or shingles, so you might say those medicines work. Or maybe because of a sensible lifestyle, I’ve just escaped catching either of those diseases.
Anyway, about half an hour after the Newstalk ZB ad for the shingles vaccine and its “medicines have risks and benefits” tagline came another commercial - for the Covid vaccine.
Seriously, I thought. Who’s still getting covid shots? Does the Ministry of Health still have a backlog of oversupply they’re trying to get rid of ? The vaccines are free of course, and you might want to get one every six months!
This is still going on in 2026? Hasn’t Covid - which I’m seriously thinking was not much more than an over-hyped cold anyway at the height of the hysteria in 2021-22 - been pretty much absent from our lives for the best part of five years?
But there we were. Newstalk ZB is still taking Ministry of Health advertising money for the Covid injection. Well I presume it’s government money .. or maybe Pfizer are paying direct?
But what stood out for me about the Covid vaccine commercial was that upwards of a third of the 30 second duration were the gabbled taglines at the end. What I caught was “ask if it’s right for you” and “medicines have risks and benefits.”
So there’s now an admission that the Covid vaccine may not be appropriate for everyone, and that sometimes there may be adverse effects if you have it injected.
Yes, it is five years since the mandates and the compulsions of the Labour government ordered Covid era. But I doubt we know any more now than what we did back then in terms of the effectiveness and safety of that particular medicine.
I never had a Covid vaccine because I’d read of some early adverse effects among recipients in Israel. Then I saw the 58 conditions attached to its use by Medsafe which raised many a red flag for me.
And I just didn’t trust Jacinda Ardern and Chris Hipkins telling me it was safe and effective when it quickly became very obvious it wasn’t.
The position I took on-air effectively ended my career. I could live with that because I was of an age where I was bit over working anyway. What pissed me off most was the day I was asked to leave a golf clubhouse, without finishing my beer, because I didn’t have a vaccine pass.
It’s a time we never, ever want to see repeated in this country.
So it is with a deep sense of annoyance and frustration, yet redemption, that I hear advertising for the Covid vaccine, and the shingles shot too, in a way that says the medicine is not necessarily safe - and that it my not work.
It is just reinforcement that what the Ardern-Hipkins government did to us in 2021-22 was utterly unacceptable on every front imaginable: the denial of our freedom of choice, our freedom of thought, our right to be medically informed, the right to give or decline consent for a medical procedure and the right to assemble in public places and locations where you’ve otherwise paid for the privilege.
What is being said in those radio advertisements in 2026 should have been the attitude we adopted five years ago.
Hasn’t it always been a given that “medicines have risks and benefits” ?
Robert F. Kennedy Jnr’s book on the now utterly discredited Anthony Fauci explained that brilliantly. Nobody challenged his thesis in court.
Just this once I’m glad some radio advertising hit the spot with me.
“Risks and benefits” is a line we should have included in our lives five years ago. Thank goodness it’s here now.
Peter Williams was a writer and broadcaster for half a century. Now watching from the sidelines. Peter blogs regularly on Peter’s Substack - Where this article was sourced.
As it turns out I had a shingles jab when I turned 65. It was the day I played pin cushion at the GP as he gave me a flu shot, a tetanus injection and the shingles vaccine in the space of 2 minutes.
At the time (it was 2019 and pre-covid) vaccine hesitancy wasn’t an issue in society. Our trust in the medical profession was implicit and we took those needles because we’d been told the potions they injected were good for us.
For what it’s worth, I still got the flu that winter but I’ve never been affected by tetanus or shingles, so you might say those medicines work. Or maybe because of a sensible lifestyle, I’ve just escaped catching either of those diseases.
Anyway, about half an hour after the Newstalk ZB ad for the shingles vaccine and its “medicines have risks and benefits” tagline came another commercial - for the Covid vaccine.
Seriously, I thought. Who’s still getting covid shots? Does the Ministry of Health still have a backlog of oversupply they’re trying to get rid of ? The vaccines are free of course, and you might want to get one every six months!
This is still going on in 2026? Hasn’t Covid - which I’m seriously thinking was not much more than an over-hyped cold anyway at the height of the hysteria in 2021-22 - been pretty much absent from our lives for the best part of five years?
But there we were. Newstalk ZB is still taking Ministry of Health advertising money for the Covid injection. Well I presume it’s government money .. or maybe Pfizer are paying direct?
But what stood out for me about the Covid vaccine commercial was that upwards of a third of the 30 second duration were the gabbled taglines at the end. What I caught was “ask if it’s right for you” and “medicines have risks and benefits.”
So there’s now an admission that the Covid vaccine may not be appropriate for everyone, and that sometimes there may be adverse effects if you have it injected.
Yes, it is five years since the mandates and the compulsions of the Labour government ordered Covid era. But I doubt we know any more now than what we did back then in terms of the effectiveness and safety of that particular medicine.
I never had a Covid vaccine because I’d read of some early adverse effects among recipients in Israel. Then I saw the 58 conditions attached to its use by Medsafe which raised many a red flag for me.
And I just didn’t trust Jacinda Ardern and Chris Hipkins telling me it was safe and effective when it quickly became very obvious it wasn’t.
The position I took on-air effectively ended my career. I could live with that because I was of an age where I was bit over working anyway. What pissed me off most was the day I was asked to leave a golf clubhouse, without finishing my beer, because I didn’t have a vaccine pass.
It’s a time we never, ever want to see repeated in this country.
So it is with a deep sense of annoyance and frustration, yet redemption, that I hear advertising for the Covid vaccine, and the shingles shot too, in a way that says the medicine is not necessarily safe - and that it my not work.
It is just reinforcement that what the Ardern-Hipkins government did to us in 2021-22 was utterly unacceptable on every front imaginable: the denial of our freedom of choice, our freedom of thought, our right to be medically informed, the right to give or decline consent for a medical procedure and the right to assemble in public places and locations where you’ve otherwise paid for the privilege.
What is being said in those radio advertisements in 2026 should have been the attitude we adopted five years ago.
Hasn’t it always been a given that “medicines have risks and benefits” ?
Robert F. Kennedy Jnr’s book on the now utterly discredited Anthony Fauci explained that brilliantly. Nobody challenged his thesis in court.
Just this once I’m glad some radio advertising hit the spot with me.
“Risks and benefits” is a line we should have included in our lives five years ago. Thank goodness it’s here now.
Peter Williams was a writer and broadcaster for half a century. Now watching from the sidelines. Peter blogs regularly on Peter’s Substack - Where this article was sourced.
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