NZCPR Newsletter: Investigating Covid

New Zealand has experienced two pandemics in recent years.

The first was the swine flu pandemic, caused by the H1N1 influenza virus which originated in Mexico in 2009. It is estimated to have affected as many as 1.4 billion people world-wide over a period of some 19 months, causing upwards of 600,000 deaths.

The second was the Covid-19 pandemic, caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which originated in Wuhan in China in December 2019. While the World Health Organisation reports almost 800 million cases and more than 7 million deaths, they believe this grossly under-represents the true situation.

NZCPR Newsletter: New Zealand Turns Sinister

In her post Cabinet press conference of 11 October 2021, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern explained, “Today, I will update you on… decisions made by Cabinet to strengthen our Covid response through the use of mandatory vaccination for large parts of the education and health workforce, in order to protect vulnerable New Zealanders…”

This announcement made a lie of the Prime Minister’s pre-election promise, that under her watch vaccination would not become compulsory.

Simon Ruda: Will nudge theory survive the pandemic?

State propaganda can flourish in times of crisis

In 2015, during a public debate on behavioural science in Lucerne, I was accused of supporting tactics befitting an unsavoury authoritarian regime. At the time, knowing how well-intentioned my colleagues were, I thought this was, quite frankly, nuts.

I remain a supporter of the use of behavioural science in public policy, and of the Behavioural Insights Team, more commonly known as the Nudge Unit. However, witnessing how the UK and other governments have responded to the pandemic, I can now appreciate the vulnerabilities of well-intentioned, democratic regimes, and the potential for behavioural science to be used inappropriately.

I was a co-founder and leading figure within the Nudge Unit. Since its inception, in 2010, the unit has been a success story for the Government. When I joined we were a team of seven within what was called the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit. In 2014, we were able to “spin out” of government. We became an independent, profit-making social purpose company, a third owned by the Cabinet Office. We could sell our services to the whole of the UK public sector and any other government or organisation seeking to improve people’s lives.

Johan Anderberg: How Sweden swerved Covid disaster

A hundred years ago, in New York City, 20,000 people marched down Fifth Avenue in protest against one of the greatest public health policy experiments in history. One of them was wearing a sign featuring an image of Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper,” beside the slogan, “Wine was served.” There were posters of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln. Another read: “Tyranny in the name of righteousness is the worst of all tyrannies.”

For a year, beer, wine and spirits had been illegal throughout the United States. From a public health perspective, it seemed a reasonable enough measure. That alcohol was a dangerous substance was clear: disease, violence, poverty and crime were intimately bound up with it. Even now, despite its failure, it is known as the “noble experiment”. But was it right to prevent people from making drinks they not only enjoyed, but that also served important cultural and religious purposes? Not for the first time, Americans found themselves torn in a balance between freedom and security — nor for the last.