Matariki Thoughts: Playing the Long Game

A guest newsletter from Julia Schiller on the ongoing need for action on Covid.

And everything seems cut and dry
Day and night
Earth and sky
Somehow, I just don't believe it

Songwriter: Dave Pirner.

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Today, a guest letter from Julia Schiller, so without further ado, it’s over to her…

Lifelong New Zealanders may not appreciate some of the best things about our country. Among them I would number a public health system, the ACC, Pharmac, the concept of duty of care, and a vibrant indigenous culture. When I arrived almost 25 years ago, I was bemused at some of the virtually meaningless British import holidays, official or not, that to my mind litter the Kiwi calendar: Boxing Day, 2 January, Queen's Birthday, Guy Fawkes. It seemed a shame that my favourite childhood holidays: Halloween, Christmas, and Easter were held at the "wrong time of year" and sometimes barely observed at all and that Kiwis were lacking a truly original and unique festive holiday. In 2022 this lacuna was filled at last, when Matariki was adopted as an official holiday. As it marks a new year and occurs about halfway through the Gregorian calendar, it is an excellent time for reflection.

I was raised by two parents who were involved and interested in politics. I remember we protested US involvement in Nicaragua and "got up on" the Presidential candidacy of Jesse Jackson. My mother was an ardent writer of letters to the editor, and I organised my first petition campaign in my first year of high school. When I was about to go off to university, my father shared with me the essay, "The Commitment of the Intellectual" and I continued this tradition with my own son. Alice Walker expressed that piece's underlying sentiment more succinctly and to a broader audience when she declared, "Activism is my rent for living on the planet."

Some say you must make your fortune, then change the world, but my prospects of making a fortune have never been spectacular, given my treasured yet perennially undervalued liberal arts degree, diverse and disparate skill set, and allergy to subordination, never mind my manic depression which went undiagnosed until age 29 and then took several more years to properly subdue--I thank our now-beleaguered public health system for the large role it played in that effort. So aside from my earliest years in Aotearoa when I was trying to find my footing and keep my sanity and also some lean years in between my marriages, I have been an activist of some stripe or another all my adult life. It is an undeniable part of who I am.

When I lived in California, I battled the death penalty, bringing to that debate the insight that in such a politically and demographically diverse state, the same crime committed in different counties could result in vastly different sentences for the convicted. It is an awful thing to live in a jurisdiction where such murders are not only sanctioned but excused in the name of making the public safer, knowing that this is an utter falsehood. So although I am no pro-lifer or vegan, I have sympathy for such sister anguished minorities who hold morally absolute beliefs.

And since about three years ago, I find myself in an anguished minority in my adopted homeland: the Covid-conscious. I can't pinpoint exactly when I deviated from the carefree norm, but I do remember feeling shocked when it was apparent we were now going to allow this virus we had all taken such pains to keep at bay, to circulate and infect us. At some point it became clear that the vaccines were nowhere near sterilising, which made it very puzzling to see the other protections we'd put in place against this Biosafety Level Two pathogen get taken away. In particular I mourned dropping masks on mass transit and thought about how it might not have taken much longer to engrain this as a societal habit, as it is in some Asian countries.

Like all the other lunatics, I "did my own research" and found a lot of information via social media, particularly the dread platform-formerly-known-as-Twitter, to which I remain grateful, for that is where I learned about proper masking, proper RAT testing, and that Covid is airborne so no amount of hand sanitiser and social distancing is actually going to do the job against it, beliefs that were credible for far less time than you might imagine. I read eyewitness reports from other lands, where Covid was let loose sooner against populations that didn't have our privilege of multiple vaccinations before encountering it.

When virtually all the other members of my singing group stopped wearing masks, I quit the group. I was vindicated when they attended an out-of-town weekend competition months later, and half of the group returned home to test positive within five days. I've now given up playing in Scrabble tournaments because the leaders of the New Zealand Association of Scrabble Players have chosen to ignore my pleas and entreaties to institute safer practices such as encouraging masking, ventilating the venues, and renting air purifiers. At last year's Whangarei tournament, held in a stuffy room over two full days, I could hear people sickening in real time, as the number of people sniffling and coughing just kept increasing. I seem to have been the only one cognisant and alarmed by this accumulating aural evidence. I was the only one masked.

That's the weird thing about Covid. Many who have had it, even previously cautious people, go on to throw caution to the wind. Surely before the pandemic, we were not comfortable to sit in close proximity to blatantly ill people? Now a state of perennial poor health, lingering coughs or worse, is accepted as the norm, most alarmingly for children. One of my heroes, the epidemiologist Amanda Kvalsvig, says, "It is not normal or OK for children to be ‘sick all the time’." My son, now age 28, certainly wasn't.

Meanwhile the mountain of evidence showing the danger of infection, particularly repeat infections, has undergone repeated volcanic eruptions, with new lava accreting at pace.

It is unfortunate that this particular pandemic struck after nearly four decades of vicious end-stage neoliberal capitalism, where short-term profit and selfish interests reign supreme. Surely only beings in thrall to such a dehumanising and destructive economic system would ever espouse the idiotic "personal responsibility" mantra to oppose a public health crisis, and those with power and resources are the ones furthest in thrall (or must play the game of pretending to be).

I wear my respirator mask not because I live in fear but because it protects me from the fear I would otherwise harbour at the likelihood of being infected by contagious human vectors, be they either uncaring or unaware. I wear my mask to set an example, to try to make the world a little safer for the disabled, and to protect others in case I am unknowingly infectious. I wear my mask to protect my body, my mind, my life, and my loved ones. Yes, I have accepted some constrictions, like giving up chorus, competitive Scrabble, dining at indoor restaurants, and any sort of communal living arrangements--which is why you won't find me at GANZ (Game Artisans of New Zealand) retreats. I play badminton in a valved mask. I still play board games and still attend big events because that is my industry.

I try to reach who I can, including the organisers of big board game events. I talk about the elephant in the room. I run a board game company, obviously I'm not anti-fun, but being an adult used to mean, and still means for me, accepting and adapting to reality and taking responsibility. I would love to see our industry events be the exception to the apathetic rule.

No one should come to an event to have fun and walk away with an illness that can permanently and gravely impair their physical health, their cognitive function, and their enjoyment of life.

I would prefer not to mask forever. Just as we can drink tap water without fear of cholera and eat takeaway from a restaurant or food from the supermarket without fear of parasites, I'd like to breathe the air in shared public spaces knowing it is clean and fresh. But we have no enforceable standards for indoor air quality and our political "leaders" have their heads in the sand around this issue, even though clean air classrooms would also improve academic achievement and lower the absenteeism, issues they do wring their hands about.

Our controversial lockdowns, vaccine mandates, and MIQ could have bought us time to act on indoor air quality and to update public health messaging (my local hospital has an A4 handout about avoiding Covid that avoids any mention of masking). Instead it seems we put virtually all our eggs into what turned out to be a basket riddled with holes and then threw our arms up in surrender at the leaks.

At a time when the "miasma" theory of disease causation was still dominant in Europe, Aotearoa's tangata whenua obviously understood germ theory.

Ancestry, I have learned, matters mightily to Māori people. What would our ancestors think of us, surrendering ourselves and, most unforgivably, our children to a virus when we have the means, the technology, and the knowledge to conquer it?

Fellow Star Trek: The Next Generation Fans, remember the Game, the season five episode in which Wesley is initially amused, then curious, then alarmed as all the other crew members succumb to the mesmerising charms of a wearable device? The android Data was Deus ex Machina, arriving to deprogram the crew via a pulsing light just as they were on the brink of turning over their precious Enterprise to the crafty species that created the game.

Of all the episodes to come to life! I guess it could've been even worse. ("There are four lights")

But the other thing I remembered about ST:TNG was an episode where someone coughed or sneezed and Dr Beverly Crusher got instantly alarmed because such things didn't happen in her century. Because guess what? All the measures we are calling for to stop the spread of Covid had exterminated airborne diseases: flu, RSV, even measles, maybe the next pandemic.

Wouldn't you like to live in that world? You've read this far. Be counted. Be a Wesley. Ask questions. Demand better leadership. Join Aotearoa Covid Action, sign our petition, and if you're able, lend us your talents.

Further information: Still Masked, Still Right: A Data-Driven Case for Vigilance

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Today’s song is from Julia, a great tune with sad lyrics, representing the fact that we’re going the wrong way in dealing with Covid.