October 15, 2021
Dr Rawiri Taonui Delta OutBreak | Our most vulnerable time
New Cases Today
Today Māori were 23 (35.4%) of 65 new cases. Since a surge in Māori cases started on 29 September, this is the 12th consecutive day and the 15th time in 16 days that we have been the highest number of new cases. The rising number and increasing proportion of Māori cases is the main concern.
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Māori are 16.7% of the population. From 5.7% of all Delta cases on 1 September, we are now 44.9% of new cases since Auckland went to Alert Level 3, 44.7% of all active cases in Managed Isolation and Quarantine, 26.7% of cases during the Delta OutBreak, and 24.1% of those who have been hospitalised.
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Māori Vaccination
The numbers in the vaccination table below differ from those from the Ministry of Health. The Ministry uses the Health User Service Index. This does not include people who have not used the health system in the previous year. This is about 4% of the population or 204,000 people. A large number of these people are Māori and Pacific. For example, the last Annual Health Survey showed that 20% of Māori adults did not see a doctor because they could not afford to do so.
Māori are 36.7% fully vaccinated. Another 21.1% have received their first dose. Combined, 57.7% of Māori have partial or full vaccine protection. This is 72.3% of the national overall rate of vaccination, which is 20% higher than the low point of 52% of the national total in mid-August.
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Of most concern, are those in the 12-34-year-old age cohort. More than 50% are unvaccinated.
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We need as many young role models as possible to speak to their peers in this age group, including any who have already had Covid-19. Ko ngā taiohi o tēnei whakatupuranga ngā rangatira o apōpō. The young people of this generation are the leaders of the future. Many are at risk from long Covid-19 complications, the worst of which affect kidney and liver function, the lungs, heart, and brain.
Māori Vaccinations by DHB
The following table presents Māori vaccinations by District Health Board ranked by those who have the highest percentage of first dose Maori.
There is a Ministry data-based website for those seeking local town by city or town. Both this table and the website have the limitations of the HSU index but are otherwise helpful.
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Our Most Vulnerable Time
Māori have suffered disproportionately in every pandemic-epidemic event to awash our shores. During the 1913 Smallpox Epidemic, Māori begged the government for life-saving vaccines. The government produced over 750,000 doses. The vaccine was frequently given to Europeans in towns first and the remainder was distributed to Maori. Gisborne received only 200 doses of vaccine for a community of 12,000 Māori and Pākehā. The Waikato community at Taupiri, where there was a serious outbreak, received only enough to vaccinate 80 of 300 Māori who lived there. The Hokianga received none. Our ancestors did not have access to a lifesaving vaccination. We do.
On the back of the 50-year Māori Renaissance, Māori are in the strongest position since colonisation began to successfully combat a pandemic. Our communities are strong. We are better educated. We have great leaders wāhine and tāne, young and old, the abled and disabled, and iwi and urban.
Delta is next level. We are entering our most vulnerable time. Our young, impoverished, infirm, and disabled on the margins are most at risk. They distrust government and rightly so. They are the victims of systemic cumulative intergenerational racism in education, social welfarism, employment, housing, justice, and health.
Delta is not a political football. Opposition for the sake of opposition is a pathway of empty rhetoric upon which we all lose. We need across-party political leadership. Decisions protecting life is all that counts.
We need people who look like us and speak our language whether in English or te reo Māori to tell our Covid story. We have the largest and most capable Māori Members of Parliament in history. They need to stand and lead, including in daily briefings.
Driven by a cognitively dysfunctional smug white racism, a fringe medical minority, and the tithe-enriched self-anointed, the anti-vaccination freedom movement exploits the fears and suspicions of the mistrusting ethnically destitute and abandoned.
The freedom to accept vaccination or not may be a human right. The freedom to place others at risk is not. The freedom riders derive and thrive on a duplicitous advantage drawn from the privilege of living in a country with the best record in the world of combating Covid the reward for which could be hectares of unmarked graves.
My great-grandfather lost his wife and two children to the 1918 Spanish Flue. His brother served on the Western Front. He returned to Aotearoa in September 1918 and was dead by Christmas. The first to fall and not knowing whether his body was infectious or not he was buried outside of the whānau wāhi tapu under a beautiful tree in a lonely but peaceful meadow. My grandmother lost a brother to typhoid in 1911, another to the Spanish Flu and a brother and sister to tuberculosis in the 1930s.
They did not have the luxury of a vaccine. We do. Get vaccinated to protect our whakapapa and your whānau. Be a good ancestor for future generations.
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Dr Rawiri Taonui