Some of the vaccination crew at Te Whānau o Waipareira in front of their mobile vax van, in Henderson, Auckland. (Photo: Te Whānau o Waipareira)
“If the government had listened to our experts, and itself, all these months, Māori could have been 90 percent vaccinated by now,” writes Vini Olsen-Reeder, who’s sick of Māori being blamed for being slow to vaccinate.
I’m tired of hearing our politicians complaining about Māori vaccination rates.
Māori, especially rangatahi, have been branded as slow and selfish and blamed for holding back the rest of the country. The truth is, we’ve been held back by a rollout that ignored the basic statistics.
Māori are a young population. Our median age is around 26. For Pacific, it’s around 24. (This compares to the Pākehā median age of 41, and the national medium of 37.)
That means half of us are under those ages. So when it comes to vaccination, the great bulk of us — more than 90 percent of Māori, including me — sit in Group 4, which was everyone aged 12 and over.
Which means we’ve only been eligible for vaccination since September 1. That’s only 53 days ago. The vaccination rollout started in February; Group 3 started back in May.
So, of course, Māori are playing catch-up.
It was always going to be a race to get vaccinated before Delta hit. That’s why our public health experts fought for Māori and Pasifika to get vaccinated first. They argued that the rollout was inequitable.
We’re younger than the general population, so most of us were going to be last in line in the vaccine rollout. (Only 15 percent of Māori and Pacific are aged over 60, compared with 30 percent of non-Māori/Pacific; 77 percent of Māori and 79 percent of Pacific are under the age of 54.)
And we’re more vulnerable. For instance, Māori have an at least 50 per cent higher risk of dying from Covid than Pākehā, a study published in the New Zealand Medical Journal found.
The government insisted the rollout was fair, but then admitted that it had got Māori vaccination wrong. I think our experts lost that battle because the government was worried about the optics. And when Māori health providers like Te Whānau o Waipareira tried to right that inequity by targeting Māori with a vax code, people like ACT leader David Seymour stood in their way.
It was a perfect storm for Delta. In the latest outbreak, of 2492 cases, 770 people are Māori, 1047 are our Pacific whanaunga.
If the government had listened to our experts, and to itself, all these months, Māori could have been 90 percent vaccinated by now.
But now the biggest group, with the biggest Māori population, is charged with the biggest challenge of all — to get vaccinated, as fast as possible, and not get Covid in the process.
Despite that late start, since Group 4 vaccinations opened in September, our cumulative doses per 1000 people has doubled. Non-Māori have not reached anywhere near this uptake in the same timeframe. Māori are getting it done.
It isn’t anything to do with our speed. It’s that we started from behind.
We had more than six months to vaccinate Groups 1–3. In those age brackets, we’re about as highly vaccinated as non-Māori. In certain regions of the country, we’re more vaccinated than non-Māori are. Our elders have smashed vaccination goals, and I’m so proud of them for leading the way.
The bulk of us have had just 53 days to navigate booking times, wait times, and overcome such a manifest lack of access that in some areas we have had to fundraise for our own clinics.
Our experts are having plenty of “we told you so” moments right now, and they’ll be bitter moments, I’m sure. It’s an impossible expectation that Māori go back in time, and get vaccinated then. We are magic people, but we aren’t that magic.
It’s no wonder it’s so hard to dampen down distrust of the vaccine, when that distrust stems from a lack of faith in government, which has made this tougher for Māori than it ever had to be. All it had to do was give Group 4 a shot to vaccinate as safely as other groups.
For anyone hesitant to vaccinate out there for reasons of distrust in government — I understand, but the last few weeks have shown me we should vaccinate in spite of how we’ve been treated.
It’s sad to frame things in this way, but when it counts most, it’s Māori who come through for Māori. Not overseas news platforms, not chat forums, not churches, and not government — it’s us. The vaccine is tino rangatiratanga, for now.
When we look back at this point in the pandemic, to pore over what we learned, I hope the lesson is not that Māori were slow, but that we were stopped.
Dr Vini Olsen-Reeder (Ngā Pōtiki a Tamapahore, Ngāti Pūkenga, Ngāi Te Rangi, Te Arawa) is a senior lecturer at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington.
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I agree wholeheartedly, nice work Vini.
Given all the setbacks and disappointments and skewed facts recently, it’s been hard not to feel dispirited and devalued. There’s something to be said about the traffic light system introduced last Friday without the Treaty of Waitangi partnership in place. We need to take a U-turn and flip the script on it.
When we introduce a specific priority (B) Bus lane within the traffic system for Māori vaccinations that should give us a head start on the fast lane that we’ll need in the coming weeks. So expect more off-ramp (exists) to come up. We’re in remedial territory right now because of the political problems and setbacks of denial. Seeing the virus elimination problem from many angles means we can come up with smarter plans.
The country is being given 3 chances don’t blow it, pay more attention to the finer details. In the 1st phase, the government didn’t listen but there’s still time to work on a better version in phase 2. Paying more attention this time around gives us the heads up so we won’t get fatigued or become aggressive with all of the upcoming adjustments heading into phase 3. The globe is turning over a new leaf and we’re part of the picture. We’re not done with the virus by a long shot. The new year should give us a clue on whether we’ve fully prepared ourselves heading in the future. If you need my advice government I’d be happy to help out with the right contract offer.