Firstly, my condolences to the people of Timaru and particularly the parents of the boys who lost their lives in the horrific incident.
I’m not going to draw any conclusions from the particular event because I feel it’s too soon and the whole district is feeling it, as are we all. No one needs a radio host or talkback callers pontificating on the should have beens.
But in the course of the conversation today we have heard talk on perception of risk and how poor it is in young brains. And that’s not the first time perception of risk has been mentioned over the past few days.
We heard it from Sir John Key in the weekend. He suggested that many New Zealanders had little perception of risk from Covid 19 because we have been spared the worst ravages of it and that may be why so much vaccination hesitancy exists.
Why get vaccinated when there’s no Covid about.
Sir John suggests that if New Zealanders were told the next stage of the plan which would include fewer lockdowns and more ease of travel then people might be incentivised to get the jab.
Then there were Maori and Pacific Islander health professionals suggesting the uptake of vaccination is low amongst their people because the state hasn’t engaged with them and, again, there is no perception of risk because there is no Covid in the wild
And a lack of perception of risk was blamed for our abysmal usage of the Covid 19 contact tracing app. 21 per cent of us have the app on our phone but don’t use it and another 20 per cent don’t have it at all. No Covid in the community, no use of the app.
This all defies common sense and logic.
Get the vaccination and you’re one step closer to travelling and one step further away from lockdown. How anyone from any ethnicity doesn’t know what’s going down is baffling and it's too late to start vaccinating once the virus is running amok amongst your people. And if you don’t start using the app until Covid is in the community then again it’s already too late and you’re a week behind the game, just ask New South Wales.
All of this inaction because of a lack of perception of risk closely resembles wilful stupidity and threatens to wipe all the gains that have been made in this fight against an invisible enemy.