{"id":330059,"date":"2026-03-15T00:26:14","date_gmt":"2026-03-15T00:26:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/330059\/"},"modified":"2026-03-15T00:26:14","modified_gmt":"2026-03-15T00:26:14","slug":"do-we-owe-our-covid-conspiracy-friends-an-apology-heather-du-plessis-allan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/330059\/","title":{"rendered":"Do we owe our Covid conspiracy friends an apology? – Heather du Plessis-Allan"},"content":{"rendered":"

They were worried about the risk of myocarditis<\/a> in under-18-year-olds from two jabs. They were worried enough that they thought it was a bad idea for the Government to demand kids that young get a second jab for permission to go to work.<\/p>\n

Hardly any of us listened when our conspiracy theorist friends and family tried to convince us the Government knew the risks but wasn\u2019t telling us. Turns out, in at least one instance, they were right.<\/p>\n

In January 2022, the decision was made \u2013 despite the health risks \u2013 to force kids to get two jabs before they would be allowed to do basic work like stocking supermarket shelves.<\/p>\n

Why the Government made that call and didn\u2019t tell parents still isn\u2019t completely clear.<\/p>\n

Chris Hipkins and Ayesha Verrall \u2013 who were health ministers at the time \u2013 believe they never got the advice telling them it wasn\u2019t safe. Which is true. <\/p>\n

The document explicitly advising against mandating the second jab never reached them.<\/p>\n

But that doesn\u2019t mean they didn\u2019t know. On another document, Verrall noted in the margins that there were safety concerns about the second jab. A few weeks later Cabinet decided to force the mandate on kids anyway.<\/p>\n

A generous explanation is that Verrall and her Cabinet colleagues were making countless decisions every day so they couldn\u2019t be expected to remember every concern.<\/p>\n

A less generous take is that it\u2019s sloppy. Mandating a jab on kids is not run-of-the-mill. It\u2019s extreme. Everything should be checked and double-checked, every concern addressed before deciding to do something so unusual.<\/p>\n

An even less generous take is that the safety concerns were inconvenient for a Government that had spent months hammering the message that the vaccine was safe, to shut down growing conspiracy theories. <\/p>\n

To suddenly have to admit that it was safe for almost everyone, but not absolutely everyone, would have been a hard message to land.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s the question of why the Ministry of Health failed to make sure that recommendation landed on ministers\u2019 desks before they made a decision potentially affecting the health of kids. Again, too busy, getting sloppy or inconvenient?<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t know. We may never know. Ashley Bloomfield isn\u2019t talking about it any more. Why would he? He\u2019s built his reputation, locked-in his knighthood, got himself on the paid speaking circuit and landed a contract as a face for Southern Cross. Why put that at risk talking about bad things that happened in his department during his tenure?<\/p>\n

Of course, he should front up and tell us what happened. But then so should a host of other characters who built their reputations and secured their financial futures making decisions about our lives who have subsequently cut and run to green pastures.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re not going to say they\u2019re sorry to the people who freaked out about the jab enough to risk losing their jobs and being ostracised by their friends and families.<\/p>\n

But maybe the rest of us should. If not an outright apology, at least a small acknowledgement that they weren\u2019t completely imagining things after all.<\/p>\n

Heather du Plessis-Allan<\/a> is the Drive host for Newstalk ZB.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"They were worried about the risk of myocarditis in under-18-year-olds from two jabs. They were worried enough that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":330060,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[3471,8831,53633,177347,8607,6309,6630,1445,10900,111,139,69,22213,51386,17888,10901,213,177348,3270],"class_list":["post-330059","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-among","tag-an","tag-apology","tag-conspiracy","tag-covid","tag-do","tag-du","tag-friends","tag-heather","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-our","tag-owe","tag-perhaps","tag-plessisallan","tag-sports","tag-theorists","tag-we"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=330059"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330059\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/330060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=330059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=330059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=330059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}