Kiwi Nurse Speaks Out

Anonymous FreeNZ Contributor - On the Covid Response & the Mandates

Become a nurse they said. It would be fun they said. You’ll find satisfaction, purpose and you will make a difference in people’s lives. For eleven years, nursing delivered upon these promises. I loved every part of my vocation and took pride in being part of the noble profession of nursing. Then, COVID-19 came to town. I rose to the occasion. This is the stuff I trained for! I eagerly donned my gown, my mask and my gloves and I got to work. I felt like I was making a difference and was proud to be a front-line worker and part of the fight against COVID-19. Then the lockdowns came. I was just relieved to be able to continue working when so many had that right taken from them and were ordered to stay at home. It was challenging, but once again I answered the call of duty. It was then that the restrictive directives started to come in from above. 

The laboratories were told they were not allowed to process non-urgent tests. Recalls for diagnostic lab tests and imaging and scheduled appointments for monitoring of long-term conditions were halted for a time. This included routine screening tests such as cervical smears for cancer prevention, mammograms to detect breast cancer, blood tests to monitor diabetes, and biopsies for suspected skin cancers. Non-urgent appointments were put on hold. 6 monthly medication reviews were waived, and we had to navigate healthcare interactions with our patients over the phone, via computer or while they were sitting in their car. Building rapport with patients is one of the cornerstones of developing a therapeutic relationship. Doing this over the phone is next to impossible and takes away a vital part of the healthcare experience, one that is required in order to build trust. 

Once we got our head around a new way of doing things, we were presented with a whole new set of directives on how to practice. It was back to square one, trying to navigate our way through pages and pages of increasingly confusing and nonsensical guidelines; having to constantly familiarize yourself with new rules around who gets what type of test and why; rules around isolation requirements; different requirements of what PPE we had to use for vaccinated and non-vaccinated patients; how long we could be face to face with someone before we needed to don full PPE. It was all incredibly confusing. Fear of giving patients the wrong advice is emotionally draining and I was perpetually in this constant low-grade state of worry that I would do or say the wrong thing.  

Not being able to offer patients an appointment because we have a reduced capacity for seeing people for the usual bread and butter stuff of general practice, is incredibly demoralising.  We have been so hyper-focused on COVID-19 related interventions; swabbing clinics; vaccinations; GP appointments specifically set aside for seeing anyone with any type of respiratory type symptom. In order to provide these services, you need to have the staff to do so, which means taking people from doing all the routine health interventions that general practice does, to the detriment of other patients experiencing the plethora of non-COVID-19 health issues that are very much still happening in the background each day. My optimism that we would get through this pandemic with minimal damage was all but non-existent by this point. I am not referring to the damage that COVID-19 would do, I am more worried about the ripple effect all the restrictions being placed upon the lives of the good people of New Zealand, and the toll it would take on the physical, emotional, social and financial health of us all.

The government had been saying for some time they were prepared for Omicron by having surge capacity in place. What an absolute joke. 2 years to invest in the system, and this is their solution? It was like robbing Peter to pay Paul. Pulling Nurses and Doctors from other areas and throwing them in a completely unfamiliar environment with minimal training and you have a recipe for disaster. The amount of training and further education that an ICU nurse or doctor needs is enormous. The training needed for complex patients such as those with COVID would be complex and would take years. How safe would you feel in ICU having a surge capacity nurse with all but 4 hours of training in their role? We could have prepared for this by allowing experienced and trained ICU personnel from overseas, easy passage into the country free from red tape, a long time ago- to prepare for COVID-19  becoming widespread in the community. Meanwhile, Chris Hipkins and Grant Robertson were asking the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment for cost estimates for a dedicated Sportspersons’ MIQ in Queenstown. It was deemed more important to dedicate the funds and healthcare personnel to run such a facility instead of investing in preparedness for the inevitable community spread of COVID! Eventually, somebody convinced them this would create a huge public backlash, and rightly so. But it was at the time, an idea that was being given serious consideration. 

The coming years will show the true damage that our COVID-19 response has inflicted upon New Zealand. A causative factor in so much emotional and economic damage that what we are now seeing around New Zealand is a direct result of Vaccine mandates, and their equally damaging sidekick, the Vaccine passport system. Vaccines have their place, but so do preventative interventions such as exercise, a healthy diet, supplementation with essential vitamins and minerals, sunlight and a balanced mind. Yet these were not being promoted at all. It was an extensive onslaught of fear-driven narratives with the underlying theme being “get vaccinated”, described by the Prime Minister herself as drumming in the message with “Sustained Propaganda”. Early treatments, such as those being used in other countries, like Ivermectin, were being touted as dangerous and ineffective when peer-reviewed data was showing the exact opposite. This data was from scientific studies that had been published in respected international academic journals, yet the effectiveness of Ivermectin was being labelled as “fake news” and misinformation. Juxtaposed against this was our own COVID-19 response here in New Zealand that was being guided by non-peer-reviewed papers published by our Governmental COVID-19 modelling team at Te Pūnaha Matatini, in order to guide the strict lockdown measures, order business closures, and install an implementation of vaccine passport measures which have had a tremendously negative impact upon the lives of New Zealanders, small business and our economy. All this was done to stop a virus, that has a 99.4 – 99.9% survival rate. I can guarantee that the statistics for death and serious illness for all other causes will explode in the coming years as a result of the fallout caused by longer waits for treatments, late diagnosis for serious disease, suicide, homelessness, increases in poverty and care rationing that will become the norm if our healthcare professionals continue to be mandated out of their roles.

When the mandate directive was announced, massive anxiety not only for myself but for many of my colleagues around me, took hold. This experimental treatment was now being forced upon us, by the threat of losing everything we had worked toward over our careers. Dedicated, passionate, highly skilled professionals, once lauded as “Heroes” in the first phase of the pandemic, were essentially being told that they were not permitted to be a part of the profession anymore unless they accepted this vaccine. Now we see that all of us who chose to get the two doses thinking they were done, now face mandated booster shots. This was the last straw for many whom I know, and I am aware of many who are going to refuse this, and leave their careers, at a time when the healthcare system is imploding. And we are still being fed the line that this is about heath and taking the strain off the healthcare system? Yet forcing many out of this crumbling institution, is the government’s solution?

What an absolute farce this whole debacle has become. Many healthcare professionals I know who are choosing not to get a booster due to the horrible side effects they may have experienced for their first 1 or 2, are absolutely broken and bewildered right now. When reporting these reactions, many have been ignored and ridiculed and effectively gaslighted into thinking it is all in their head.

I know of a few who were in the not-vaccinated category who were denied medical exemptions - despite valid reasons to be granted them, including religious concerns about being vaccinated, or justifiable concern at the lack of the long-term safety data. And for this, these highly educated and informed professionals were ridiculed, had their intelligence questioned and were bullied out of their careers.

We are not just healthcare professionals, we are also health consumers, with rights enshrined in the New Zealand Patient Code of Rights, and the International Nuremberg code, which is a set of research ethics that guides ethical medical experimentation on human participants, and which states that voluntary consent MUST be obtained from the participant to be a part of the experiment. ‘Voluntary’ is defined as being given without coercion, or any element of force or duress, or any form of constraint. Having your career and livelihood dangled in front of you like a carrot is coercive, wouldn’t you think? 

Under the New Zealand patient code of rights, we are all afforded the right to freedom from discrimination, coercion, harassment, exploitation as well the right to informed consent. All of these rights seemed to go out the window for us as employees. We are expected to uphold these rights for our patients, yet we ourselves have had every one of these rights trampled upon when being mandated to take these vaccines, under threat of expulsion from our careers, loss of income and invalidation of all the hard work and dedication we bring to our work. How is this justified, or fair for a transient respiratory illness that is for most, no worse than a cold or mild flu? 

These vaccines were sold to us in the beginning as a tool that would stop onward transmission and provide immunity, a line that we were fed that has turned out to be untrue. Helen Petousis-Harris, one of our so-called leading vaccinologists is on the record saying that the Pfizer vaccine was remarkable in this respect. How she can say this baffles me when Pfizer documents themselves confirm that during the extremely short clinical studies, the vaccine’s ability to reduce transmission in the community was not even being used as a measure of its efficacy.

It is blatantly obvious now that we were sold a lemon in regards to providing immunity given that we see COVID-19 running rampant in the community. First, it was “get your covid vaccine”. Then it was “2 shots for summer”, then “get boosted bro” in 6 months, then 4 months, and now within 3 months. Goalposts are being shifted all over the place, and people wonder why the Government have lost the trust of a large proportion of kiwis? A government that is led by a woman that states they are “the single source of truth” and any other source of information should automatically be dismissed as it is misinformation. She openly and gleefully admits that she has instituted a two-tier society based on medical apartheid. It is quite chilling to watch her admit this with a smile on her face, a reaction that is the polar opposite of her usually well-manicured fake façade of kindness she uses during our daily scaremongering updates of the number of cases in New Zealand. 

Throughout the course of this vaccine rollout, I have heard story after story from the patients that I see or speak to on the phone, of how these vaccines and the mandates have affected them.  Why are patients not made aware that they themselves can lodge a report of adverse reactions on the CARM website? The number of calls I take, saying doctors won’t suggest doing this for them is ridiculous. I guess this is what happens when you don’t make the reporting of these mandatory. One young woman that called in one day relayed to me an absolutely horrific 5 days of adverse reactions immediately after having her vaccine, with symptoms that included all over body pain, facial paralysis, excruciating chest pain, episodes of being unable to breathe, numbness to one side of her body, and extreme fatigue. She was not being taken seriously by her family or other healthcare professionals, who were essentially gaslighting her, suggesting it was all in her head. She was being denied having an ACC claim lodged and nobody that she had seen about these symptoms would take her seriously or even suggest she file an adverse reaction report to CARM. I helped her file that report and managed to get her in to see a doctor that day to address these reactions, and an ACC claim was lodged. When we finally met in person, she showed so much gratitude to me that I had taken the time to listen to her and not dismiss her concerns. She was in tears as she thanked me for taking the time to listen and act. This is my job, as it is all other healthcare professionals, and the dismissive treatment she had endured up to that point absolutely disgusted me.

I have lost count of the number of phone calls coming in thick and fast over the last year that were from young, fit and healthy patients with cardiac symptoms after their vaccination. These are people that have never experienced chest pain, palpitations or arrhythmias before. Nurses around the world are speaking out of wards packed with vaccine-injured patients with mainly cardiac adverse reactions. I have heard stories of patients losing their homes, as they were mandated out of their jobs. I have taken calls from suicidal patients at their wit’s end. I have spoken to elderly patients so fearful of even stepping foot outside their house who are suffering immensely from social isolation, children who are too scared to take off their mask in case they “kill Grandma” from potentially giving them COVID. These stories weigh heavily on me and are not ones that I will ever forget. 

I have never in my life had mental health issues. Last year I was pushed to my limits and had to access counselling to address overwhelming feelings of despair, powerlessness and anger at the situation I found myself and others in surrounding these mandates. I was watching as the beautiful and inclusive society I have grown up in devolving into one driven by an “us” versus “them” mentality. Ultimately, I decided to get vaccinated, as I had just bought a house and frankly, the thought of not being able to be a nurse anymore scared me more than anything. I went into the vaccination knowing full well that it could result in serious side effects or even death. Now I am facing D-Day again and will need to get my booster in April if I am to continue on in the career I am so passionate about. I am at a point where I am questioning whether I want to be a part of the industry that I love; one I have given 11 years of my heart and soul to. I would lose a huge part of who I am, and my patients will lose another passionate healthcare professional at a time when we are desperately needed. So, I have finally resigned myself to the very real possibility that I will have to roll up my sleeve again to take the gene therapy “vaccine” that I do not want. Once again, I will have to struggle with feeling violated, essentially having to face having a form of medical rape thrust upon me for the 3rd time, in order to keep my career. I hope and pray that these mandates which are essentially redundant now that COVID-19 is in the community and we have rapid antigen testing available to us, all are dropped well before then. I have drawn my line in the sand. 1 booster, and I am done. I pray that those colleagues of mine that have had their intelligence questioned, their professional reputations destroyed and their careers put on hold are reinstated in their old positions and given an apology and compensation for the damage that has been inflicted upon them. 

Our country has a lot of work to do to get back to the beautiful and inclusive society we were before COVID-19 reared its ugly spiky head. I truly hope that we can get back to where we were, but I fear there has been damage done to us all that will be felt for years to come. Trust and togetherness have been eroded by these mandates and I hope that we can all come together as Kiwis again. I pray that forgiveness can be found and extended to those of us who directed hateful words and actions towards others. Actions that were guided from a place of fear and ignorance, borne from the confines of cognitive dissonance. The time to move on from this pandemic and heal the heartbreak is now.