‘If you think I’m a Jacinda Ardern puppet, you’re going to get a huge surprise’.

Who’s saying that, do you think?

It’s Professor Tony Blakely – the epidemiologist and public health expert who has chaired the first phase of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into New Zealand’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

And I’m feeling the same way he’s feeling about the COVID vaccination mandates. I don’t know if you can call it “buyer’s remorse” but, like Tony Blakely, I would feel very differently about forcing people to get vaccinated next time around.

So his report on the first phase of the inquiry is being handed over to the Government today, which means his work is done and a new person is taking over to run Phase Two.

You’ll remember there was a bit of political furore over Blakely running the inquiry when he was among the cast of thousands of health experts who were in the news day-after-day during the pandemic.

But it seems any concerns about him not being independent enough to do a proper or thorough investigation —without fear or favour— it seems they might not have been justified. That’s going by what he’s been saying in the last 24 hours.

We won’t know for sure how critical his report is until the Government releases it. At this stage, that’s not going to happen until at least next year. The reason the Government’s giving for that is that it wants Phase Two of the Inquiry to be well under way before we get to see this report.

Professor Blakely says his view on vaccine mandates has evolved.

He thinks we went over-the-top with the vaccine mandates. And that’s where I’m at too. And yes, I was one of those people who talked about ‘no jab, no job’, I’ll admit that.

But that was me then, and this is me now. Because, for me, I’d never experienced a pandemic before. Or more to the point, I’d never experienced such an intense public vaccination programme before.

Whether I can be accused of drinking the Kool Aid, I’m not sure. I don’t know, but what I do know is that if there’s ever something like this again, you won’t hear me banging the drum in favour of vaccine mandates.

If you think that makes me a hypocrite, you’re welcome to think that. But, as Tony Blakely seems to have done as well, my thinking has shifted. That’s something he reckons the people in charge of our COVID should have done a bit more of at the time, as well.

Now you might say that hindsight is a great thing, and I'd agree with you. But it doesn't mean you can’t change your mind, which is why I now think forcing people to get vaccinated was a big mistake.

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