In this opinion piece, Tracy Lynch reflects on how COVID-era policies affected families, workplaces and communities, and how ordinary people came to enforce decisions made by authorities. She asks what evidence supported those decisions at the time and argues that accountability should focus on the records, advice and decision-making behind them, rather than blame between neighbours. Her central message is that decisions affecting people’s health, livelihoods and freedoms deserve transparency and verifiable evidence.
The hardest question after COVID may not be what government did - but why so many of us stopped asking for proof.
By Tracy Lynch - NOT A LAWYER
Government did not stand personally at every front door. It did not stand at every supermarket entrance. It did not sit at every family table. It did not personally tell every grandmother she could not see her grandchildren. It did not personally tell every employee they could not return to work. It did not personally tell every parent what medical decision had to be made for a child. A lot of that was done by ordinary people - by families, employers, shopkeepers, schools, institutions and professionals. In many cases, those people genuinely believed they were protecting somebody. And that is what makes this so difficult to talk about now.
What did we actually know?
And what were we merely repeating? A press conference is not verification. A newspaper headline is not verification. A government statement is not verification. A lawyer's letter is not verification. An expert opinion may be important evidence, but it should still be capable of examination. A court order may be lawful, but that does not answer the separate question of what evidence was actually placed before the court. And a frightened family member saying, 'You have to do this because they said so,' is not the same thing as independently knowing that the proposition is true. That distinction matters.
Because during COVID, public policy did not stay inside government buildings. It entered homes. It entered workplaces. It entered maternity care. It entered relationships. It entered schools. It entered employment. It entered family disputes. It entered courtrooms. And somewhere along the way, many people stopped asking:
SHOW ME THE EVIDENCE.
Instead, the question became: Are you complying? That is a very different society.
When policy becomes personal
People were told that vaccination was necessary. People were told masks were necessary. People were told testing was necessary. People were told particular workplaces required vaccination. People were told access depended on compliance. Families argued. Some stopped speaking. Some grandparents lost access to grandchildren. Some employees lost work. Some relationships broke down. Some parents disagreed about whether their children should be vaccinated. Some of those disputes reached the courts.
And through all of that, a very basic evidential question remained: What was the actual evidence being relied upon at that particular time, for that particular decision? Not what was known later. Not what became accepted by repetition. Not what somebody believed. What was actually known then? Who checked it? Who signed off on it? Who recorded the uncertainty? Who considered the alternative? Who carried the consequences if it was wrong?
Those are not unreasonable questions. They are the questions that should accompany any decision capable of affecting someone's body, livelihood, property, family or liberty.
Good intentions are not evidence
This is where people become defensive. They say: 'We were only trying to protect people.' That may be completely true. Many people were frightened. Many doctors, nurses, shopkeepers, employers, teachers, family members and public servants were acting in good faith. That is important.
But good intentions do not remove the need for evidence. A person can be sincere and wrong. An institution can be confident and wrong. A government can act urgently and still be required to justify what it did. A professional can rely on another professional who relied on another professional until eventually nobody can identify who independently checked the underlying fact.
Not everybody has to be dishonest for a system to go wrong. Sometimes everybody merely has to trust the person before them.
'Someone told me' is not enough
We need to stop confusing authority with verification. A person in a uniform can be wrong. A person in a suit can be wrong. A person with a medical degree can be wrong. A lawyer can be wrong. A judge can be given incomplete information. A government department can rely on assumptions. A computer record can contain an error. An official minute can be inaccurate. A model can be based on assumptions that later prove wrong.
None of that means every institution is corrupt. It means institutions are made up of human beings. And human beings make mistakes. That is exactly why evidence exists. That is exactly why records should be preserved. That is exactly why decisions should be reviewable. And that is exactly why people should be allowed to ask: Where did that come from?
The most dangerous part may have been obedience without examination
How quickly did ordinary people begin enforcing government policy against one another? How quickly did disagreement become suspicion? How quickly did a medical decision become a test of whether somebody was a 'good' person? How quickly did people accept that another person could lose employment, access, income or family contact because they did not comply? And how many of the people enforcing those consequences had ever seen the primary evidence?
That is not an accusation against every person who complied. It is a question about how societies behave under fear. History has repeatedly shown that frightened populations can accept extraordinary measures that would have been unthinkable only months earlier. That is exactly when verification should become more important, not less.
We cannot repair this by attacking each other
There is another danger now. It would be very easy for people who were excluded, pressured, injured, dismissed or separated from family to turn around and attack everybody who participated. That will not fix anything.
The shopkeeper did not write the legislation. The grandmother did not write the health order. The employee checking a pass did not commission the scientific advice. The neighbour repeating a headline did not build the epidemiological model.
The proper place for scrutiny is the decision chain: Who created the policy? Who advised them? What evidence did they rely upon? What uncertainty was recorded? What alternatives were considered? Who authorised implementation? Who monitored the consequences? Who reviewed whether the assumptions remained correct? Who accepted responsibility when harm occurred?
That is where accountability belongs.
The records should exist
If a policy was justified, the records should demonstrate that. If an emergency decision was necessary, the evidence should demonstrate why. If a restriction was proportionate, the analysis should demonstrate that. If people were excluded from employment because a particular risk required it, the underlying evidence should be capable of examination.
If a medical intervention was promoted or required in particular circumstances, the advice, limitations, known risks, uncertainties and monitoring should be visible. If a government says it relied on science, then show the science it actually relied upon. Not a press release. Not a slogan. Not a retrospective explanation. The contemporaneous file.
This is bigger than COVID
That is why this issue now matters far beyond the pandemic. A council says water is safe. What did it test for? An agency says a substance is toxic. Where is the laboratory result? A government department says money is owed. Show the calculation. A receiver says an asset can be taken. Show the authority. A court record says something occurred. Show the underlying record. An official says a meeting decided something. Show the recording and the authenticated minute. An insurer says a loss is excluded. Show the policy.
The same principle keeps returning.
Verification is not hostility
Somewhere along the way, asking for proof became treated as being difficult. It should be the opposite. Verification protects everybody. It protects the public from bad decisions. It protects honest officials from false allegations. It protects professionals from relying on inaccurate information. It protects courts from being asked to decide cases on defective records. It protects agencies from repeating errors. It protects government from suspicion.
If the evidence is sound, verification strengthens it. If it is not sound, we need to know.
The lesson
Perhaps the hardest lesson from COVID is not simply that government exercised extraordinary power. It is how quickly ordinary people learned to enforce those decisions against each other. That should concern us.
Not because every decision was wrong. Not because every official lied. Not because every doctor, lawyer, journalist, judge, employer or family member acted badly. But because too many consequential decisions were accepted without the people affected ever seeing the primary evidence themselves.
And when somebody did ask questions, too often the response was not: 'Here is the evidence.' It was: 'Why are you questioning it?'
That needs to change. New Zealand does not need more blind trust. It does not need more fear. It does not need neighbours fighting neighbours. It needs records. It needs transparency. It needs evidence. It needs institutions willing to say: 'This is what we knew.' 'This is what we did not know.' 'This is who made the decision.' 'This is what we relied upon.' 'This is what happened afterwards.' And where we got it wrong: 'This is how we will put it right.'
Because decisions about someone's body, livelihood, family, home or liberty deserve more than: 'Someone told me.' They deserve: SHOW ME.
Source
Author: Tracy Lynch - NOT A LAWYER
Article: We Did It to Each Other, supplied to eLocal.
The views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author.