New Zealand's Pandemic Plan to Legalise Vaccination by Force

The Ministry of Health's Pandemic Plan

Last month, New Zealand’s Ministry of Health published an interim update to its Pandemic Plan. The Pandemic Plan they used during the Covid pandemic was published in 2017, so if you thought things were draconian last time, just you wait until the next one.

The Ministry says that whilst “the plan is focused on respiratory pathogens, such as influenza and COVID-19, it can be adopted and applied (with adaptations as necessary to any pandemic, regardless of the nature of the pathogen and its severity”. This translates as meaning that they can do what they like and whenever they like, so long as a pandemic is declared, whether or not that pathogen is dangerous or not.

Page 125 of the Pandemic Plan is where some of the dangerous text lies, detailed under the heading of ‘Special powers’.

Special powers are authorised by the Minister of Health or by an epidemic notice or apply where an emergency has been declared under the Civil Defence Emergency Management Act 2002.

All that needs to happen for the following draconian powers to apply is a declaration of an emergency. It is so ambiguously worded that it doesn’t even sound like the emergency needs to be a pandemic.

The power to detain, isolate or quarantine allows a medical officer of health to ‘require persons, places, buildings, ships, vehicles, aircraft, animals, or things to be isolated, quarantined, or disinfected’ (section 70(1)(f))

In an instant, a medical officer can suddenly detain, isolate or quarantine you.

The power to prescribe preventive treatment allows a medical officer of health, in respect of any person who has been isolated or quarantined, to require people to remain where they are isolated or quarantined until they have been medically examined and found to be free from infectious disease, and until they have undergone such preventive treatment as the medical officer of health prescribes (section 70(1)(h)).

This is where it gets worse. Some jobsworth medical officer will have the power to prescribe preventative treatment to anybody who has been isolated or quarantined. One can assume that ‘preventative treatments’ are primarily referring to vaccines.

Not only that but the officer can keep you isolated or quarantined until you have been medically examined (i.e. had a swab shoved as far up your nose as possible) and the PCR test has given you the all clear. But even if it does give you the all clear, if you are in isolation or quarantine, you will remain there until you have been vaccinated.

Section 71A states that a member of the police may do anything reasonably necessary (including the use of force) to help a medical officer of health or any person authorised by the medical officer of health in the exercise or performance of powers or functions under sections 70 or 71.

But it gets even worse still. The jobsworth medical officer can get his bully boy mate in the police to do anything reasonably necessary to get you vaccinated. And that includes the use of force.

Keep an eye out for similar wording starting to be proposed in your country. Let’s nip this in the bud before an emergency is declared because once it is, there is no going back.