Ayesha Verral - Lessons from NZ's COVID-19 response and opportunities for the future

November 2021

Ayesha Verral is the Associate Minister of Health in NZ.

I’ve started this at the completion of Ayesha’s talk Friday, 26 November 2021. As I think the interactions are interesting, at one stage Richard Blaikie says that they could easily clone Ayesha if she strayed from the path of righteousness (well I’m liberally paraphrasing there but nvm) and he was unhappy enough with the 3 questions from audience members (one mine) that were proffered that he made sure that he got the last one in before wrapping up.

If you want to watch the whole video as well, that’s also interesting as it gives a good outline of what NZ is up to. Not complete by any means, but part of the puzzle.

I don’t think Ayesha is that happy with her role. Maybe she thinks that she’s been given a poisoned chalice.

The first audience question is mine. The report that I’m referring to is “Myopericarditis following COVID-19 vaccination: Updates from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS)”