Thalidomide survivor Barry de Geest told a Royal Commission of Inquiry of the impact the Covid-19 response has had on people living with disabilities. Photo: Barry De Geest
Some people with disabilities are still terrified of leaving their homes, an advocate has told the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Covid-19 response.
The week-long hearing is underway in Auckland.
It is concentrating on the impact of the extended lockdown in Auckland and Northland in 2021, and on vaccine mandates and safety.
Thalidomide survivor Barry de Geest told the commissioners of the profound impact Covid lockdowns continue to have on people living with disabilities.
"They were terrified actually, and we even have people today that still won't come out of their houses because of the terrifying effects of what they were told, what the media was saying, what other people were saying, so they still won't come out into the community because they're just terrified of what could happen."
He said disabled people faced discrimination because they were often mask or vaccine exempt.
"The number of people we had crying because they were uptown or done something, and they were being abused by people saying 'put your mask on', 'think of us'," de Geest said.
"There was so much of that."
Barry de Geest told the inquiry the longer lockdowns went on, the more isolated disabled people felt.
"No thought was given to the social side of how people were supported," he said.
"It was more about having borders and checkpoints and stuff, rather than saying how can we entertain people because they can't go to the movies, they can't go out for dinner, and so I think that has impacted people considerably."
Dr Nick Long from the CARUL Collective, an international group of social science researchers looking at reactions to the pandemic, said lockdowns were a blunt instrument.
"It's important to have clarity, but clarity doesn't need to translate into a blunt, one size fits all approach, which was something that people sometimes experienced," he said.
His colleague, Dr Antje Deckert said it was difficult balancing the government's message of being kind while also enforcing lockdown rules with family, friends and neighbours.
"What we found was that the peer-to-peer policing proved highly ineffective, because not one of our research participants said that peer-to-peer policing had spurred them into obeying Covid-19 restrictions," she said.
Deckert said 63,000 lockdown breaches were reported to police by citizens during levels two, three and four.
Speaking alongside other general practitioners, Dr Fiona Bolden said the situation could have been much worse.
"If we had gone ahead as happened in other countries, we would have had extreme difficulty managing that number of extremely unwell people, and I'm sure more people would have died as a result."
The inquiry continued on Wednesday, with commissioners expected to hear about the impact on the education sector, Māori health and Auckland's ethnic communities.
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