A Whangārei nurse is so fed up with anti-vaccination billboards in Northland, she donned a disguise earlier this month and spray-painted over misinformation.
A nurse says she spray-painted over a billboard after becoming frustrated at vaccine misinformation on display in the region. Photo: Getty Picture Alliance
The nurse, who RNZ has agreed not to name, is increasingly worried about the number of patients she is seeing who are still unvaccinated for Covid-19.
Te Tai Tokerau only reached the 90 percent first dose milestone last week.
"It's quite a threatening sign especially towards kids" - The Whangārei nurse who defaced an anti-vax billboard
The nurse has noticed a growing number of anti-vaccination signs outside properties and when she saw one erected on public land earlier this month, targeting misinformation at children, she intervened.
"There's this huge billboard, it's pretty massive and it's on public land as you're coming in [to Whangārei]. It's quite a threatening sign, especially towards kids, sort of saying 'Covid jab kills our kids'. And that sort of set me off."
She decided to come back to the site under the cover of darkness.
"I phoned up dad. I said, 'Can you please get the spray paint out ready to go?'"
The way the message had been painted meant she couldn't "fix" it, the nurse said.
"So I just went all out and spray-painted the whole thing. So I wore like, you know, a massive hoodie and I wore a Shrek ... a Shrek mask."
The nurse felt the protests at Parliament highlighted why anti-vax billboards should be ousted.
"They [anti-vaxxers] think they are a majority but they really aren't, they need to know that," she said.
"They're just going around putting up signs threatening kids ... This is not okay. I don't have kids but ... I deal with children all the time."
She is particularly concerned that anti-vaccination and Covid-19 misinformation signs are, in her view, becoming more noticeable in Northland, than pro-vaccination ones.
"The anti-vax signs are so much more aggressive, in your face," she said.
"As soon as you hit Kerikeri up north, especially Coopers Beach area, [it's] just filled with anti-vax, the wrong sort of information, complete misinformation."
She said "there's not enough" Covid-19 vaccination signs to get accurate information out.
"We need more people out there," she said.
In a statement, the police said they "would not recommend such behaviour as it could potentially inflame a situation".
They said the person doing the spray-painting could be liable themselves for their actions, and billboard concerns should be reported to "authorities".