[lynnetye]

I live in SF but was in New Zealand just 9 days ago. At the time, there were 6 confirmed cases and NZ had already put in place a 14-day self-isolation policy for travelers. Seeing how things _could_ be handled (and watching the U.S. from afar) made it extremely difficult to "go back home." I felt so much safer there. W/ all of that said, I'm actually surprised Arden didn't lock things down sooner.

[robocat]

I think the government has failed to prepare everyone, almost misleading us with lack of worry or urgency over the last many weeks. We obviously could have begun some actions months ago (I started acting on the 10th February, Taiwan started acting strongly on 31st Dec). Many people and businesses have been caught out badly in NZ.

However, I have some trust that our government has been actively measuring the signals needed to know when to shutdown, and I am now really happy to see action.

I have seen many people I would expect to be smarter downplay this (Ioannidis, Musk, etc), and the failure of most western countries to act, so I don’t have too many hard feelings about what we could have done better...

NZ has a lot to learn from Taiwan, Vietnam, South Korea, Japan, and other countries that prepared properly and haven’t had to shut down their economies.