[robocat]

> with far less international travel to it than literally the rest of the Western World

Did you make that up? From 2018 data https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/st.int.arvl?view=map

Tourists to NZ: 3.7M population: 4.9M

Tourists to US: 80M population: 327M

And NZ tourism is mostly during our summer, so Jan/Feb/Mar are busy. “Tourism is New Zealand's biggest export industry, contributing 20.4% of total exports.“

> warm island nation

Irrelevant: compare NZ to states with equivalent temperature and population in say February and then compare your death rates.

About 1/3 of NZ cases are NZers returning from overseas, which makes NZ numbers even better: https://www.newsroom.co.nz/2020/04/19/1101216/covid-19-in-nz...

[Taniwha]

Yeah - people have to remember that they've grown up with maps where the northern hemisphere is twice the size of the southern. In reality NZ is roughly as long as the west coast of the US and covers roughly the same latitudes (and range of climates, though they're not as continental).

We have been very lucky that the govt put incoming people into voluntary lockdown quite early, China first, then everywhere - that means that lots of cases occurred in isolation and didn't spread (seems like we've received probably more cases from the US than elsewhere), of course some people were stupid, we kicked out some tourists who wouldn't do it.

5 new cases yesterday nationwide, and a continuing lowering trend. Still ~400 people with active cases so we have to be careful - we're nominally getting out of "level 4" lockdown next week, our "level 3" is roughly where California is now, that's predicted to last 2 more weeks - then apart from international travel, and at risk people still taking care we will largely be back to normal. Of course one mistake could scupper all of this.

[iateanapple]

You are only looking at tourism - now add in business and personal travel.

For example JFK international airport alone gets around 30 million international passengers a year.