[wenbert]

Everyone did a good job. The government did a good job. The people did a good job. A lot of sacrifices in the right places.

And just last night NZ time, we had the results of the elections. Current government won by a landslide. And surprisingly a Greens candidate won in Auckland Central. On mobile - but Chloe is just great for Auckland Central!

[kinow]

Agree! Voted for her but thought one of the two big parties would get Auckland Central. Good surprise!

[c0nsilience]

I agree that they did a good job, but I get tired of seeing others comparing NZ to other countries who didn't do so well--countries whose populations are 500-1000x bigger than NZ.

[_Microft]

New Zealand has 5 million inhabitants. That would mean these other countries would need to have billions of people (2.5-5B people). I suspect you just missed a decimal when looking up the number.

Being an island and having a government that doesn't openly reject science certainly helps but they still needed to actually get it done. Which they did. Now they are in the comfortable situation that they can quarantine visitors and sit tight until there is a long term solution. Meanwhile their economy can function pretty normally.

[matthewmacleod]

The US population, as an example, is only about 70 times that of New Zealand. This is a large difference, but I have yet to see any reasonable argument as to why this matters beyond "the population is small so it doesn't count".

[tomhoward]

> I have yet to see any reasonable argument as to why this matters

The major factor that accelerates spread is the frequency/duration of interactions between different people.

So a country such as NZ, that has:

- a much smaller population

- a much less dense/more spread out population

- geographic isolation from the rest of the world

- its population split across two islands

- a small fraction of the international and domestic passenger movements that the US, Europe and Asia have

- a very small number of infection cases in the country when the world suddenly woke up to the scale of the problem in mid-late March

- a centrally managed national health system (and government)

- a cohesive and compliant society

... will have a vastly easier (like, exponentially easier) time controlling the virus.

NZ deserves credit for handling it well before it got out of control and they're deservedly enjoying the benefits now.

But the conditions that made it even possible for NZ to achieve this apply in very few other places.

I can't actually fathom a way the US could have contained the virus the way NZ did, no matter who was in power federally ("just be like China" obviously can't happen).

(FYI I'm an Australian living in Melbourne, which has partially similar conditions to NZ but has spent the past 4 months battling a "second wave" and enduring a brutal lockdown which is just starting to ease now. That was after we'd seemed to have beaten it in May, and the rest of the country has stayed on top of it. So I know what it looks like to win and lose against this virus. Though even then, our case numbers and fatalities are far lower than the US and many European countries.)

[gmm1990]

China was able to do it with a massive outbreak and the largest number of people. Clearly it has to do with social dynamics and a competent government with a lot of power. Rather than the specific size of the country

[bioinformatics]

Yes, China is an example to the world. If only my government bolted my doors shut, I'd be so happy.

[gmm1990]

That's obviously disgusting and there's plenty of examples (Korea, Vietnam, Taiwan) who didn't do that. Korea never even fully locked down. Also, I'm extremely unhappy that my government let more than 200,000 people die at least 95% of which were easily avoidable.

[moltar]

Vietnam has 3.4 times smaller population and it did great.

[bacon_waffle]

What scales such that the NZ approach would not work for a larger population?

[odshoifsdhfs]

Well, being an island a 'bit far away' certainly helped.

In Portugal I know folks that drove from London, Paris, Utrecht (Netherlands) and even Moscow to avoid the no fly laws so they could vacation here. I personally know 3 families that drove from Moscow to the Portuguese south during the lockdown period. (And I am sure based on the foreign plates I saw, various orders of magnitude more did so as well).

This is not to say it was all the foreigners, but it is much easier to control a pandemic if you can close all the borders (Madagascar anyone?) and have a smaller population. (This is also not to say NZers shouldn't be praised, but just a land border with 2-3 countries would probably see a lot of these efforts go to waste)

[moltar]

That has nothing to do with islands or not. Just lack of political will to enforce.

In Vietnam, when there was a new outbreak in Da Nang, the whole city was isolated from the rest of the country. Flights grounded. Roads closed, with checkpoints. Trains stopped. This lasted for several weeks until it was clear that situation was under control.

Some Canadian provinces had setup measures to prevent unnecessary travel.

[odshoifsdhfs]

There are 5 mains highways that connect Portugal and Spain. Then are around 15 (can't find the details, from memory) that are normal roads where you can also do the crossing. Then you have several smaller roads you can also do the crossing. If you are really really into it, then you can also cross it by walking in several other places.

Having 24/7 border patrol between two land connected countries setup and agreed over 20+ crossing points isn't something easy to do, specially during a pandemic where those agents are also needed elsewhere (and there were border patrols along the mains roads, but not close to all).

Compare to only entering by airplane where you can a) prevent planes from landing by just sending an email (exaggerating) and b) anyone that lands goes through a funnel where you can easily quarantine them.

And you can't compare a city, with 1,285 km2 with a country of 92,212 km2 (and other countries even more) and talk about border controls. Portugal also did the same to a city with some success but still there were flaws in the patrolling.

[moltar]

No one said it would be easy. But for a country to deploy even a few hundred people shouldn’t be a challenge.

If a country can’t close a road, how would it hold up during an attack or war?

This should be a well trained, standard procedure.

Canada is in between mainland US and Alaska. US citizens were allowed to drive thru without diversion. Some didn’t follow the rules and made unnecessary detours. They were fined $600,000 for that. You just need a couple of these cases to make the news to deter people from skirting the laws.

Da Nang also had small road leaks at first. Then those who were diverting via those roads were caught and punished. Roads were closed.

[viraptor]

Same in Australia. Travel between states is restricted based on how affected each area is. It didn't start perfectly for border communities, but it was mostly fixed in a couple of weeks.

[lostlogin]

This also occurred in Auckland, New Zealand. Auckland was shut off from the rest of the country after an still-unexplained outbreak.

[andrewinardeer]

Co-operation