[Arnt]

Draconian, "excessively harsh and severe."

Where I live, the pediatric psychiatry clinics are still badly overloaded due to children who coped and then, when school and social activities were harshly constrained, didn't cope. I had the impression that NZ's lockdowns, such as they were, avoided that kind of severity.

[throwaway6532]

They have definitely avoided the vast majority of deleterious effects from an overloaded health system, but it's definitely very harsh and severe to be instructed that you're now not allowed to leave your house for a month particularly when by world standards for freedom you are used to ranking right at the top. I think it meets the colloquial usage of draconian. Though I would say that word has a negative connotation indicating ones discontent at the state of things imposed on you by an authority. In my experience the vast majority of people initially supported the lockdowns and compliance was very high as we figured we just should do what we need to do and not fuss too much about it. I myself never labelled it draconian as I was in support of it, but those who were not in support of it at the time used that term.