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“Tourism is New Zealand's largest export industry in terms of foreign exchange earnings. It directly employs one in eight New Zealanders.“

NZ is highly connected, and it gets a significant number of tourists from China. Summer is the high season for tourism.

So if anything, NZ should be hit harder than many less connected states/countries.

Still easier to seal the border when you're an island.

And summer matters because most scientists think hot weather slows the virus' ability to spread.

Sure, but the border was sealed after 100s of thousands of tourists, and hundreds of infected cases arriving from overseas. This was before we had any ability to test for the virus. Returning NZers were asked to self-quarantine for two weeks, and I’m guessing the majority did.

NZ has temperate weather - it is not a hot country: https://weatherspark.com/m/144837/3/Average-Weather-in-March...

In March in Christchurch (approx 1/10th NZ population) the temperature would be called “cool”. I think you are rationalising.

Most of the countries that ran balanced budgets performed well : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_governmen...

Actually it's been autumn here for 2 months.