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Comment by vajrabum | Hacker News Reader

Some folks think NZ is paying a price for this but it appears to be a lot cheaper than the price the US is and has been paying, certainly in lives but also economically. Here is the relative performance of the US and NZ in 2020 according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis at the US Commerce Department and Stats New Zealand. We're paying a price both in US lives and worse economic performance for the current US policy.

US 2020 Q1 -5% Q2 -34.3% NZ 2020 Q1 -1.4 Q2 -12.2%

https://www.stats.govt.nz/indicators/gross-domestic-product-... https://www.bea.gov/sites/default/files/2020-07/gdp2q20_adv....

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I think may are comparing annualised figures for the US and quarterly figures for NZ. Annual growth in NZ was consistently higher than the quarterly change in the past (which couldn't be the case for annualized figures).

NZ is an island with a population of a small metro area. Comparing the US to NZ makes no sense.

I agree. NZ isn't very well traveled compared to the U.S. or most of western Europe. And NZ's population is like 1/20th of Los Angeles County. It's not surprising that the little island handled the virus so well--it'd be more surprising if they didn't.

>NZ's population is like 1/20th of Los Angeles County.

you are wrong by only one order of magnitude

NZ has more per capita tourists than US.

NZ population: 4.89

NZ tourists: 3.7 (2017 figure)

US population: 328.2

US tourists: 79.26 million international visitors to the U.S. This figure includes visitors from overseas, Mexico and Canada.

What do you mean when you say ‘NZ isn't very well traveled compared to the U.S.’?

I had a look about and according to the things I can find, New Zealanders travel abroad about twice as much as US Americans. And keep in mind that pretty much everywhere a New Zealander can go is more infected than NZ.

We also have a lot less international clout than the US and less money. This matters.

As a country we have less people per square km than the US, perhaps by half. But the US is not vastly more populated the New Zealand when examined as a whole, and USA is nowhere near the top when you order countries by population density.

Our population is about 1/66th (5 million versus 330 million) that of the US, but our death toll is 1/8,900th (25 versus 224,000). I don’t believe the reasons you list explain this. In protecting its citizens New Zealand has done better than the average and the US has done worse.

https://www.traveller.com.au/the-worlds-biggest-travellers--...

Gee, LA county has 100 million people in it ? Who knew ...

The question is also who is paying the price. In the US, certain groups are paying more of the debt than others.

US GDP Q1 -1.25% Q2 -9%

The US reports annualized decreases.

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