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I'm assuming next time there's so much as a hint of the next pandemic every country will immediately close it's borders to try and get into a New Zealand situation.

Of course, that's assuming the next pandemic isn't in 100 years when we forget everything we learned this time around.

The real lesson, I think, is to not over-prepare.

Paradoxically, most of the big governments had plans in place for years, even decades, but they were not targeting the correct virus, and they had a hard time adapting to something unknown.

Next time, it will be different, and we should only be prepared to that.

What we really need is more basic research into vaccines. We need a solid theory of vaccine safety, so that we can inject people on the first day of the pandemic.

How can we ethically get such a theory? Cancer. Tailor make a vaccine targetting the particular cancer cell a given patient has. If you give this as a hail-mary to those with a bad prognosis it becomes a win-win.