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Comment by hkt | Hacker News Reader

NZ and AU are faring pretty differently. AU is wracked with crisis and NZ has been business as usual for ages. The key difference as I understand it is that NZ sacrificed easy international travel for domestic wellbeing and AU didn't.

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NZ is well on the path to becoming like AU in the next few weeks - it's not at all obvious they'll manage to crush their current outbreak and won't end up like Victoria currently, and their vaccination and even testing capabilities seem to be behind Australia considerably.

Agree that there's no guarantee of success. However, the political environment and compliance with lockdowns is very different between the two countries. For example, New Zealand is seeing nothing like the widespread protests in Melbourne and across Victoria.

Give it a month

The impression I get as an internet observer from the West Island is that on the whole the NZ government has done a much better job of public communications, maintaining social cohesion, and not trying to police their way out of a pandemic than Australia has. But we'll see whether that lasts. The political environment can change - see NSW - and if level 4 restrictions last more than a few weeks I think you might see the protests start up.

AU has certainly sacrificed international travel also - there are still Australians trying to get back. Aus outbreaks were mostly from escapes from hotel quarantines, and the quarantines were in the major cities.

And NZ is having outbreaks from hotel quarantine in the middle of major cities too, exactly like us.

Australia has far more restrictions on travel.

For outbound travel Australians are required to get a government exemption to leave the country. Australia also has far fewer inbound quarantine places per capita.

Also internally most states require entry/exit permits and frequently close thier borders to one another.

Australia sacrificed international travel too. It still leaked in which led to occasional limited lockdowns. Until Delta strain hit and spread too fast for the small lockdown strategy to contain it.

Australia screwed up the vaccination strategy. They bought AstraZeneca and relied on a domestic vaccine that was being developed which failed in trials.

Then the AZ side effects became an issue and there was no backup plan.

But even the AZ rollout was a debacle with no one sure if they were eligible or how to get it. And the Prime Minster excusing it all by saying "it's not a race".

If Australia had the vaccination rate of the US or the UK (which was absolutely achievable) then Australia would still be the envy of the world.

> Australia screwed up the vaccination strategy. They bought AstraZeneca and relied on a domestic vaccine that was being developed which failed in trials.

New Zealand also screwed up vaccinations by not buying AstraZeneca - as evidenced by the fact that they're several percentage points behind Australia and constrained by Pfizer supplies from overseas with no ability to rely on domestic or Australian manufacturing.

Australia ordered AZ from overseas, AZ manufactured locally, Pfizer, Novavax and now Moderna (as well as the UQ vaccine which as you mentioned failed).

The issues with the non-AZ vaccines was that they didn't lock in early supply dates soon enough. For example, in June (which was already late for what was needed) Australia only had 1.7M Pfizer doses available[1] and now the PM is putting out press releases about obtaining extra supply from Poland[2].

Australia needed the doses in April/May, not September/October.

[1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-09/australia-to-get-pfiz...

[2] https://www.health.gov.au/news/vaccine-operations-centre-wee...

I'm not saying the Australian rollout has been good. I'm just saying it's been better than New Zealand.

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