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> New Zealand just shut down everything over a single case

It's maddening to see someone peddling this narrative in a discussion on HN.

No, that's a literal description of what they did last week:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/17/new-zealand-to...

One (1) positive case, entire nation placed on maximum level 4 lockdown where you can't leave your house except for a very short list of permitted reasons.

NZ now has more than 100 cases. I wonder how high it would be now if they didn't.

It's not a literal description of what happened.

Read the article you linked to, not just the headline. It explains the additional factors that informed the decision.

The "1 positive case" narrative is nonsense.

I'm quite well aware of what's happening in NZ, thank you, and the reason they locked down the whole nation is because that one case a) could not be immediately linked to another case, implying there were likely others out there, and b) had moved around quite a bit, meaning other cases were likely widely spread. As we now know both these turned out to be true.

Nevertheless, it is still a literally true statement that the entirety of NZ was locked down over one (1) case, because if they hadn't found that one case, they wouldn't have done that.

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