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Comment by mvdtnz | Hacker News Reader

What? NZ had one of the strictest, most prolonged and most extreme lockdown regimes in the world. Especially Auckland.

NZ had very strong lockdown but once the country had zero covid there were months of no lockdowns at all.

Other countries had longer lockdowns or even when they didn't people were not going to concerts etc.

Yep, as a Kiwi living in UK I actually went back to NZ to redo my visa about December 2019, then that was all sorted and I returned about late Jan-early Feb 2020.

I had a stopover in Bangkok and _everyone_ was wearing masks. Not just Asian people, _everyone_. And that's when I was like "oh...this covid thing in the news is gonna be a bit bigger than we thought".

Then I land in the UK after that and all my friends & colleagues either haven't heard of covid or aren't really bothered by it ("it won't come here"). Was back at work for 2 weeks, then the first lockdown hit.

And we had lockdown, after lockdown, after lockdown. I would walk to the supermarket (the one thing we were allowed to do as per the rules) and be walking past parks filled with moron families socialising in the middle of lockdown.

The UK had so many long lockdowns because people here are quite selfish and cannot follow rules - and before people take offence - this is in contrast with NZ culture. There's much more "me me me" and "mine mine mine" culture here in the UK.

Not really.

The international border quarantine was quite extreme, but the rest of the country was (mostly) business as normal.

Our level 4 lockdown was scored at 95/100 ("extreme") by the Oxford Coronavirus Government Response Tracker. Our border lockdowns and MIQ system were extreme and very prolonged stretching into 2022 and even impacted returning citizens.

Our level 4 lockdown didn't last very long.

The strictness index (which is what I'm assuming you're referring to) varied over time as the response changed.

The claim I was initially responding to was, "New Zealand locked down less than a lot of countries". Not specifically length. NZ lockdown was especially strict in some regards (level 4, border lockdown) and especially prolonged in others (Auckland lockdown, border and MIQ).

we just locked down quick and strict, we then were one of the only places you could go about life relatively normally without too much worry while the rest of the world went through comparatively ineffective lock downs and rrestrictions.

The claim meant less time. The lockdown periods in NZ were very short. That's because they actually worked.

Yes, also because I imagine people generally followed the dog damned rules there.

It's also because the rules were strict enough to achieve their stated purpose.

Yeah, we had a very strict initial lockdown, and closed the border, once the number of cases went to 0 we opened up again, we then had regional lockdowns after cases broke the border quarantine.

I’m guessing you weren’t in Auckland?

You Aucklanders are still really hung up on that extra lockdown you got because Delta turned up.

As in, the most lethal variant of Covid.

But never mind that, it was bad for the local economy, right? You know what's worse? Excessive deaths due to Delta.

I agreed with the lockdown and still do. I was pointing out that for a lot of us it was far from business-as-usual for a significant chunk of time.

I hear people describe their lockdowns and how difficult shopping was, and work, and seeing friends.

That ceased in Auckland, and was policed hard, it was very aggressive.

And the worst part of our 7 day lockdown? The first 3 months.

2 weeks to flatten the curve

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