Countries quite different to NZ achieved (near) elimination with a lockdown approach. Vietnam, for example. Other countries have been successful without a lockd

Countries quite different to NZ achieved (near) elimination with a lockdown approach. Vietnam, for example. Other countries have been successful without a lockdown, e.g. South Korea. There's more than one way to beat this virus. New Zealand even made some big mistakes to this day --- not encouraging mask wearing, not testing people in quarantine --- and still pulled it off. Beating COVID19 is not easy but it's not crazy hard and you don't have to be an island fortress. Seems to me there's a lot of special pleading going on to rationalize failures of leadership and execution. OTOH I agree that lockdowns in many countries have been very poorly done. In particular, a lot of countries have used lockdowns as a delaying tactic with no clear strategy for eliminating the virus or avoiding endless cycles of infection and lockdown --- certainly no clearly communicated strategy. In those cases, indeed a relaxed lockdown with more infection might be better in the long term.