Summary
New Zealand’s royal commission into its Covid-19 response found vaccine mandates were reasonable based on available data but acknowledged they harmed social cohesion.
The report praised the country’s elimination strategy for achieving one of the lowest Covid death rates among developed nations while preventing healthcare system collapse.
However, it criticized prolonged lockdowns, weak health system preparedness, and a lack of planning for future crises.
Commissioners urged broad investment in pandemic readiness and emphasized the importance of both frontline and planning staff.
A second phase of the inquiry will review vaccine harms and conclude in 2026.
Most places had some type of shelter in place orders for a period of time that was difficult for people to handle. I never thought your comment was anti-vax.
Here’s the thing, it was a global pandemic, any decision a government made was only going to mitigate disaster, not prevent it entirely. Either a lot of people died or a lot of people had a really difficult time. I tend to think preventing deaths comes first. If your argument is NZ wasn’t flawless in their handling of the pandemic response, sure, no one was. But they did a better job than almost any other country. Zero countries had a satisfied populous after the pandemic. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. You’ll learn from it and hopefully do even better next time.
Here’s some perspective, in the US we had more people die in the pandemic than any other single event in American history. More than WWII, more than the Spanish flu, more than the civil war, etc. The damage to our psyche from all that death, far exceeds 4 months in lockdowns and vaccine mandates. Over 1 million dead here, be grateful your country at least sought to keep you alive.
I am grateful for how NZ handled it. I’m mostly critiquing the very end of the pandemic when the government started going against ministry advice. I appreciate how lucky we were. I don’t know anyone who died from covid.