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Comment by captainredbeard | Hacker News Reader

Authoritarians always lose because they have the burden of accurately predicting the future, a fools' errand. It may take additional time but the heavy handed response by the NZ government will go down as a tyrannical mistake, one which will not stop the spread of the disease through their population and will have introduced great psychological harm by isolating people for so long.

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There’s no authoritarianism going in here.

The New Zealand government did what you should expect of a government: they governed.

They made a tough decision and explained their reasons why.

Public support for the lock down is high as are compliance levels with the restrictions.

Well, they do raise a lot of sheep in NZ, I can see how that translates over into the behavior of NZ 'subjects'.

Lol you wot m8? That “heavy handed response” has been NZ living a basically normal life for the past year while the rest of the world goes in an out of restrictions and mask mandates and watches the death toll climb ever higher.

The vast majority of the NZ population supports the current level 4 lockdown because of that.

Good slave, take your pills

470 days without a lockdown. Lowest death toll per capita along with China. I can see how that equates to a #NZhellhole [1] in some people's minds.

[1] https://twitter.com/hashtag/NZHellhole?f=image

Ah you’re one of those. I hope you get the help you need before you hurt yourself or someone else.

Projection

The 'tyrannical mistake' is to buy us time... We're only at 26% completely vaccinated... Once we've got to >80% vaccinated - around Xmas at current rates - We will have more choices.

We are not trying to stop spread of the disease - we're trying to buy time so can open our country back up on our own terms without killing thousands.

Losing a parent or child to the virus would've done greater psychological harm. Besides, hindsight is...

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