What I find curious is that some countries with less rigorous quarantine measures don't seem to have come off worse than the ones who had.
This is an interesting construct and it is used here as a reason why we shouldn't have such rigorous lockdown proceedures, but the reality of the situation is that every environment is different, from whole countries to individual households. Perhaps what you are saying might be the case, Marcel, but it might not either. What makes one group of people survive and another not? There are too many unknowns to be presumptuous about it. Each government has handled the virus its way based on its expert advice, but we really don't know what will happen if things were done differently where we are.
Some people here believe that the lockdown we have/had should be lifted sooner because of the damage to the economy, they could be right, but we just don't know enough about what might happen if we did get rid of lockdown, there's no saying things would be better or worse, but evidence says it
could be worse and perhaps for those making the decisions about lockdown that is enough.
As for comparisons with other countries, that just can't be validated because of so many variables. People here reckon that Australia is doing really well and they didn't have a Level 4 lockdown. Firstly, people in Australia think their government isn't doing enough. Secondly, what's to say that had Australia imposed a Level 4 lockdown their rates of illness and death wouldn't be less. They probably would be. Should we just accept that yes, people are gonna get sick and die, or should we do as much as we can to prevent the spread?
The struggling economy is a political football at the moment, but let's just clarify that the whole world is going through this and a small country like New Zealand relies so much on international trade that even if we went into a system that we think might help the economy, what difference would it actually make if no one is taking our products? Getting out of this lockdown won't save the economy at home if the rest of the world is not buying from us and we are not letting people in. Whose also to say that if we went back to life before this that our death and infection rate wouldn't escalate, like it has in the USA?
Political commentators and the media are not experts and are not doing the research required to make informed decisions. Governments, despite what they think are their best efforts also have to make decisions based on what they know, but even then they really don't know either way what might or might not happen if they didn't take the stance they did. And if they don't know enough, why take the risk?
Look at me changing my stance from before!