New Zealand locked down less than a lot of countries, but other than people with health problems I see no signs that people aren't going out any more due to Covid.
However due to other reasons people definitely have less money for discretionary activities, especially the youth.
And no, Covid never ended. It's still here, it's still killing and disabling people, but due to vaccines and antivirals it's less prevalent than it was.
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.
Not really.
The international border quarantine was quite extreme, but the rest of the country was (mostly) business as normal.
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.
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).
The claim meant less time. The lockdown periods in NZ were very short. That's because they actually worked.
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.
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.