New Zealand edges back to normal
Half of New Zealand’s cabinet gathered this past Monday morning in the round meeting room on the top floor of the Beehive, the tiered 1970s landmark here that houses the government’s executive branch.
The other half called in on Zoom.
Running the meeting was Jacinda Ardern, the liberal prime minister who has won international renown for her empathetic leadership during the global coronavirus pandemic. Next to her was Winston Peters, the wily politician almost twice her age who heads the populist party in the coalition government.
The cabinet faced a momentous decision.
New Zealand had been in almost complete lockdown for 46 days, a step the government mandated when the country had only 100 coronavirus cases but modeling showed it was on a trajectory similar to Italy’s.
The stringent measures — only essential work and grocery store and medical trips for the first five weeks, then two weeks when noncontact businesses could open — had worked. Just 21 people, all of them over 60, had died. A couple of cases, at most, were being detected each day, and all were linked to known clusters.
Now, the cabinet needed to determine whether to continue the restrictions to lock in the gains or loosen up and get the economy moving again. It is a decision that countries such as China and Spain have already faced and that is roiling many parts of the United States. [Continue reading…]