There is no doubting that New Zealand has, thus far, managed to avoid the worst excesses of the global Coronavirus outbreak.
Despite the fact that we are still only in the very early stages of this crisis, and the fact that we still know very little about Covid-19, there is no shortage of memes, social media posts and even news articles declaring that the credit for this outcome belongs to Jacinda Ardern.
However, I would humbly suggest that a more reasoned and prudent approach is one which begins by recognising that things are never quite that simple - even more so when you are talking about a global crisis involving a new virus about which very little is currently known.
This is the age old problem of causation versus correlation - we see an outcome and we wrongly assume that events correlating too it must be the cause of the outcome.
Firstly, the primary role in combating this virus on our shores lies not with the Prime Minister but with the director and staff at the Ministry of Health - that's Dr. Ashley Bloomfield and the rest of his hardworking team.
Secondly, there are still many more months of hardship yet to be played out in this global crisis. As such it seems both unwisely premature and Chamberlain-esque for anyone to be rushing to declare that 'peace for our time' has already been achieved.
Which brings me to my third and most important point...
I believe that cult-of-personality politics and attempts to deify political leaders in a time of ongoing crisis are extremely dangerous.
Even a cursory reading of the facts would suggest that the New Zealand situation has just as much, if not more, to do with good luck as it does with good governance.
We are a remote island nation with a small population, and we have a very low population density (we rank 167 out of the 195 countries on the planet for population density) - this is undoubtedly one of the biggest factors in the good fortune we have experienced so far.
These important protective factors have nothing to do with the Government, or forward planning, but they have absolutely provided us with a massive advantage in the fight against Covid-19.
There have also been noteworthy problems in the Government response to the Coronavirus that could have very easily seen us facing a much worse outcome in New Zealand.
The biggest of these was how slowly and late in the process the Prime Minister acted to enact a mandatory quarantine at the New Zealand border.
Just yesterday she declared that our borders "represent one of the biggest risks" for Covid-19, yet that major danger to our country was left without a mandatory quarantine until late last week.
The fact that we haven't had a dire problem with Coronavirus as a direct result of the Government failure to act in a timely and prudent fashion regarding our borders is sheer dumb luck.
At today's session of NZ Parliament's Epidemic Response Committee, Professor and epidemiologist Sir David Skegg also raised serious new questions about the current slow speed of contact tracing and the lack of surveillance testing in our country.
Australia's chief medical officer Professor Brendan Murphy also told the committee today that it was simply luck that the Ruby Princess cruise ship only made temporary stops in New Zealand in March. That cruise ship has been identified as the source of multiple deaths in Australia due to its stops there.
In the last couple of days serious questions have also begun to emerge about whether the current situation with PPE gear really is as good as we were initially told that it was.
When considering the New Zealand Coronavirus situation all of these factors must form part of any serious and rational judgment about the success of our response to this issue.
This means accepting the truth that, along with the positives, major mistakes have also been made, and that it is only good fortune that has allowed us to avoid the very bad outcomes that could have easily resulted from those lapses.
If we are unwilling to be honest about these factors then we will continue to remain woefully unprepared for future pandemics, or even future waves of this one, as we blind ourselves with cult of personality politics instead of learning from our mistakes.
Well said. While the government were talking about widened testing last week, I had an appointment with the doctor with flu like symptoms. As I had no connection with overseas travel, I wasn't tested. There is a disconnect between government announcements and what is actually happening. And there aren't enough critical questions being asked.