Comment Re: Which sucks (Score 5, Informative) 60
Lockdown isn't the right word. We haven't had a lockdown here for months.
The tourism situation isn't as bad as it might sound. Before the pandemic domestic tourism was already >50% of local tourism spend. Domestic tourism spending is increasing sharply because NZers don't want to travel overseas. A big part of the problem for tourism operators is simply that domestic spending is more bursty because of school holidays.
Yes, if there's no vaccine NZ will have some hard decisions to make. But it is much more likely that there will be a vaccine. Even a vaccine that's not very effective would still give us valuable options. E.g. if it only works for 80% of people, or only lasts for an average of three months, vaccinating everyone and then dropping border controls would still be much better than the kind of spread other countries have had to date; spread would be slower and cases less severe.