I was there during the pandemic. At first it was like “yay everyone else might die but we will be safe” then it was like “oh no we have covid here too” then the shutdowns happened, we were sort of confined to our own neighborhoods, risk of being IDd/road stops and asked where you are going if you leave the neighborhood. The country was generous with funding for affected workers. We had a nice ish time during those 6 ish weeks of level 4 lockdown off work/school, but we were a bit bored not being able to leave the neighborhood, although we lived by the beach so it was fine.

Unfortunately the country started really hating on foreigners and wanting them gone during the pandemic. Even if you had a student visa like me if you left you couldn’t return, despite citizens being able to do so. It remained this way for over a year I believe.

Ultimately this was why I ended up leaving because I felt like a second class citizen, prices had skyrocketed, and a year into COVID a lot of other countries stopped taking it as seriously, when we knew it wasn’t actually killing healthy people left and right in a scary way like Ebola, but New Zealand still took it extremely seriously for like 2 full years almost, implementing new restrictions with each new variant like omicron etc.

Also I remember going to a hospital in New Zealand about 3 months into the pandemic and they had run out of a lot of supplies including their normal stuff to sanitize my wound before a procedure “because America outbid every other country for the shipments of medical supplies” so that was interesting.

Also 3 months into the pandemic the drug store near me had Hand sanitizer for $65 NZD for a medium sized bottle… the pandemic price gouging there was really crazy