I don’t know about a New Zealand path, but I do think that there would have been a much more significant response.
Consider that to a significant degree, populations seem to be fairly good at maintaining COVID-19 spread to a constant rate (ie. an R_t of around 1). This seems to be based on feedback mechanisms that operate through hearing news of the virus, through official channels, mainstream media, and social media. For instance, if you hear that the government is telling you not to go out and that the hospitals are full and that many people are dying, you will likely comply, but once those are working, you will become less cautious, causing the cycle to repeat.
I would suspect based on this that a more dangerous disease (either higher IFR or higher infectivity) would result in more cautious behavior, likely causing a flatter behavior rather than the peaks that we have had with COVID-19, but the response would be substantially the same. That said, if it was especially more dangerous (black death or smallpox levels), then a substantially different response might be possible.
I don’t know about a New Zealand path, but I do think that there would have been a much more significant response.
Consider that to a significant degree, populations seem to be fairly good at maintaining COVID-19 spread to a constant rate (ie. an R_t of around 1). This seems to be based on feedback mechanisms that operate through hearing news of the virus, through official channels, mainstream media, and social media. For instance, if you hear that the government is telling you not to go out and that the hospitals are full and that many people are dying, you will likely comply, but once those are working, you will become less cautious, causing the cycle to repeat.
I would suspect based on this that a more dangerous disease (either higher IFR or higher infectivity) would result in more cautious behavior, likely causing a flatter behavior rather than the peaks that we have had with COVID-19, but the response would be substantially the same. That said, if it was especially more dangerous (black death or smallpox levels), then a substantially different response might be possible.