"Relative Isolation"
Geographically absolutely. Couple thousand miles of sea in every direction. But in 2019 and early 2020 NZ was certainly not as isolated from COVID as many seem to think it was. As someone who knows both NZ & the UK well, it's frustrating to see the comparison dismissed offhand.
Take a look here for example -
https://www.routesonline.com/news/3...southern-s19-long-haul-changes-as-of-30jan19/
China Southern were flying 10x weekly
Guangzhou - Auckland direct, 10x 787-9s is not a small amount of pax at an average load factor. On top of that they were also flying
Guangzhou - Christchurch direct, again, 5x 787-9s every single week. And this is just one single airline, there were many other airlines including AirNZ itself plying the NZ - China direct routes on a daily basis. While Guangzhou is far from Wuhan itself, those flights did continue even after the virus was spreading within China. These daily direct China - NZ flights are almost certainly where NZ's initial cases came from.
Additionally, NZ's testing capability was absolutely shocking during the early stages of the pandemic. I am aware of people who were associated with one of the "clusters" and still couldn't get a test despite having symptoms, because it wasn't serious enough to have them in hospital. The country was definitely hit worse than the statistics will ever record, especially on a per-capita basis.
The UK had exactly the same opportunities available in the early days of the crisis. Both countries had time to see what was happening elsewhere before an overwhelming number of cases reached their shores, both could have had the same outcome. The fact that the UK borders were never shut, not even to non-essential travellers, is disgraceful.
Even with the high starting point, the UK's first lockdown brought cases down to less than 1,000/day in a country of 65+ million. Imagine what could have been possible if the lockdown had kicked in 2 weeks earlier and not ended with a big marketing drive to pack the restaurants to the gunwales.