The NZ government has made their choices based on how terribly stretched the existing infrastructure in NZ is.
It’s not about a team of 5 million, or being kind, or patriotism or pride or anything else.
I live in a small seaside town of 131 000 people. My local doctors office has 10 000 patients registered. If even 10% of that one practice in my small town was to require hospitalisation, that would take up the entire north island of NZ capacity.
If the death rate was to increase (for any reason, even a large disaster such an earthquake with high mortality) by less than 10% nationwide, we don’t have enough morgues.
Even if people don’t need intensive care, but require ambulances, NZ has no facility to manage that uptick. Ambulances here are not free, and rely on donations to run.
And aside from all that, we don’t have the people, the medical staff, to manage any sort of big medical event.
When White Island erupted and there were 50 patients (I think) that was enough to overwhelm the four closest hospitals.
The NZ government is literally doing what they are because any other direction lies disaster.
That they have done almost entirely nothing in these last 2 years to solve any of these issues is quite frankly, appalling. But I don’t see how they could have done anything differently to begin with.