Misattribution of competence when the causal mechanism is distance and integration?

Today marks 100 days in NZ without community transmission.

There are key lessons from New Zealand’s COVID-19. experience.https://t.co/ACFRzdKB7h @otago

— The Conversation (@ConversationEDU) August 9, 2020

As one commenter noted - Lesson 1: Be a nation of 4.5m on an island chain far from much interaction with the world.

But I wonder if there is a generalizable rule about relative international engagement?

It is not yet proven, but it seems increasingly likely that as long as there is a modicum of national hygiene, general social distancing, and commonsense health awareness (don't mix when ill), there isn't much difference in the per capita death toll, absent specific bad policies, such as mixing vulnerable populations with infected populations.

The death toll is going to be about the same on a per capita basis, lockdowns or no lockdowns.  

The only significant variable under that scenario is, when does Covid-19 take hold?  Time and again, we have seen countries with major lockdown strategies being lauded for have everything under control.  Eventually Covid-19 arrives and the mortality curve looks like everyone else's.  

You can flatten it marginally to avoid overwhelming hospitals and you can avoid foolish policies such as co-mingling the infected and the vulnerable but other than that, it will burn though the population.  

If that is eventually the pattern, then what you end up with is a proxy for global and national integration.  New York was first because it is so globally integrated, New Zealand last because it is so remote and unintegrated.  Same for cities within a country.  There are a dozen other variables but that would be the bare-bones hypothesis.  

It is possible we will end up seeing the lavishing of praise on leaders for their policies to simply have been a misattribution.  Everyone eventually gets it, those most active and interconnected getting it first.  

Maybe.