Hmm I would actually disagree here. Western MSM kept harping on how New Zealand was a role model when there were so many Asian countries that did just as well. I mean they could have described how Taiwan managed to supposedly contain COVID despite being next to the so called Chinese hotspot. But nah it was New Zealand the role model despite being an island isolated from the whole universe and easily able to screen arrivals (and with far fewer Chinese arrivals than other countries).
Or they could have brought up Vietnam. Of course in 2021 it's too late to use Vietnam and Taiwan as role models.
New Zealand, Australia, Taiwan and SK were all just proxies used by the west to save face from adopting Chinese measures without admitting that they are copying the Chinese, since that would be heresy of the highest order to the western world view.
New Zealand and Australia kept getting mentioned in the press because they are white, whereas Taiwan and SK are yellow, and whites > yellow so obvious got no lessons worthy for the west to learn from.
But despite all the western effort to promote the China counter COVID model through the back door via New Zealand and Australia proxies, notice how easily the examples of both were dismissed in the core western world of Europe and America. That is because those countries are seen as lesser-whites and still considered backwards frontier outposts.
It’s only if core western nations like major European powers start to seriously outperform America that the American public would start to take serious note, which is why France, Germany and the UK are so important to America in its planned new Cold War with China.
New Zealand and Eastern Europe nations can have double digit economic growth and it would not matter as there are pre-set shopping lists of reasons to explain all that away. But if core EU nations like France and Germany start to significantly outperform the Americans economically, it would be far harder for the chicken hawks to dismiss and explain away.
