March 23, 2020: The day that changed our lives. Video / Mark Mitchell / Chris Tarpey / AP
Stay at home. If you don't, thousands of people will die needlessly.
It was a year ago today that Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced an imminent move to level 4 lockdown, but the memory of that moment remains clear.
The edict wasn't unexpected, but it was still sucha gobsmackingly surreal thing to hear.
"I remember seeing on your face the same look I had on mine: A pale, 'world is closing in' expression," a fellow journo at the presser told me later.
Around the country, there were surely minor brain explosions at the enormity of the announcement, but also tears of relief among health experts who'd been calling for it for some time.
A year ago today, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern stepped to the podium in the Beehive Theatrette and told the country that a move to level 4 lockdown was imminent. Photo / Mark Mitchell
"If that happens unchecked, our health system will be inundated, and tens of thousands New Zealanders will die ... It would represent the greatest loss of New Zealanders' lives in our country's history."
Tragedy was already unfolding in Italy and had started to grip the United States, where more than half a million people have now died from Covid.
To avoid that, all New Zealanders had to self-isolate.
"These decisions will place the most significant restriction on New Zealanders' movements in modern history," Ardern said.
The New Zealand Herald front page of March 24, 2020.
"I do not underestimate what I am asking New Zealanders to do. It's huge. And I know it will feel daunting."
She also prepared Kiwis for what to expect. Cases would rise. Things will get worse before they got better. But we could avoid what was happening overseas.
No one knew how it was all going to play out, except for the inevitable and universal rush for the toilet-roll aisle in supermarkets.
A year on, given how everything was shrouded in so much uncertainty, it's remarkable how neatly reality seems to have aligned with predictions at the time.
For the most part, shops closed, streets emptied, and people stayed home as the chains of transmission were broken in pursuit of elimination. If we had stuck with suppression, like Britain and the US has, we are likely to have suffered about 10,000 Covid deaths. Instead, we have had 26.
The borders remain closed while we wait for vaccinations to make us protected here, as well as establish enough global immunity.
Some setbacks and a handful of new community cases were inevitable throughout the rest of the year, and Auckland has had to endure three more lockdowns, but New Zealand is ultimately walking the path of elimination successfully.
While Londoners and Californians remain in self-isolation, Kiwis enjoyed a summer of festivals, and took advantage of the lack of international visitors in the country's most gorgeous destinations.
Some things have worked out better than expected, including the astonishingly quick development of vaccines, which were expected to take up to two years.
One thing that hasn't come to fruition is a Covid-free travel zone, but a quarantine-free transtasman travel zone is, we're told, not far away.
Deserted Auckland City motorways during level 4 lockdown last year. Photo / Dean Purcell
In hindsight, the lockdown was necessary and only worked because everyone played their part - just as Ardern had asked them to.
"Together we have an opportunity to contain the spread and prevent the worst," she said a year ago.
"I would rather make this decision now, save those lives, and be in lockdown for a shorter period than delay, [and] see New Zealanders lose loved ones.
