New Zealand borders closed on 19 March 2020. Based on deaths and IFR at that time, there were likely 150,000 new cases a day in the UK on 19th March. Closing borders then wasn't going to stop the spread.
Maybe a strict lockdown after the Feb half term and a total closure of all borders - including lorry drivers, could have worked.
Would it be worth it? The age-standardised mortality rate for the UK in 2020 was 1,043.50 per 100k, the highest since....
2008, when it was 1,091.90 per 100k. That wasn't an anomoly either - every year from 1990 to 2008 was higher. Even ignoring ages, the crude mortality rate per 100k was higher for every year before 2003.
While that is true, the UK "was considered" as such, both of those little words are key, especially _was_. This misperception has been overtaken by reality.
Coming to conclusions about how good countries' pandemic planning is based on how well they've done is even less meaningful, because it doesn't even attempt to deal with confounding factors or simple luck. It's certainly very suspicious that so many Covid-19 success stories were in the same geographic Asia-Pacific area, despite having very different cultures, policies and measures.
Before an actual pandemic, that may be somewhat true. although some measures are blatantly counterproductive, e.g https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/06/13/boris-johnso...
An actual disaster though, is a "can't fake it" test of disaster preparedness.
So you agree with what I said here prior evaluations were overtaken by events? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27290252