Joe Nocera, Columnist

The U.S. Isn’t Protecting Enough Blue-Collar Workers

New Zealand demonstrates what a truly effective coronavirus lockdown looks like.

April 24, 2020 at 12:00 PM UTC

Corrected

April 26, 2020 at 11:59 PM UTC

Joe Nocera is a former Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He has written business columns for Esquire, GQ and the New York Times, and is the former editorial director of Fortune. He is the host and writer of the Bloomberg-Wondery podcast "The Shrink Next Door."

Jacinda Ardern has the right idea.
Photographer: Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images

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My son Nick lives in New Zealand, which has done a remarkable job fighting the coronavirus. As of Friday, the nation of 4.8 million people had 1,456 confirmed cases and only 17 deaths. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s government is now talking about not just containing the virus but eliminating it.

It helps that New Zealand is an island nation that can seal itself off from the rest of the world. It also helps that it has a centralized national health system. But as Nick explained to me the other day, Ardern has also imposed a lockdown unlike anything in the U.S.