At the start of 2020, when COVID-19 hit China, I was in East Africa seeing my parents for the first time in almost 18 years. At the time, we knew very little about this COVID-19, and we thought it was going to be contained in no time—but here we are, two years on; we're still fighting it. At the end of 2019 when I left New Zealand, the country was in a mood of celebration for Christmas, and the parties—it was a good time. Six weeks later, I returned back to a different country, where people were scrambling to stockpile food and the streets were quiet, which somehow reminded me of the wartime back in my home country. This is when I realised that we were up against a tough, tough enemy that was already taking so many lives, but I am proud the core of our response came from an empathetic leader who prioritised saving lives. When the Prime Minister stood at the podium, explaining the lockdown guidelines, she was sombre, and she was balanced, and she was reassuring, as she is today, but not hiding the alarming circumstance that we were about to face.