Outbreak preparedness is not about perfection. I remember doing the Advanced Cardiac Life Support certificate when I was a medical registrar at Wellington Hospital. While that training was incredibly important, I realised that it only prepared me so much for the day I had to run an arrest call, when the hospital sprinklers went off simultaneously, making safe use of the defibrillator impossible. That day was tough, and it's a reminder that preparedness, while it's so important, cannot simulate every possible scenario. It is the same with outbreaks—decisions need to be made with imperfect information. But name a service in the health system that can scale up to demand tenfold like our testing system has done, or go from zero to 32,000 like our contact tracing system has done. We had a plan, we were ready, and we're executing that plan.