Correction, NZ had its first cases of swine flu connected directly with travel to Mexico, the epicenter of the pandemic, 10 days after the USA identified its first cases which were community spread. In other words the virus had been circulating for some time in the United States already and just happened to be observed then. Case in point. The US/Mexico border is the most crossed border in the world with 350 million documented crossings annually and undocumented crossings in the 6 figures annually. Each crossing is another chance that the virus gets in and starts spreading domestically which is why the first case was community spread and not associated with travel to Mexico.
> Covid19 reached New Zealand before Berlin.
Maybe the first detected case but considering that Germany had its first detected case in late January in Bavaria a full month before NZ's first case, again directly associated with international travel, the virus very well had opportunity to have already gotten to Berlin and elsewhere undetected.
> Even back in 1918 the flu pandemic reached NZ in months at a time when that journey by ship wasn't much faster!
This was the massive demobilization from WWI with a rush of repatriation from the epicenter of the pandemic which had been active in Europe for some time, Spain was just the first country to admit it had an epidemic. Again, my case in point, NZ was infected long after most of the rest of world because NZ is out of the way. Thank goodness it is.