The first months after Covid-19 first reached New Zealand's shores completely changed the political landscape.
It was an election year, and in February the polls showed it was shaping up to be a close-run race.
Three months later, Covid-19 had turned that on its head.
National's leader Simon Bridges had been toppled, and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was riding high. Claire Trevett looks at five of the critical moments.
When the Prime Minister sat at her desk to deliver a live address to the nation over TVNZ and RNZ it marked the moment she – and New Zealand – went onto a wartime footing, this time against a virus.
It had been 40 years since a leader last used the emergency provision of taking over the airwaves for a direct address to the people: the last was Sir Robert Muldoon in 1982.
Ardern used that platform to set out the battle plan: the alert levels system that has governed New Zealanders' lives since.
The alert levels flowchart was her focal point of order amidst the rapidly moving turmoil.
Behind Ardern on that day was a portrait of Michael Joseph Savage, the Prime Minister who led New Zealand out of the Great Depression in the 1930s.
At that point the economic forecasts from Covid-19 were still uncertain. The Government had already announced a $12 billion package of measures, including the wage subsidies.
As time went on, it became apparent the comparison to the Great Depression era was more and more apt.
Things were moving fast, but fortunately for New Zealand not as fast here as in other countries.
At that point we had just 56 confirmed and probable cases.
But there was also minimal capacity for testing and contact tracing.
Ardern put us at alert level 2 on that day.
But later on the same day, Director General of Health Ashley Bloomfield confirmed two cases were now believed to be community transmission: the first signs of it in New Zealand.
Ardern was not willing to be another Italy. Nor was anybody else. There were already calls to move into lockdown and companies and schools closing of their own accord.
It was only two days before Ardern announced New Zealand would head into lockdown after two further days at alert level 3.
It had been obvious it was coming, but there was a still a sense of shock in the Beehive Theatrette when the PM arrived on that Monday afternoon to say she was imposing a full lockdown from 11.59pm on March 25.
On that day, a grim-faced Ardern began by saying New Zealand had tipped over the 100 cases mark: it had 102 cases. She set out where that could lead.
"If community transmission takes off in New Zealand, the number of cases will double every five days. If that happens unchecked, our health system will be inundated and tens of thousands of New Zealanders will die. There is no easy way to say that, but it is the reality we have seen overseas and the possibility we must face here."
Only after setting out that worst case scenario did Ardern set out what she planned to do: close the entire country down.
It was one of the most extreme decisions any Prime Minister has had to make – the significance of it was something Ardern referred to before she set out the reason why:
"These decisions will place the most significant restrictions on New Zealanders' movements in modern history. This is not a decision taken lightly.
"The worst-case scenario is simply intolerable. It would represent the greatest loss of New Zealander's lives in our history, and I will not take that chance."
Ardern gave New Zealanders two days to get ready for it.
She was asked on that day if she was scared.
She replied she was not. "But no, I am not — I am not afraid, because we have a plan. We've listened to the science. We are moving early, and I just ask New Zealanders now to come with us on what will be an extraordinary period of time for everyone."
The Budget's whopping $50 billion Covid-19 package highlighted the seismic shift to the political landscape Covid-19 had wrought in just four months.
The Budget showed debt soaring up to $200 billion in the next few years, and deficits as far as the eye could see.
Normally a government would be hanging its head in shame over such figures.
This time they were boasting about it – and being rewarded with record-high support in the polls.
The road out of the crisis was to spend.
It was a Budget for the times. The cost of Covid-19 was now much clearer, and much worse, than the initial comparisons with the Global Financial Crisis.
The borders are closed for the foreseeable future.
Some industries New Zealand had relied on, such as tourism, are crippled.
Ardern's choice of the Michael Joseph Savage portrait back on March 21 had proved prophetic.
Few ministers remained in Wellington as MPs and staff scattered to work from home.
However, one minister in particular should have stayed in Wellington – Health Minister David Clark.
Clark returned to his family in Dunedin. And once there he well and truly soiled his copybook.
In the first week of lockdown, as Ardern and Bloomfield were scolding people for surfing and fishing, Clark took his branded car to a nearby mountain bike park for a ride.
He also admitted he had taken his family to the beach, about 20km away from his home.
His excuse that he had used one of the easy tracks was no excuse at all.
It was the last thing Ardern needed as she tried to ensure the rest of New Zealand abided by the lockdown rules.
Clark was demoted but kept his job.
Ardern decided it would be too disruptive to change the Health Minister at such a time.
Another politician was not so lucky: Simon Bridges.
A simple Facebook post on April 20 triggered the end for Simon Bridges.
It was not even an inflammatory post: it came after Ardern announced that alert level 4 would be extended by five days.
In it Bridges argued the extension would not have been needed if the Government had used the lockdown to ensure testing and contact tracing were up to scratch.
"Unfortunately the Government hasn't done enough and isn't ready by its own standards and rhetoric."
But by then New Zealanders had been in lockdown for four weeks. Job losses were mounting, businesses were struggling - but it was working.
The appetite for any criticism of that effort – or the woman New Zealanders gave credit to for leading that effort – was low.
The backlash was swift and brutal – tens of thousands of comments and thumbs down.
Figures in the media were copping the same backlash over anything deemed critical of Ardern or the management of the response, even valid questioning over the handling of personal protective equipment and contact tracing.
But Bridges was the one the public could vote for. The vote was a big thumbs down.
Any good work Bridges had done counted for little in the end: his constructive chairing of the Epidemic Response Committee, his full backing of the decision to go into lockdown.
The responses in the comments to that Facebook post were disproportionate to the comments Bridges had made – but that in itself was telling.
National Party MPs decided it showed two things: Bridges' judgment had failed him, and voters were no longer open to listening to him.
Parliament was still locked down and MPs scattered around the country. It brought Bridges some time.
However two polls in May confirmed the worst – National's polling was tanking after a decade in the 40s. It was all that was needed and Bridges was rolled by Todd Muller.