> Masks and social distancing and banning birthday parties are not about speeding up or ending the pandemic but slowing it down (to minimize deaths) until a vaccine is ready. This is what 'flattening the curve' is all about.

Not quite. NZ took the route of hard lock down early, 30 days (2 infection cycles). They basically managed to get covid to burn itself out, so they're just dealing with imported cases, and contact tracing the heck out of out them to bust any potential clusters.

Canada's lockdown isn't nearly as long, and people didn't take it nearly as seriously. PHAC dragged their heels on mask use; and now on rating COVID as potential aerosol risk. We did it all half-assed, the province didn't use the time to really amp up contact tracing, learning techniques from jurisdictions that had success, such as South Korea, or Taiwan; nor did we really make testing work during the summer lull. The Feds didn't / can't squeeze some kind of national standard in dealing with things, in part because of the minority government, and in other parts of not knowing when doing the right thing matter more than dealing with idealists bitching about divisions of power.

We get cold faster and longer, and people tend to stay inside, so there can be more clusters. I'd expect things to get worse.

In this situation, NZ has unique geographical advantages. Others that have tried similar measures without those advantages haven't found the same success. I think most European and North American nations recognized very early on that NZ-style elimination was not a viable choice for them.

I agree with everything you say about Canada, which is another reason why I wouldn't put it in the same category as NZ.