It is also worth considering that the maritime bubble is employing strategies in addition to business closures that likely has a lot more to do with the region'

It is also worth considering that the maritime bubble is employing strategies in addition to business closures that likely has a lot more to do with the region's success. For example: most people entering the region must go through two weeks of self-isolation. When infection rates went up in the fall, self-isolation became mandatory for most people when travelling between provinces within the region. This made it much more difficult for the virus to be reintroduced after it was more-or-less eliminated from the regions. With reduced numbers in the fall it was also practical to guess where the virus may be spread, which resulted in more targeted business closures. Other factors, such as timing, undoubtedly played a role. Extremely low infection rates at the start of the school year meant that the respective governments weren't pressured into opening schools prematurely (i.e. they could open on schedule) and the delayed outbreak in the fall meant that tightened restrictions around Christmas were better accepted (e.g. people could see what was happening in other parts of the country). The reasons for bringing this all up is more to point out that there was a lot going on besides mandatory lockdowns or business closures. I suspect that it will take years to collect and analyze data to get a coherent idea of how policies interacted and how to employ them effectively. But that is all a moot point for the period the study examined (early in the pandemic, when we were still trying to get a grasp on how the virus spread) and it may not be relevant at the current point of time because the initial response tainted people's emotional responses.