Why is Canada's Covid death rate so much lower than US?

As someone who's gone back and forth between the US and Canada, it was clear to me that there's a stark contrast in numerous aspects of pandemic handling between the two countries. Canada travel policies imposed quarantines since very early in the pandemic vs virtually non-existent restrictions on the US side until fairly late in the game. And while the US was mostly ok with telling people to mask up to go to stores (and in some places, barely even that), Canada effectively shut down in-store shopping for a large number of product categories for extended periods of time. Even casual outdoor gatherings (e.g. casual soccer games in a public park) were scrutinized by police in Canada; whereas basically nothing of the sort happened in the US.

And it's also worth noting that policy compliance is much easier in Canada. The Greater Toronto Area alone accounts for 15% of the entire Canadian population, and this is a largely metropolitan-city-dwelling more-or-less-progressive segment of the population. There are only a handful of such hubs in Canada, and most canadians live in one of them.

Yes, universal healthcare does mean that the population largely doesn't distrust the medical establishment and I think the vaccination stats speak for themselves, but clearly there are a whole slew of other factors that can contribute to the discrepancy.

There's quite a bit of variation between Western countries. Among large countries in Western Europe France and Germany are near the low end while the UK, Spain and Italy are higher by roughly a factor of 2. The US is above everybody and Canada is well below everyone else.

If you're trying to tell some kind of story about why some country is better or worse than another, it may be quite difficult to make it fit this data.

I can see how care can mitigate deaths, but not lower infections. Anyone have insights?