The first time round wasn't the main thing that NZ basically shut itself off from the world? I was generally supportive of the sort of measures much of the world implemented restrict the spread of covid (widespread testing, masks, vaccinations, encouraging WFH, etc) however to me both NZ and China's approaches didn't seem feasible for most of the world.

So if I understand correctly NZ had a short hard lockdown to reduce cases to zero and then maintained it by severely restricting and controlling arrivals from abroad. I live in a Central European country that simply cannot seal itself off from the world like NZ did, we have open borders within the EU via Schengen (a good thing IMO) but there's very little chance of every country in the Schengen area agreeing to follow this model. This means virus carriers would inevitably enter the country, cause an outbreak of cases, necessitating repeated lockdowns and the public would quickly rebel against the measures.