The idea that zero Covid is a non-sustainable approach for countries longer term especially in the face of highly transmissible variants like Delta which can seemingly exploit the slightest crack in your border controls.
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/08/08/asia/delta-covid-zero-china-australia-intl-dst-hnk/index.html
Well, one shall not forget the ultimate objective in the present war is NOT to eradicate the damn virus, smallpox or polyomelitis style. Or to near-eradicate it as done with the plague.
It is not possible to achieve that with the flu, corona or not corona. We have known this since a veeeeery long time: all flu viruses mutates so fast, the only way to live with them is essentially damage control by re-inventing new vaccines every single year, according to the yearly virus brand.
The ultimate objective is thus to treat COVID as just one more flu-virus; delt by deriving vaccines year after year.
When you think about it this way, that objective has been partially met. We have now vaccines that can keep the pandemic damage at so many levels - from vulnerable people health to hospital saturation to worlwide economy devastation - under control.
Another encouraging aspect is a third shot somewhat improving the odds, too.
Next step is for these vaccines to be derivated
faster than variants, to screw those before they pull a Delta.
That's the crux of the matter.
So far present vaccines are able to protect people from every major COVID variants that have popped up, Delta included.
While a future variant could screw the vaccines, it won't be a return to January 2020 because we have now a "vaccine tech base" from which we can derive new vaccines to screw new variant: it is kind of race between the two.
I have re-red Kim Stanley Robinson "The years of rice and salt".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Years_of_Rice_and_Salt
The three major killer plagues in history have been, Plague (duh !) Smallpox and the flu.
The first two are now history but keeping flu under control has proven much more of a headache: vaccines already had to be re-invented each year. and then from time to time a mutated flu went out of control.
People remember the infamous 1918 flu and the more recent very close calls of SARS (2003) and avian flu (2009-2010).
But between them were two major deadly onslaughts, in 1956-58 and 1968-70. And if you think COVID is bad, these two pandemic death tolls were in the 4 to 5 million ballpark at worldwide scale.
I chated with an old physician who happens to be one of France Fights On "founding fathers.". He told me that he clearly remember the 1968 then.
Guess what ? it was as bad and deadly as COVID, with a HUGE difference:
nobody gave a frack.
In France alone, if you think De Gaulle and Pompidou went the Macron - Phillippe way: how wrong are you.
"Lockdown ? are you nut ?"
The result was also frightening: 30 000 people dead of the flu in January 1970 alone. 30% of France present death toll 18 months in the pandemic... in a single month. Ouch.
One minor trivial note: Soviet cosmonauts boss Nikolai Kamanin hold a diary of his years heading the corps; he noted in passing he had caught the Hong Kong flu, circa 1968... it was ordinary business for people back then.