It really is sad that we can't work as a community to eliminate COVID like we have effectively done for serious diseases like Polio and Measles. My company is advised on policy by a physician (epidemiology) so that we can make good business decisions in light of COVID. Our exec committee recently had lunch with him and there is part of this story that few people are discussing. FACT: projections show that we will not eliminate COVID due to 20-30% of people not getting immunized. FACT: COVID is highly transmissible and each time it transmits to a new host (even if that host is a 20 year old that may not even have symptoms) there are millions of new COVID replications that introduce the opportunity of genetic variation in the COVID virus via natural defects in the replication process. FACT: these millions of evolved changes every time a new person contracts COVID will continue to run rampant and the most transmissible variants will run uncontrolled in our society. Hopefully, immunity from current vaccines will slow the new variants and the new ones won't introduce new health issues. We are rolling the dice that a new variant does not evolve that is immune to the vaccine and has similar or worse symptoms.
The solution is to eradicate the disease through the amazingly effective vaccine gift we have been given. The technology and skill that the human race has brought to bear on this issue is absolutely incredible. Anything short of a community wide effort to eradicate COVID will be a serious problem for a very long time, for everyone, as we are providing a perfect environment for COVID to evolve and become more successful. People who aren't getting the vaccine are not thinking this through.