[jfnixon]

Australia (and New Zealand) have no clear strategy to defeat the virus. They have won the opening battle and are claiming the war is over. Unless Oz and NZ cut themselves off from the rest of the planet, no, the virus war isn't over.

Herd immunity through vaccine or infection is the only rational strategy for a disease like C19. There is no vaccine, and possibly will never be a vaccine. Sorry to be a realist.

[6nf]

Australia's strategy started off as 'flattening the curve' and as far as I know officials never stated that eradication is now the strategy. There's still about a thousand confirmed live cases and of course there's many thousands more that are not symptomatic or otherwise carrying covid without being diagnosed. Eradication as far as I can tell is not realistic.

[roca]

NZ, at least, has a clear strategy to defeat the virus: eradicate the virus internally, mandatory 14-day quarantine for everyone entering the border (and only NZ residents plus a few essential workers are allowed to enter) to keep it out, intense contact tracing and testing to snuff out outbreaks from cases that slip through. (I think this is also the Australian govt strategy but I haven't been watching their press conferences.)

Sure, the war isn't over, but it's at least plausible this will be effective for a long time. Versions of it are working in China and a number of other countries that were able to stop the spread in time.

If there is never a vaccine, then there will be harder decisions for all these countries in the future about how to deal with countries that failed to defeat the virus. It seems fine to worry about that later.