[F30]

Leaving aside variants, the end game is for the virus to become endemic and everybody to encounter it every few months or years.

But you cannot do that while the non-immune part of the population is large enough to overwhelm the healthcare system if they get infected rapidly. Hence the focus on getting as many people vaccinated as possible, and keeping more or less non-pharmaceutical interventions in place.

Over the last months, removing non-pharmaceutical interventions has worked relatively well for some Western societies like Denmark (high vaccination rate) or the UK (lower vaccination rate + many previously infected), but not so well for others like Germany.

Variants change the game, but don't completely reset us to square one: Vaccines still provide some protection, but factors like higher transmissibility may work against that. mRNA vaccines can be adjusted relatively quickly.

We're seeing some congruence in the mutations acquired by different variants and most experts I listen to don't expect the virus to keep mutating forever. There is a limited number of options and population immunity will only become more broad.

On the other hand, the variants seen so far have surprised us quite a bit. Given that, it remains difficult to map out a clear path on the scope of years.

[makomk]

The UK and Germany have very similar vaccination rates averaged across the entire population, but the UK has very high vaccine uptake amongst elderly people who're most at risk whilst Germany doesn't. If you're relying on vaccines to prevent the hospital system being overwhelmed that probably has a disproportionate impact because they're massively more likely to be hospitalized.