I don't think eliminating the virus 100% is a realistic expectation.
Once in a while we still see cases or even flare ups of viruses / diseases thought eliminated long ago and for which vaccines have made a thing of the past.
Some projections predict Covid-19 may be with us for the long haul in some form, even if the vast majority are vaccinated (and we've already seen more recently that even vaccinated people can still contract it, spread it, manifest it and in rare cases even die from it).
So it's likely Covid-19 will be with us for the foreseeable future, but hopefully in a less virulent form due to the combination of vaccines & natural herd immunity, and hopefully it will eventually sputter out like the "Spanish Flu" (- which itself never fully "went away," rather it mutated into other viruses, some of which became indistinguishable from the common flu and others which ended up causing other pandemics many decades later).
https://www.history.com/news/1918-fl...ic-never-ended
A more realistic goal is to reduce cases to a point where Covid drops below typical flu numbers - and the common flu itself is nothing to sneeze at: taking between 60 to 80 thousand lives in the U.S. each year (yet we've never closed school's nationwide for the flu despite the flu being far more dangerous to children than Covid-19, or had economic shutdowns, business lockdowns, mask mandates, vaccine mandates, politically-based banning of potential treatments, or changed election practices over even the most severe flu outbreaks).
Once in a while we still see cases or even flare ups of viruses / diseases thought eliminated long ago and for which vaccines have made a thing of the past.
Some projections predict Covid-19 may be with us for the long haul in some form, even if the vast majority are vaccinated (and we've already seen more recently that even vaccinated people can still contract it, spread it, manifest it and in rare cases even die from it).
So it's likely Covid-19 will be with us for the foreseeable future, but hopefully in a less virulent form due to the combination of vaccines & natural herd immunity, and hopefully it will eventually sputter out like the "Spanish Flu" (- which itself never fully "went away," rather it mutated into other viruses, some of which became indistinguishable from the common flu and others which ended up causing other pandemics many decades later).
https://www.history.com/news/1918-fl...ic-never-ended
A more realistic goal is to reduce cases to a point where Covid drops below typical flu numbers - and the common flu itself is nothing to sneeze at: taking between 60 to 80 thousand lives in the U.S. each year (yet we've never closed school's nationwide for the flu despite the flu being far more dangerous to children than Covid-19, or had economic shutdowns, business lockdowns, mask mandates, vaccine mandates, politically-based banning of potential treatments, or changed election practices over even the most severe flu outbreaks).
Last edited by Captain Steel; 11-02-21 at 10:56 PM.