In early 2020, we had a low understanding of COVID 19, there was no vaccine and it was infectious and put people in ICU, which had limited capacity; closing borders and lockdowns sort of made sense.
18 months on and our understanding is much better, there’s several vaccines and the new strains are more infectious, but generally less lethal; the problems we have now is people spreading it because they have no symptoms. There is no threat to ICU capacity from COVID.
Yet, here we are rooting the economy and locking down citizens every time there are 1 or 2 cases. The rest of the world has moved on and realised case numbers are no longer a useful metric, and COVID will be with us for the long term, but managed like Flu. Not Australia, or NZ.... there seems to be a nationwide panic every time there’s 1 case. 16,000+ cases in the UK yesterday, but they are getting on with it and planning holidays because the vaccine rollout wasn’t half arsed and they know case numbers are less relevant than hospital admissions or deaths.