My point is, unless we had achieved artificial "herd immunity" world wide, mutations would have occurred. Since it's quite clear we could not have achieved artificial "herd immunity" mutations were going to happen regardless of what we did in the countries who had the resources for full immunization of eligible population.
There was no realistic chance of keeping this under control once it spread beyond Wuhan.
> There was no realistic chance of keeping this under control once it spread beyond Wuhan.
This is probably our main point of disagreement then. Given that many governments did quickly get it under control, I would contend that with proper testing and quarantine during travel, it could have been extremely different.
There was a lack of global coordination, and with that coordination I think this could have turned out very differently. And I fear that we are not learning the lessons to prevent another incident precisely like this one.
That said, I'm not fatalistic, and think there still may be a chance for wiping out this disease, but I think it's only going to get harder with time.
Even with a high rate of vaccination it will unfortunately be impossible to eradicate SARS-CoV-2. Unlike smallpox or polio there are animal reservoirs. And while the vaccines are very effective at preventing deaths they don't really stop the spread. Any notion of wiping it out is simply wishful thinking not grounded in scientific reality.
The most likely scenario is that almost all of us will eventually be infected no matter what we do.
There was no realistic chance of keeping this under control once it spread beyond Wuhan.