The takeaway to me is that unless you are willing to exert extremely strict border controls, localized quarantines and hard lockdowns of hotspots, and pervasive test & trace, indefinitely, then you wont keep Rt below 1 without the benefit of some herd immunity.

Hence lockdowns should either be as minimal as possible, encouraging low-risk populations to be out and about while high-risk populations shelter.... Or, you need an extreme and extraordinary response until widespread effective vaccination.

Small island nations may find they can choose the second path (although it’s not guaranteed, Hawaii has recently failed at it) but the vast majority of the world should choose the first.

And we should stop politicizing it, because largely everyone is in the same boat and will hit all the same endpoints.