Micro-managing viral transmission is probably not among the capabilities of governments and "experts".

I'm skeptical that the policy machinations of "health" experts have had any serious impact on the cyclical rise and fall of Covid.  

I suspect vaccines have helped. And certainly as more people have actually HAD Covid there is a continually shrinking opportunity for the virus.

But it has never been scientifically compelling to suggest that through controlling the movements of entire populations you can control the spread of a virus - especially a virus that is allegedly infectious without visible symptoms.  

It is simply unsustainable to shutdown the productive activity of a mostly healthy population. Even in the unlikely case that you could control viral transmission that way, it is far from clear that the collateral damage from lock downs isn't actually worse, for the vast majority, than any possibility of catching Covid.

The harsh reality may be that the virus is loose in the world and will have to be lived with. Hopefully, it will eventually go the way of the Spanish flu and become less lethal over time, ending up behaving more or less like a common cold variant.

I lean strongly toward the view that it is an engineered virus. I lean that way largely because of the behavior of the Chinese and the legalistic word parsing done by the Fauci's of the world when questioned under oath about gain-of-function research.

At some level, the policy flailing of the "experts" has started to feel like we're stuck at the 3rd stage of the Kubler-Ross model of the 5 stages of grief. Masking and lockdowns feel like we're bargaining when what we need to do is work past bargaining and depression and move on to the point of acceptance.

Quite simply, the world has been damaged. Probably at least by the Chinese but also perhaps with the connivance of some in the U.S. scientific community. We should absolutely work hard to pin the blame on the perpetrators and pursue consequences. Where there are no consequences, behavior rarely changes.

But we also need to come to grips with the fact that micro-managing viral transmission is probably not among the capabilities of governments and "experts". It's unlikely that any policies exist about masking and lockdowns which are draconian enough to ever amount to more than a spit in the river.

Unhappily, there's just a new normal now, and we're probably going to have to accept that the only way out is through.