One thing:
As for the other end of the spectrum—which is, why can’t we just eradicate this virus?—that’s also impractical for a variety of reasons. There are reasons why we have, to date, only managed to eradicate one human disease—smallpox—with two or three others that have been just on the edge for a long time. It’s very, very difficult to do.
Fair enough, but it kind of elides the "eradication" vs "elimination" distinction.
It's certainly possible to eliminate the virus from a community. I live in such a community - no local cases for months in my state, SA. We have approx the same population as N. Ireland and over the whole course of the pandemic we've had about 500 cases (70%+ of them being international arrivals) and 4 deaths, figures which N. Ireland is exceeding every day. Victoria, which had a per capita new infection rate bigger than the UK's at the end of July, has now had 6 days without a new infection. Etc etc etc.
We have had to close borders to achieve this, but it has been achieved & there's no absolute reason why the UK couldn't do the same. Of course you could say that the trade-offs aren't worth it, but I haven't seen anything like a real effort to even work out what they would be, let alone a benefits/harms analysis. It just seems like a big blind spot.
