I suspect that COVID and its variants will be with us for a long, long time, and we should get used to the idea.

That would mean frequent re-inoculation, like the annual flu shot but with higher stakes and, consequently, more nagging from the public health authorities (I hope).

And we would get used to bouts of mask-wearing and limitations on gathering and travel, depending on infection rates and the appearance of variants.

Kinda like the olden days, before mass immunization and antibiotics, when quarantine was not a figure of speech.