I'll say it again: we cannot move on with it until people are vaccinated. It's not a choice. It's not something where we just say "eh well it looks like it won't get better so let's move on". It physically cannot happen.
Strong circumstantial evidence indicates that another coronavirus HCoV-OC43 caused another worldwide pandemic starting in 1889. It killed a lot of people. There were no vaccines or effective treatments. The same virus is still endemic today; the only reason it doesn't kill many people today is that most of us get infected as youths and the resulting immunity protects us later in life. People moved on.
It would be instructive to compare the virulence factors encoded in SARS-CoV-2 vs the common cold coronas.
People can move on when Covid stops making people seriously ill and compromising our healthcare systems. That is not yet, indeed the way we are going it may be never. Even if Omicron turns out to be 'mild', the next variant may not be.
To be sure, the descendants of the novel coronavirus that appeared in Wuhan in 2019 will float around the human population indefinitely. Omicron isn't the end of covid, but it could be the end of widespread hospitalizations and deaths. At least until the next crisis comes along.
Eventually people will move on. It's the human condition.
Individuals can individually choose to pretend covid isn't a thing, but society as a whole cannot simply choose to suddenly restore our medical infrastructure, fix supply chains, grow the labor market, etc. Covid's effect on those things won't magically go away just because someone says "you know what, I'm tired of waiting on covid! I'm going to be normal now!"
Adjustments to these will happen over time and humanity may "continue", but when that happens is not a choice we make.
In the UK we have issues with driving tests because everything closed down "cus Covid". Except the virus had nothing to do with it and now most of the instructors have already had their mild cold anyway.
0.2% of the population dying, heavily weighted towards the elderly, does not break supply chains.
Yes, it might mean another 9 months to a year of lockdown, but it would be there still when (not if) another disaster occurs. Now, people will get angry at subsidizing private hospitals... but I could go on about how emergency care should be publicly funded anyway. But I digress.
Oh goodness no. There’s a supply limit for medical professionals that will take half a decade to solve even with unlimited funding. And as this is a worldwide issue, not just an American one, you can’t just outbid the rest of us for migrant healthcare workers.
Granted, I have zero power. I ask because I'm curious and just want to know.