Yes, that is exactly my point. > It doesn't seem possible to permanently stop outbreaks without having either reached 20-25% of the population infected, or loc

Yes, that is exactly my point. > It doesn't seem possible to permanently stop outbreaks without having either reached 20-25% of the population infected, or locking down until a cure or vaccine is discovered. You can't magically make yourself immune to future outbreaks by locking down - the only way to avoid outbreaks in the absence of widespread immunity is to maintain the lockdown indefinitely, until a cure or vaccine is discovered and widely distributed. So, it's not true that we could have eliminated the virus and been happily back to normal in the US if we had just locked down harder/better/longer. We would either still be locked down with no end in sight, or have opened back up and now be experiencing another outbreak. Not sure about China, but FWIW Australia and NZ are still quite locked down.