(emphasis mine) > Why Europe didn’t aim for zero I’ll never understand. They _were damned close_. I think that's why, BECAUSE they were close to not that many

(emphasis mine) > Why Europe didn’t aim for zero I’ll never understand. They _were damned close_. I think that's why, BECAUSE they were close to not that many cases at some point. You see, humans (and politicians by extension) do not want to pay any of the negative consequences of a proper plan to take control of COVID19, but they will do the minimum necessary to deal with the current short term problem. If the current problem is small (ie "they were close") than that doesn't provide much incentive to go the extra length and pay the price to get it completely under control. That's one of the many reasons why I think this virus will linger with us for a very long time. Because as a society we can't get our act together to do the necessary thing to take control of the spread. And if you think about it, if we had the will we could have stopped the spread of ANY virus, but who cares about that, better to think of excuses why the virus won't infect you (like in the case of AIDS, "hey I'm not gay" and Ebola "hey, I'm not living in third world Africa") than do the necessary responsible thing to help everyone that might be potentially infected. So hopefully science will fix it for us.