Actually, yeah. That would mean on average an infected person would infect less than one person and thus after a short while we converge on a zero infected pop

Actually, yeah. That would mean on average an infected person would infect less than one person and thus after a short while we converge on a zero infected population; as an infected person you either get well and unlikely to get infected again or die. Vaccines work probabilistically and at scale. You need everyone to get the vaccine. If you have pockets of "inoculation" and give enough space to the virus to evolve through retransmission or too long to live, well tough luck. This is the tool we have. And historically pandemics destroyed us. Not sure what we hope for here.