At the end: "provided there are no new variants…" Does anyone actually believe there will be no new variants? That seems like hoping we don't get any more inf

At the end: "provided there are no new variants…" Does anyone actually believe there will be no new variants? That seems like hoping we don't get any more influenza variants (and flu is back up again this year, btw). Of course we will get new variants, we will always get new variants. Was this statement made in jest?