Fred99:

 

Nope.  We'll never get herd immunity globally, so those who are vulnerable because the vaccine won't protect them will continue to be at risk, even if we could eliminate it locally.  Best chance is to get maximum community immunity by high uptake of vaccine, so it won't rage through when inevitably cases do arrive in the country.

 

Even if we reach the theoretical herd immunity level based on R0, it'll be like measles - with pockets of lower immunity.  Some of those will be groups of anti-vaxxers, some will be the elderly or unwell most at risk already.  As for groups of anti-vaxxers, I'd expect them not to front up for testing if they do get C-19, nor take precautions to not transmit it to others.

 

As for emerging escape variants, it's too early to know.  Needing booster shots seems likely, when there's countries with hundreds of millions of active cases and some impossible timeline to vaccinate everybody, it might be inevitable. 

 

The meaning's of some words are different to normal in epidemiology.

When epidemiologists use the word eliminate in the context of Covid-19, they mean to bring the disease under control and reduce cases to zero in a particular geographical location.  

Eradication is the word for getting rid of it globally.

https://www.auckland.ac.nz/en/news/2020/04/24/what-do-we-mean-elimination-covid-19.html

I agree with the rest of the stuff. When we open up there will be regular introduction's of covid-19 to NZ from overseas.

Thankfully covid-19 is both less harmful and less contagious than measles, so we should be able to tolerate the odd pocket of covid-19 in the community.

Just need to cross out fingers that there isn't a variant doesn't mutate to evade the vaccines. The number of daily global cases ATM gives the virus lots of opportunities to mutate.