See this is why I’m a little cautious about my state opening borders. Even though I have a selfish reason for wanting them open ASAP. The Omicron variant has apparently spiked in other states. So whilst I’m not particularly worried about my state relaxing restrictions (because we reached out vaccination goals first) I am a little apprehensive of the wider ramifications of relaxing restrictions on a bigger scale. At least right this minute. Once Omicron is contained then whatever. But people are being whiny spoilt brats and crying because of the restrictions. (Not everyone mind you. But I mean bigger picture guys!)
We did that earlier. Relaxed as soon as we were able to, only to have to lockdown again and again and again. Due to outbreaks.
We all seem to get complacent at the first hint of success. Like you said, Germany avoided the brunt but opened too quickly and suffered for it. As did we all, to varying degrees
There are different ways of being open or closed as well. Local lockdowns encourage people to remain indoors where the virus spreads more easily. Global lockdowns that restrict travel between localities is a serious impediment to viral spread.
If you aren't worried about relaxing restrictions because your your state reached its vaccination goals, then it's the wrong reason to be unworried. Germany and South Korea felt confident in relaxing their restrictions because so many of their populations had been vacccinated.
The primary factor in Covid cases is seasonality.
The secondary factor is Global restriction.
The tertiary factor is efficacy and availability of treatments for the infected.
The quaternary factor is individual behaviors such as masking and socially restricting.
And somewhere way down near the bottom of the list of factors is vaccination.
Extreme measures can be effective at a cost. These include things such as Local lockdown which forces people to remain indoors (confined space) with other potentially infected carriers. This is the sort of measure you use when you've decided to sacrifice one group of people to save another group of people.
Why is vaccination so low on the list? Because it is one of the least efficient methods of targeting potentially infected individuals. The vast majority of people who are vaccinated don't ever get exposed to the virus. To put things in perspective, approximately 266,420,034 of the 7.9 billion people worldwide have been confirmed to have been exposed to Covid to date. That's roughly 3.37% of the world. Other methods on the list are simply more relevant to the question of who actually gets infected and more effective at containing the spread among infected individuals. This is why we can expect vaccination rate to have a very small effect on the spread of Covid. In fact, no one knows what percent of the population needs to be vaccinated before it actually begins to have a meaningful impact. 80% is just speculation because no one actually knows. There's reason to believe that even 100% vaccination will not stop the spread simply because the virus can and does infect and spread among some people who have been vaccinated.
On the other hand, requiring a person to quarantine when traveling is very immediately effective for stopping spread. Treatments such as monoclonal antibodies can greatly reduce spread by directly targetting infected individuals immediately. The seasonal ups and downs of viruses is not something people fully understand, but it is unquestionably the biggest factor. The virus always spreads orders of magnitude more when it is in its most active season.
I'm cautiously optimistic about omicron. At the moment, it looks as if omicron has the potential to end the pandemic.
