This situation demands a huge global collaboration to fix this problem - nothing less. This risk may remain forever if we dont rise to the challenge now, cutting huge numbers of peoples lives short.
Here in the US (and in a great many other countries) this epidemic is only beginning in most of the country. There is no large scale testing program in place as there should be. There is no certainty that even if we develop a vaccine that it will work, it may be impossible to eradicate it totally from peoples bodies or - more likely, there will need to be new things learned before we are successful, like happened with HIV, so that the illness cannot remain in the body indefinitely like some other viruses do.
The thing we do need to understand is, we can't go back to living as we did in the recent past right now if we want to be successful. Thats basically giving up, and consigning large numbers of poor people to death, unless we change a great many things, ramp up our health care response. change the way we do a lot of things on a fundamental level.
This starts with the economics. Profiteering off this illness is not okay. What about vaccine cost? We need to vaccine 7.5 billion people in order to eradicate COVID-19. They also should figure out ways to test everybody, rapidly.
The whole idea that they could award some kind of testing certificate to some people and deem them able to be certified as free of COVID-19 is lacking any scientific basis because we are not certain that illness conveys permanent immunity, that it cant come back, as far as I know the science behind that assumption is unclear. Also, this illness in its current state often leaves people with permanent health issues. (Because in a subset of cases, it invades the brain.)
Also the newer "G614" (which has a glycine at position 614) variant, is claimed to
have a higher case fatality rate.
We need a better approach, one that doesn't run into this issue of the virus making some tiny change and getting more virulent.
All that said, I think
we, the human race could do this, but not without some deep realizations that its not going to happen as long as people think its just going to go away on its own like some irresponsible, inexplicably important people are claiming.
We're way past that stage where it could or would. Its not helpful to pretend its business as usual as some are doing.
Especially, they shouldn't send people into employment situations (crowded workplaces and factories) that put people into danger. Also, people should be able to wear whatever PPE they want in any work situation. Especially the underinsured and uninsured.