By now, Americans should realize that there isn’t a magic solution that will make COVID go away. Many restrictions, such as indoor mask mandates, remain in place to protect the vulnerable and unvaccinated in states following updated CDC COVID-prevention guidance. But within two or three months of introducing vaccines for 5-to-11-year-olds, the U.S. should be able to begin winding down most of the formal and informal limits to which Americans have become accustomed—office closures, masking mandates, educational interruptions, six-foot distancing, and more. (Data should be available soon on whether vaccines are safe for children ages 6 months to 4 years and how much of an immune response they provoke in this group. But children of this age are already at very low risk of COVID-19, and because most are not yet in school, their lack of access to vaccination is less disruptive to their family’s routines.)

COVID-19 is still causing more than 1,000 deaths a day in the United States; by comparison, influenza causes about 100 deaths a day on average, and most experts will feel uncomfortable declaring the coronavirus emergency phase over until COVID deaths settle down to a similar level. Yet infection, hospitalization, and death rates have begun to shrink since the peak of the Delta surge, and it’s not premature to begin planning for an end to the crisis phase. Once the emergency is over, Americans can focus on rebuilding their lives and think more clearly about how to accelerate COVID-19 vaccination abroad—a moral imperative that would also do far more than masks or booster shots for healthy, vaccinated U.S. adults would to end the global pandemic.

At this point in our pandemic, Americans should be explicit about the goals of our public-health policies. Immunity obtained through vaccination or infection can bring a pathogen to various states of containment: Eradication means reducing the worldwide level of a disease to zero, a level achieved only for a cattle virus and smallpox to date. Elimination means reducing the disease in a certain region to zero. Control means that a disease circulates only at low levels and causes minimal harm. This is the most realistic goal for dealing with the coronavirus.