Fair question.

Answering it requires keeping two things in mind:

1. Just because there's a problem doesn't mean that there's a effective solution
2. Just because there's an effective solution doesn't mean that the benefits outweigh the costs

Unfortunately you can't stop every force of nature. New diseases appear every now and then and our ability to deal with them has always been extremely limited. Remember that there used to be a time when HIV didn't exist. Now it does and there isn't much we can do.

In the course of history we've only ever eliminated one human infectious disease from existence (small pox). All other diseases either still exist or mutated into less harmful strains over time. Given how little success we've had fully eliminating diseases we have to stop and seriously ask the question of why we think it's even possible to eliminate COVID. Suppose hypothetically that we somehow managed to do something that completely eliminated COVID from Canada. What then? New Zealand already pulled it off once. It spread back into the country a few weeks later. The only way to keep COVID out of Canada is to completely eliminate it from EVERY country in the world. The reality is that there are impoverished countries that will never have the resources to pull it off. That's the reason that diseases like polio are still around even in spite of having an effective vaccine available.

If we can't completely eliminate COVID we have ask ourselves, is there anything that we can do that's actually worth doing? We can talk about using lock downs or other measures as a means of reducing the spread but it's important to note that if the measures are lifted the disease just spreads out again. The benefits only last as long as the actions are taken. Given that there's no reason to think that we can ever fully eliminate COVID we have to instead ask what we're prepared to do literally forever.

When HIV appeared what we settled on was that blood needed to be tested prior to transfusion, needles or other instruments that contact blood must be single-use only and that people are advised to use condoms when having sex. The measures were targeted to specific high-risk activities that had minimal impact. Condoms were recommended but not mandated which allowed people to decide for themselves whether or not it made sense for their particular sexual encounter.

It's time to take stock of the actions were doing and ask if we are prepared to do them forever.

1. Lockdowns

Can we lockdown forever? No. We're racking up obscene amounts of debt while bankrupting our taxbase. Either the government ends the lockdowns or the government goes bankrupt and can no longer enforce the lockdowns.

2. Social distancing and social isolation

Can we do this forever? Maybe. Humans are social creatures though. A generation raised on this is going to go crazy. Also consider that we've made dating impossible. How are we going to get the next generation if men and women can't meet each other? This is going to be the most bizarre experiment in human psychology ever conducted.

3. Masking

Again, theoretically we can do this forever. Many Islamic nations have forced their women to mask in public for centuries. It's not a world I want to live in though.

4. Prohibition of social gatherings

Of all things on this list it's probably the easiest to imagine never doing again. Communal experiences have existed in every society that's ever existed though. Who knows if we're going to fuck people up by denying them it. It also has the effect of giving tech companies an obscene amount of power over our public discourse if 100% of our interactions have to happen online.

The biggest problem though is that the government, media and general public seem to fail to recognize the shortcomings of their actions. They're so wrapped up in this idea that we have to do SOMETHING that no one is asking what that something is really going to accomplish.

I'm serious, if you were in charge what would you do to protect people from COVID?

NOT by locking down healthy people and NOT by becoming a dictatorship.
Isolate and protect the vulnerable the best as you can possibly do.
Take a closer look at therapies, including experimental ones. Right now, if you catch covid in Canada, you're told to go back home and drink water. That's it.

Other than that, everything was already said by u/Nietzscheese/ , which I can't agree more with:

• This virus is a force of nature and can't be eliminated
• The benefits don't outweigh the costs and we're certainly going to pay dearly these costs
• We can't lockdown forever It's been a year already! We all remember when this was supposed to last 14 days