.
So any "expert" who said it's impossible, or promised wildly optimistic timelines should go on your naughty list of self-important idiots. This includes most talking heads in German politics and media, for example.
Another "how to spot a bad expert/attention whore" top tip: Anyone claiming that the pandemic will
never end unless some arbitrary goal (mostly: vaccination) is met.
This is not true, simple as that. Anyone claming "we will have to live with spending a few months in lockdown each winter" is a fearmonger.
Having a vaccine or medicine or faster tests available will determine how quick the pandemic ends and how many people die before it does. But our bodies have amazingly different immune systems that react to the same virus in different ways (one of the things that makes large-scale vaccine studies so important and vaccine development so hard). This gives us the evolutionary advantage that no, or only very few pathogens have the power to kill us all. Which is how humankind survived the centuries until the advent of modern medicine, by the way, without even having the possibility to socially distance for longer periods of time.
So what we are doing here, socially distancing as much and as long as we do to flatten the curve, is making sure that as few people as possible die until medicine caught up. The longer it takes, the more people die. And at some point, maybe we will have to declare defeat and let the virus run it's course. I don't believe we will have to do this, but it's the worst case. Then, it's a question of how many people die. A few million? A few hundred million? Maybe a billion? It's certainly possible, with the current mortality rate being around .5% before even hitting Africa. But humankind will prevail due to the robustness of our immune systems, and it will do so in a not socially distanced way.
Same holds true for "not enough people will vaccinate" - the more people are protected, the less people die.
But what if the virus mutates?
Here's my personal opinion as someone who knows statistics - any siginificant mutation would be good news right now. The virus occupies a sweet spot of being benign in most cases, so it can spread, but being severe often enough to become a public health threat. So if it mutates and becomes more severe - good! Less asymptomatic cases make isolation of spreaders easier and help to control the virus, while the more visible threat to personal health enhances compliance with protective measures. But it it mutates and becomes less severe, with even more mild/asymptomatic cases, it's good news as well, since the load on the healthcare systems drop and we don't have to fear getting sick any more. People will just have a cold more often.
Bottom line: Pandemics end as our immune systems adapt, and most mutations are worse for the virus than for the hosts. Let's just make sure as little people as possible die along the way.