Dave comments

BA4 and 5 are not more severe. Look at the data from Portugal and South Africa, who are already through their BA4/5 waves.

This is only happening because Japan refuse to let in vaccinated EU nationals. It happened with the US a few weeks ago. Why do you think they would ban the US and Japan but not the UK?

B.1.617 strain is being shown to be resistant to vaccines. So...

Wrong.

I understand doing this now, but what is the end game?

Zero covid is impossible globally, vaccines don't stop all cases, even if everything was rolled out perfectly globally, which clearly isn't going to happen.

Have places like Australia and New Zealand said what they plan do to long term when countries that aren't aiming for zero covid start opening their borders at the end this year/next year, if the vaccine roll outs go to plan? I would imagine residents in zero covid countries will start being less patient once other countries are allowed to travel more freely.