Swabian, it's not just me and my own conjecture. There's a growing consensus among the scientific community that COVID is now an endemic disease, and will likely join the disease biome as another virus like the various Influenza strains. Many of the scientists are optimistic that COVID will likely become less deadly, both as a result of herd immunity, later genetic inheritance of that immunity/resistance, and because less deadly strains will be more likely to survive and reproduce in other hosts compared to deadly ones. Maybe that last theory isn't holding up quite well, as we've seen with Delta that it strikes people of an increasingly younger age.
Regarding the idea of starving the virus out via intensive quarantines: let's review the numbers, I'll be using this graph. Cases have grown globally in a generally steady progression, even despite lockdowns in many countries (this is not, in my opinion, however, a measure of individual nation success: obviously their own specific case-rates tell the story). Naturally, it would have been easier to shut out the 15,000 global cases on February 1st, than the 43,000 cases on March 1st, a month later. You would have to wait only for those 15,000 people to go through the infection to either survival or death, and then open up. At this point, about 20 million people have been infected globally, and it's even less likely that we can bring that number to zero with even the harshest lockdowns. Furthermore, many national publics are against further lockdowns, and it would be politically inexpedient to execute further lockdowns in countries like the United States. Evidently, even the Europeans like the Dutch are taking it well, and I am sure uproar is brewing in Austria over the selective lockdown for the unvaccinated.
Now, I do think some practices were done "wrong" with the entire handling of the pandemic in my country and many others. Firstly, an early lockdown in January and February, commensurate with barring all international travel in and out, was necessary but never seriously considered outside of places like China, Taiwan, and New Zealand. Second of all, we were too quick to drop all safeguards in a rush to get back to full normalcy. The US, for example, should have maintained masked mandates everywhere, and the Biden administration should have held to keeping the border closed and keeping immigration halted. Cultural life should have been obligated to keep occupancy limits even if permitted to reopen, and companies should not have been allowed to force their employees back into the office, especially if working from home remained viable for those industries. We also should not have given the vaccinated a free pass from social distancing, either, as it is clear now that the vaccinated infected can still spread the virus: again, we all should have been obliged to social distance and test regularly for the duration of the pandemic, not just during ebb periods.