I don't understand this question at all. As long a there's >=1 case and little immunity the virus WILL spread.
ridiculous huh
No one estimates a vaccine any time remotely soon and even with one it would take years at best to achieve zero cases globally.
No, suppression was the goal. At least, the study that turned the tide on policy concluded that targeting suppression was essential.
There's no guarantee that herd immunity helps. On the other hand, we could be working all hands on deck to arrange our lifestyle AND protect from infection.
Herd immunity by everyone getting infected should _not_ be a goal. That's still going to kill many, many people.
The estimate for the US by that route was around 2.5million dead. You could probably scale that by population size and maybe reduce a bit as we get better at treatment for this disease, but that's still a big number.
I don't think we have much option other than to prevent the spread as much as we can while waiting for something like a vaccine and/or far better treatments than we currently have.
Zero cases globally will indeed be a while, if it ever happens.
We've seen that local outbreaks happen, and that local authorities hesitate to take action.
There were 140 new cases in Germany yesterday in a country of 83 million. In my city of 3,5 million there were 17 new cases. At what point would you say it's safe to not wear a mask in stores?