To that point, my grandma's retirement home was as well locked down as possible.

But you know who didn't take it seriously? The staff who worked there and brought COVID in, which ended up killing her.

There's no way of isolating them without isolating their staff, their families, everyone they interact with. With a virus as contagious as COVID, there doesn't appear to be a way to target portions of the population effectively.

Indeed, and that's a retirement home which is really the easy case. I don't see how an elderly person that lives with their younger family members is supposed to be isolated.

The staff could work like oil rig workers - in month-long shifts. Get quarantined for a week on the way in, do your shift, go home to your family. Not pleasant, but doable and a lot simpler than placing everyone's life on hold.

An improvement in testing (accuracy + turnaround time + cost) would also help significantly. But there's been little talk in investing in such a tool. That strikes me as a red flag. Instead, we're betting on the jab, and apparently that's not working out well. At all.