A full lockdown like we had at the beginning would halt even Omicron - it is not that much more contagious than the original. Unfortunately the narrative settled on it being 'mild' and 'super contagious', therefore there was not much we could do about it and it didn't matter anyway. There are practical and ideological reasons why a section of society would wish us to fail against Covid, but that is outside the scope of this discussion I feel.

Measures such as customary mask wearing in public places, better ventilation, less tolerance of the 'walking sick' would certainly have an effect on the infection rate. If we are looking at a situation where health issues become more severe with each (re)infection, then this may be a reasonable approach to take.

>the narrative settled on it being 'mild'

that's a funny way of saying "it turned out to be mild". deaths and hospitalizations undershot all the dire predictions.

Correct me if I am wrong, but I think "NPI" here means "non-pharmaceutical intervention".

What a horrible acronym! Was it coined by the pharmaceutical industry? "To fight COVID, we have vaccines, antivirals, steroids, novel pharmaceutical approaches, and then we have a miscellaneous category of non-pharmaceutical interventions."

You could've used "PPE" here. (personal protective equipment.)

It's a term of art that's been around for decades and it means something different than what "PPE" means.