President Joe Biden’s CDC announced new guidelines last week, recommending that people fully vaccinated against COVID-19 wear masks indoors again, especially when they are with unvaccinated individuals.

Whatever the merits of this thinking (and we are unpersuaded), it is implicit acknowledgment by the Biden administration that efforts to contain the virus have failed, as they were doomed to from the outset. Scientists and doctors have found ways to mitigate the disease’s effects through vaccination and treatment, but it will keep spreading anyway.

The CDC’s working theory is that vaccination, even if it dramatically reduces the severity of infections in those who get the shot, does not prevent transmission of the virus to the unvaccinated. Even if that theory is true, it will be insufficient to make people mask up again. Neither will

Humanity’s victory over COVID-19 is imperfect, just as it is over many other ailments. There will still be daily deaths from the virus, but we should expect them to taper off as more people are vaccinated. Those deaths will also be concentrated among people who refused vaccination despite its availability.

further societal lockdowns help; they didn’t help the first time around, when the virus was more dangerous because millions fewer people were immune. The answer is to isolate those rare people unable to develop immunity, and to keep working to improve vaccines and treatment methods to mitigate COVID’s effects.

This is not to give up hope, for vaccinations and treatments have brought COVID mortality rates to their lowest since the pandemic began. But containment or eradication will not happen in the foreseeable future, or possibly ever. Ideally, infections will gradually become less dangerous.

Humanity’s victory over COVID-19 is imperfect, just as it is over many other ailments. There will still be daily deaths from the virus, but we should expect them to taper off as more people are vaccinated. Those deaths will also be concentrated among people who refused vaccination despite its availability.

It is too late to return to pandemic restrictions, even if that were desirable. That’s why Barack Obama feels confident ignoring Biden’s guidance and inviting 700 people over for his birthday. That’s why Mayor Muriel Bowser, even as she crams new mask mandates down the throats of D.C. residents, is seen at public celebrations, maskless (although she is lying about that to make it seem like she cares).

Facing a transmissible virus, containment should be abandoned as an unrealistic goal in favor of mitigation. The world cannot be turned inside-out again to protect vaccine refuseniks from their own choices. That wouldn’t work anyway even if it were tried.