Four successive waves of COVID-19 have buffeted the United States for the past year and a half. With each wave, we have bet on different measures to push us through: First, public health measures, then drugs and treatments, and now, with our fifth wave, we hold out hope for vaccine-led recovery. But from the outset, we have underestimated this virus and its ability to manoeuver the public health battleground; it is escaping the best defenses we are able to muster and finding new avenues of attack.

In this paper, the author proposes a multimodal strategy for long-term COVID control, one that sets up multiple barriers of protection so that we are able to not only contain SARS-CoV-2 and eliminate COVID-19 as a major life-threatening disease, but also return to a new social and economic life. The strategy uses the best of what we have on hand today—a rapidly growing arsenal of vaccines and antiviral drugs and public health measures— with an eye towards future improvements and developments.