Actually Speaking it is really the health experts who failed the common man. What they did was scare mongering. Scaring about variants when it is natural for virus to mutate, mass testing using PCR when it is known that these tests are dumb as they cant distinguish between dead and live virus and of course they couldn't justify why the viral load is same in vaccinated and unvaccinated people. People trusted them, but they were clueless changing the goalposts.

In my understanding the further course of the pandemic depends as per the below article

https://sogmoe.medium.com/waves-after-waves-three-factors-which-will-largely-decide-the-course-of-the-pandemic-and-why-e11b223ab6c1?sk=b4495f675a6adf387455297bc03eeace

Self protection is the best protection!