Citation needed.
Up to 3 weeks ago, California, the Southeast were in field hospital territory.
Anecdotally, Alabama hospitals have been in overflow since July.
Georgia re-established a field hospital in January at their conference center [1] hospitalizations only stopped dropping beginning at the end of January
[1]https://www.11alive.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/geor...
And that article is from December.
https://www.covid-georgia.com/today-in-georgia/hospitalizati...
You can see ER status by hospital here: https://georgiarcc.org . Flip through the counties where most people live and you'll see a lot of full ERs.
You should choose another region to support your argument, it's not going so well here in Georgia right now.
And normal only in the sense that many people don't care that much if very few people are allowed to enter the country.
For several days Auckland residents couldn't go to the pub.
Normally of course they can go to the pub. Or a night club. Or a packed stadium to watch sports.
But it's true that for several days last week in Auckland they weren't allowed to do that. And the same back in... September maybe? And according to you that isn't "mostly back to normal" so we can assume you believe it isn't "mostly back to normal" anywhere and never will be. That's just not a very useful benchmark.
Still, I think you're right when you say perhaps unnecessary: some countries have successfully suppressed COVID without eliminating it. That said, it's some but not many countries.
I'm a bit ambivalent. Regardless, it certainly wasn't necessary for NZ to close their border to asylum seekers.
Ouch, that article links to one from May 2020. It said the Avatar film crews were allowed to fly in, whilst families were separated.
This was predictable in advance, and with hindsight I still would prefer 0 cases.
But if your base is zero then double that is still zero. That's why they've pursued elimination and why it has worked.