Which other countries governments are sensible (some will say bold) enough going to follow?
The notion of zero Covid is an absurdity and it has always been. No one ever spoke of zero influenza, so how did zero Covid become a thing?
Remember the beginning of the pandemic, a lot of countries thought that they could handle this in the same manner as hard flu season. Essentially "taking it on the chin" as Boris Johnson put it.
Now with vaccines, there is a possibility of returning to normalcy without eradicating the virus.
Interestingly China has implemented zero-covid, yet is now undergoing a massive vaccination campaign, and my guess they will change their policy at the end of it.
That is because it caused severe symptoms which required hospitalization within a short time and thus could be quickly contained whereas with Covid symptoms are milder if any at all, and can be spread by both symptomatic and symptomatic infected.is
Thus the "something extremely weird" - it's been much different than just an epidemic occurring in a vacuum.
The long term strategy, of course, needs to be vaccination and learning to live with COVID. But, saying elimination is absurd is incorrect.