There was probably a window in time when cases were less than a few thousand or so when such a thing could have been possible. That's the real game in fighting emerging diseases. Early detection, identification of reservoirs and rapid vaccine development and aggressive isolation and ring vaccination if possible.
But I agree, it's absolutely laughable to think enforced social distancing could ever control a fully airborne disease, already so widespread, and with an R_0 over 4, especially now with the current rate of emergence of immunity escaping variants. Check out BA.4 and BA.5 in south africa right now, both of which seem to elude immunity from BA.1 just 6 months after Omicron's emergence.
Sure, it would have originally been rational to try to contain it until widespread vaccination could happen. That was no longer an option as soon as:
(a) Trump decided that his followers should treat it by injecting bleach, fish tank cleaner, and horse dewormer
(b) the WHO and the CDC decided it wasn't an airborne disease because apparently they were still relying on research from 1949 C.E.
(c) the CDC decided not to tell Americans that masks were effective (because they didn't want panic buying)
(d) Biden's COVID czar decided to ostrich the whole thing
Now we're just fucked; everyone will get it, the question is how many times and how bad the next variants. And whether we'll ever develop effective treatment for long covid.
The cat was long already out of the bag at all of those points.
There's a small chance it could have been contained in late 2019 when Wuhan doctors were raising the alarm, but they were silenced and punished by Chinese government officials
But I agree, it's absolutely laughable to think enforced social distancing could ever control a fully airborne disease, already so widespread, and with an R_0 over 4, especially now with the current rate of emergence of immunity escaping variants. Check out BA.4 and BA.5 in south africa right now, both of which seem to elude immunity from BA.1 just 6 months after Omicron's emergence.