This is microbiology in action. It's been almost 2 full years now and we all "know the drill".
Mitigation, mitigation, mitigation. That means masking and other strategies, like improved HVAC systems for indoor settings.
There are a number of localities like here in Philly, where there is an indoor masking mandate (ours went into effect back in August and it is still in effect). So far, through the late summer/early fall spike, we have been able to keep our numbers relatively low for our population vs the rest of the state of PA, with the transmission rate holding in the 3% range here so far (which includes breakthroughs and/or reinfections). We are also still doing mitigation for large events including what was done for our Thanksgiving Parade (oldest in the nation) that happened yesterday.
Many of the balloon handlers and other performers were masked, even with them being outdoors. I thought these guys were pretty cool -
One of the things that researchers are trying to do is see if there is a way to use mRNA tech in a way that can be made adaptable enough to effectively mimic the "look" of what are often the "hidden" (due to protein folding) parts of a variant's spikes so that a better set of antibodies can be produced to respond that will better help neutralize, and clear an infection.