COVID immunity could be lost in months

There is a current parallel and similar-outcome Spanish study too; the implication is that Covid-19 may be able to re-visit a patient year by year such as the common cold, which of course is also a not un-similar type of virus, constructively but of course not as dangerous.

Not a good sign. By the way, today I watched the 1990 film "Awakenings" which covered in a fictional way the true story of Dr. Oliver Sacks (a former post-graduate immunology fellow at UCLA). He found a population of "recovered" victims of the 1918-1920 influenza pandemic. As a Doctor he noticed that a rare form of encephalitis affected their brains. It can be looked up, to save me the typing...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encephalitis_lethargica (EL)
Point being, it can not be proven or dis-proven that the 1918 coronal virus influenza these patients were all linked to caused their post-flu-recovery but eventual suffering with the EL that made them catatonic (to oversimplify various symptoms, all requiring institutional imprisonment in mental hospitals.)

It was fascinating to see, although as just one example of downstream health defects in RECOVERED patients, pretty scary. So brain disease may join the other rumored possible maladies such as muscular, intestinal and cardio-vascular difficulties we hear about in the Covid-19 news these days. By the way, after UCLA, Dr. Oliver Sachs lived a Timothy Leary kind of life for a couple years before rejoining his distinguished medical and writing career.

The point of masks and distancing is to get the infections to a low enough level that isolation, contact tracing, testing, and selective quarantine can work.

Considering the factors already mentioned in this thread, there is no certainty that herd immunity or vaccines can work. It's not that we can't be hopeful and optimistic about them. But with this disease, none of that is yet proven.

And I've been saying for at least a month now that there is way too much happy-talk about herd immunity and vaccines.

On the other hand, the approach identified in my first paragraph here is exactly how New Zealand already eradicated COVID. But even for New Zealand, it will only stay that way with committed vigilance.

The contact tracing approach, however, won't work until people are compliant with public health mandates and we make a sufficient investment in contact tracing. It requires both.

Unfortunately, the public has been conditioned now to think the only two solutions are vaccines or herd immunity.