Is the current COVID-19 strategy effective?

The aim of the Dutch government’s current policy to combat COVID-19, as in many other countries, is to reduce the number of infections as much as possible. This column argues that recent data show that societies can handle a much larger number of infections during this second wave without excessive social costs, and that the Dutch policy should therefore move away from almost eliminating infections towards creating herd immunity by letting the COVID-19-virus circulate more freely among the non-vulnerable groups, while strictly protecting the vulnerable groups.