After declaring independence from Covid-19 on July 4, the US finds itself having to mount a new counteroffensive. But half-measures will continue to yield only incomplete victory.

The U.S. finally seems to be getting serious about its Covid-19 problem. President Joe Biden on Thursday issued new rules that will require every company with more than 100 employees to make them get vaccinated or endure weekly tests. The New York Times estimates this will affect 80 million workers, though it’s unclear how many of those haven’t yet been vaccinated. If they haven’t been, the new rule would force more than half of the remaining 155 million unvaccinated Americans to get the jab.

Unfortunately, that won’t be enough to end the pandemic and its paralyzing impact on travel, the economy and Biden’s own legacy. After declaring victory over the virus on July 4, the U.S. is only now starting to reverse a summer surge by the Delta strain. Even as Delta ebbs in the U.S. and the rest of the world, cases continue to soar in countries like the UK, which has surrendered to the virus. People there argue that they can “live with the virus” because, even though case numbers are rising again, hospitalizations and deaths aren’t. That’s because the UK has managed to vaccinate 65% of its population, including a high proportion of its vulnerable seniors.

It’s this kind of selfishness that will condemn the world to a much longer pandemic. Every British breakthrough infection is a carrier, and can potentially give the virus to an unvaccinated person who may succumb, whether in the UK or abroad. Each also represents another host in which the virus can mutate into a new strain resistant to vaccines, like the emerging Mu variant. And the UK is mostly just lucky: Delta arrived when it had just hit the zenith of its vaccination drive.

Here are some of the most highly vaccinated populations on the planet….

And here is how their infections are faring:

Those that saw a late surge in vaccinations, like Belgium and Ireland, have managed to overcome their Delta surge relatively quickly, because their immunity levels were very high going into the surge. But those that vaccinated earlier and then have just been steadily building, like Israel, have been hit hard by Delta as immunity among the early vaccine recipients starts to ebb.

Even those nations with fresh immunity from late vaccination efforts are finding that they still can’t ward off Delta entirely. Take Germany. It only crossed the 50% vaccinated threshold in late-July. But it’s now struggling with its own, more modest, Delta surge, prompting the country’s health minister to call for a new vaccination drive before colder weather allows the virus to make more aggressive inroads.

The new drive in largely vaccinated countries to “live with the virus” also condemns to the margins those populations that haven’t yet been able to vaccinate. Sheltering from the pandemic, UNICEF has warned, is already causing irreparable damage to the educations of young people in South Asia who don’t have the kind of connectivity required for remote learning. Some of these young people are in the United States—children in areas where resistance to vaccines and social distancing measures has allowed the virus to run rampant. Record numbers of kids in these areas are being hospitalized by Covid infections. They can’t live with the virus.