My understanding of containment is that it is only effective when testing and tracing are radically pursued. There just are not enough resources at the state level (at this point) to do this with the effectiveness China has managed to do it. So we are left with one tool to fix this which is flatten the curve to not overwhelm the healthcare system and lead to further deaths. South Korea has been doing a lot of tracing and they are starting to see this as a great success, but mostly due to south korea's ability to track phones of people diagnosed positive.

We could do that too, if there was enough social trust to make it politically acceptable (the tracking, that is).

I think they mean over the next few years. This virus is in every city in the world, we can't contain it everywhere. Eventually its just another endemic disease, but one we can vaccinate for and treat at a steady rate.