Whether it's federal parliament sitting, or sniping between governments,

Australians are trapped in a Groundhog Day of arguments over when and how we will "end the lockdowns". Some say when vaccination rates hit 70 per cent.

Others 80 per cent.

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Sometimes it's a percentage of the total population.

Other times it's the adult population. Or those over 16. Or over 12.

As was the case with Dan Andrews in Victoria, the daily media conference of NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian has become a focal point of the coronavirus news cycle.

The premier takes ample questions, but she also sets the agenda, and the more she can talk about the future, the less the focus remains on the present.

Yesterday, case numbers hit a unwanted national record total of 919: a number that puts us perilously close to crossing another psychological threshold - that of 1000 cases a day.

Even if the bulk of the Greater Sydney cases are in the city's sprawling western suburbs, the picture elsewhere in the state is also problematic, with Deputy Premier John Barliaro indicating yesterday that the regional lockdown was likely to extend beyond its slated end on Saturday night.

Things have taken a turn for the worse here in the Hunter, too, with concern over a Windale unit block after one resident contracted the virus in Sydney.

Test results for his neighbours will determine what happens next.

On one hand the politicians have a point when they say the nation needs to prepare for "life after lockdown".

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But the squabble over the vaccination percentage needed to trigger the stepped return to new normal ignores a greater reality: that the mood at the time - which will be a reflection of case numbers, deaths, and how well the health system is coping - will ultimately determine how "open", or not, we become as a nation once most people are vaccinated.

Ultimately, much will depend on the vaccines continuing to do their job.

Booster shots are already looking likely.

The greatest risk, however, must be COVID taking another mutational turn for the worse.

A paper published last week in the British Medical Journal recorded eight "notable" variants since September 2020.

Another type, worse than Delta, could be around the corner.

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