If you're pinning your hopes on a Covid vaccine, here's a dose of realism

Covid will be in our rear view mirror before a vaccine is safe, ready, mass produced and easily distributed. Herd immunity is not terribly far away in most countries and by the spring the threshold should be reached nearly everywhere. A vaccine won't be necessary and even if available isn't likely to be taken by most people, as covid has lower IFR than the flu for people under 50 (and magnitudes lower under 20).

The current pandemic is unprecedented, I think the assumption that no more people will get a covid vaccine than get a flu vaccine is absurd. While there will certainly be some small section of the population which can't or won't receive it, we should still reasonably expect a huge number of people will. Even if people didn't want the vaccine in larger numbers (which I see no evidence to support), I imagine most businesses and schools will require vaccinations for employees and students.

Then for population protection, its important to note that the level of protection we need is not certain - estimates range from as high as 90% to as low as 43% [0], with 60% being the classically assumed number. With a 75% effective vaccine, to reach 60% coverage you only need 80% of the population to receive it, and it's reasonable that with repeated doses the effectiveness can be further increased. While that's a lot of people, it is well within the achievable range.

On top of this, we can target vaccinations. Most of us interact with the same people every day, and most of us would be able to tolerate the disease so long as we have access to proper medical support. Treating people who bridge relatively isolated communities, the immunocompromised and those who come into direct contact with them, and those who are especially likely to be exposed to the virus can substantially reduce the virus' ability to spread and to kill with only a fraction of the doses required for true herd immunity.

A vaccine also provides a substantial benefit in terms of risk reduction. Right now anyone can potentially have the disease; even if you've recently been tested you might have since been infected. As the size of a group goes up, the odds that someone has not been careful goes up, and thus you must be constantly vigilant in all circumstances. But with a vaccine, if everyone in a group has been vaccinated, the odds that the vaccine didn't take in both you and another person are low, and the odds that that other person also happens to be actively infectious is lower still. Even if there are still localized outbreaks, many communities could confidently be declared free of covid with extremely limited restrictions on their members to prevent the reintroduction of the virus.

Things won't instantly go back to normal the minute a vaccine is available, but there is good reason to expect substantial quality of life improvements once a reasonably effective vaccine is being mass produced.

[0] https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20200626/herd-immunity-thres...