With even a small, relatively speaking, amount of Covid in the country any amount of unlocking is going to be problematic. The question is how much can the Tories get away with versus how much they'd like to. We know, from experience last year, that there is a tangible point that comprises "too much". Can that be reached before sufficient people are vaccinated? There is no doubt going to be a ton of pressure from the cranks to unlock as much as possible.
What of the vaccine? Do we know how long it lasts or its efficacy in stemming transmission? Unfortunately the only way to find out is in the grand social petri dish. Finding out the hard way, but that may well end up being too late. But eventually we will vaccine everyone, hopefully. Then it's a case of how long will the vaccine last? It seems agreed that boosters will be needed regularly, applying those will likely take as long as the vaccine initially. That's an assumption, but everyone will have to go through getting a shot again. That is, as we've seen, quite the task. This means those initially protected will find they become vulnerable again, and so it could be a rolling, endless, task of vaccinating people. Can we really keep the virus suppressed in the meantime.
The problem with that is if you give people an inch they will, as the saying goes, take a mile. We know that, as soon as restrictions lift, people will go out en masse, like a violent exhalation. We also know that means an increased number of people not obeying the rules. I've seen it on the bus in the period before this lockdown; people closing the windows because it was cold (not an issue now), taking masks off to scoff, etc. All of this will happen, no matter how uncomfortable it makes us feel.
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