It will take at least a year to vaccinate enough people for herd immunity to kick in. So social distancing should stay for a while. However they're definitely gonna relax the rules. For example there is nothing wrong with gatherings where everyone is vaccinated. If they relax measures too soon we'll see major spikes again even if the vaccine is already in wide circulation. The most important metric will be new cases and overall vaccination ratio. It will be up to epidemiologists to decide what combination is a safe amount to relax measures.

The good thing about vaccination is that it works both ways. You can't get or give the virus. That means 2 families can come together even if only one side of the family is vaccinated.

Yes but as far as I know we didn't have to shut down our lives for one whole year because of polio. Also children infected had no choice. Today a person that is in the risk group has the option to isolate or make people that lives with them to isolate. There is no reason why you are not allowed to see people that are not in the risk group. There is not reason a group of 5, 10, 20, 50 people that have no contact with risk group people to not be able to see each other. I was reading about the average age for covid deaths in UK and it is pretty abysmal. The vast majority are people above 70. If you are under 60 and is not fat or have any otther serious condition than most likely nothing will happen to you. Everyone I know that got covid recovered pretty easily just staying home.

I'm just tired. I have been following the rules since the beginning and agree that at the start of the pandemic we had to take extraordinary measures, we didn't know much about the virus and the health are sector could collapse. But here we are almost one year later and we are still doing the same thing and making peoples lives miserable when it is clear this is not necessary. And most likely we will have to keep doing it for one more year at least until this is 100% erradicated.

Another problem is that a lot of people just don't want to take the vaccine, especially "minorities" and other groups that are being heavily impacted. So people will keep on being infected and dying and we will keep on being locked.

Sorry I'm just ranting. Its probably just frustration for not seeing a feasible end to all of this.

Of course you're getting frustrated when all you think about is nonsense.

There are more people dying from this virus than ever and you think we're doing fine and those measures aren't necessary? Just because the news has fatigued and isn't talking about it as dramatically anymore doesn't mean it's over. It's as bad as ever and the only reason why nothing has collapsed yet is

1. The measures you're so tired of are working!

2. The health sector has massively expanded capacity.

We're burying more people than ever, we just got more efficient at it. To say that we're doing fine is a fucking joke. It's winter now and it's going to get a lot worse, because a virus like that spreads like crazy in that season.

Yes, we're learning more and more about the virus. For example how even in asymptomatic or mild cases it can do lasting damage to the body. I'm not gonna stop social distancing and wearing a mask just because there is "only" a 0.1% chance for me to die or fuck up my body long term. I like living and I like being healthy, sorry if that is an inconvenience to you.

Not to be a Debbie Downer, but do we know that? My understanding is that we only know the currently approved vaccines (eventually) teach your body how to combat the virus' spike protein; no one knows whether it'll cut down on asymptomatic spreading, and the two approved vaccines are using a method never used before. AstraZeneca says their data shows a decrease in transmission for their own vaccine, but their results are (apparently) screwed up, so no one really has a clue how reliable their data is.

Corona-virus will never be cured as long as authoritarians can use it to control the population

Oh come on. Quarantines and other measure of containing the spread of disease have been used for centuries for everything from Bubonic Plague to Smallpox.

Smallpox has been eradicated and Plague is now curable with a simple dose of antibiotics.

It is not authoritarian to implement disease control during a pandemic.

Pelosi recently said the reason they finally agreed to push the stimulus bill through was because Joe is now going to be Prez.

No shutdown's and lockdown's for Hong Kong flu back in the late 1960's. They held Woodstock in America instead.

That doesn't at all disprove what I said. From the Spanish Flu to numerous outbreaks of serious disease throughout recent centuries, measures to prevent the spread of the pathogen within the population have been widely implemented, everything putting Smallpox victims in special hospitals or even ships, to marking the houses of plague victims and keeping them there. During the Spanish Flu, they took such measures as closing schools, theatres, and places of worship, limiting public transportation, and banning mass gatherings. Masks were also commonly worn.

It's got nothing to do with authoritarianism. It's about reducing the toll of the disease.

If that were true, the same protocols would always be instated with a severe enough illness. They aren't always, because some are more controlling than others, depending on their agenda.

I never said it had nothing to do with the illness, but a 'good' politician never let's a crisis go to 'waste'. Pretty sick when it comes to a deadly illness.

Some politicians are simply willing to do what needs to be done, others are not. A lot of people tend to cry foul at the slightest convenience, a good leader ignores this and thinks of the greater good of the community.