> I don't think the two concerns are all that neatly separable. I find it impossible not to notice the relentless campaign to put forth _vaccinating everyone with an experimental jab_ as the only legitimate escape from indefinite lockdowns and distancing.
Who said that?
There are quite a few ways out: we can reach a state of herd immunity (as a practical matter, this would mean that going back to normal would result in a low enough rate of serious infections as to not be a big deal), we could find an effective, practical treatment or prophylactic, or we could vaccinate everyone. Or a combination.
Many things are wrong with the process, but, right now, all credible models suggest that we are nowhere near herd immunity. We have two vaccines that, in proper RCTs, appear very effect. We have a third vaccine that had an incompetently run RCT and appeared somewhat effective.
As for other treatments, we have some things that help a little. There’s ivermectin, which (if you read Derek Lowe’s blog, for example), seems dubious. It’s cheap and safe, but the dosage that works in vitro is impractical in vivo. The studies saying it’s effective are, in my opinion, dubious. Vitamin D (injected) looked good in a tiny study. Fluvoxamine looked good in a well run but very small study. HCQ does not appear effective. Convalescent plasma looks so-so. The mABs look less effective than hoped, and they don’t really scale well enough to use for everyone who gets exposed. Remdesivir seems to be barely effective.
We should absolutely run serious, expedited trials of everything credible. The fact that we haven’t set up a national clinical trial system for this is an embarrassment.
But please check your assumptions. Under the previous administration, the federal government did not impose significant restrictions on your freedoms (even your freedom to go around in indoor public spaces without a mask). The government did not do much of anything useful. To the contrary, the government gave premature EUAs to untested treatments that actively interfered with the private sector’s ability to run trials. The current restrictions have been largely imposed by the states, democrat and republican, whose governments have been some combination of ill-equipped to do anything else and insufficiently creative to come up with anything better. There is no “they” setting up a campaign to convince people that the new vaccines are the only way out. Heck, there isn’t even a “they” doing a good job of jabbing people at all — note the bizarre contrast between the number of doses shipped, the number administered, and the medical providers who have run out of doses.
If you want to look at a country with an organized vaccine campaign, try Israel. If you want to look at countries that are managing COVID effectively with minimal invasion of peoples’ freedom, look at Taiwan, New Zealand, and China. (China has taken extremely harsh measures, and their administration is not dumb. Taiwan’s measures are not particularly harsh. All of these countries have serious travel restrictions, which the US states cannot implement on their own.)