I think most people would rather take the risk than commit to 12-16 more months for a 'possible' way out, one we have no means of quantifying yet.
Exactly. I have the luxury of some patience here (married and can WFH) and even I’m not excited about forfeiting 1 of my ~50 years of “healthy, active adult lifespan” for limited gain.
If you estimate that the lockdown takes 50% of life enjoyment away and each of us gets 50 healthy years of self-directed adult life, a year of lockdown is equivalent to sapping 1% of total life enjoyment. That’s not exactly the same as 1% increase in population deaths in a year, but it’s comparable IMO.
What I think is that we sorta can and sorta should; we need to figure out the trade-offs, as best as we can, and decide what measures we want to keep for another year (will vary by country/state/city).