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.)
I find any "the required dose for in vitro neutralization is too high" reasoning to be dubious for the simple reason that we are not trying to battle the virus in vitro. A good meta-analysis on ivermectin: https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-148845/v1 There are also some accounts of possible successful use as prophylactic in Chiapas and India but I'm not familiar with any studies on that subject.
HCQ appears effective when combined with a TMPRSS2 inhibitor: https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/j...
In the vaccine trial, when suspected COVID cases are included (they dwarfed the confirmed positive tests used in the 95% number), the effectiveness estimate drops to 19%-29%: https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2021/01/04/peter-doshi-pfizer-and-...
I don't really feel any cognitive dissonance in observing that the same TPTB (if you prefer that term to "they") which clearly strongly desires that everyone gets a jab is not necessarily all that competent at running the administration and logistics side, particularly not on the enormously compressed timescales which have characterized Operation Warp Speed.
Japan used to be included in the usual lists of "here's how it's done" countries until they had some relatively significant community spread this winter. New Zealand has been in their summer but just reported their first case of community spread in months as their autumn gets underway -- being an easily isolated island I imagine they might have more success keeping things under control, but if Covid goes endemic I don't expect lockdowns to halt it in its tracks there any better than they have in the US or Europe. I don't buy China's numbers given that they have laughably reported a single Covid-19 death for a country of 1.4B people in the last 8 months, and find including them on a list characterized by "minimal invasion of peoples' freedom" bizarre.
Ding ding ding, I’m already refusing in solidarity with anyone else who wants to refuse for whatever crackpot reason they like. The system pushing the vaccine is far too corrupt, and the bullying is already far too aggressive, to justify any other position. But it is still a tough decision, because the expected risk of war and fascism is pretty fucking hard to calculate.
By the way in a vacuum I like both MRNA vaccines and nuclear fission, despite the risks.
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. Evidence piles up in favor of easy & cheap measures like vitamin D supplementation or ivermectin treatment having the potential to significantly reduce the threat of Covid and it just gets drowned out by media noise.
I view mRNA vaccines in much the same way as nuclear power: they could be an important technology to address our problems, if we could trust our institutions to adequately guard against their potentially enormous hazards or misuse. But we can't. And while I haven't decided yet whether I'm going to get the vaccine, one thing that will make me much more likely to fall into the "refuse" camp is if they decide to impose some kind of restrictions on basic freedoms and make travel or attending concerts contingent on getting a vaccine.
Even with all these concerns, if I was in my 90s, I think I would still find the danger from Covid so severe as to tilt the risk/reward balance in favor of getting the shot. But I don't find your relatives' approach absurd by any stretch.