The vaccine clearly has had a beneficial impact. The last numbers I saw here in the USA is 38 percent of people have natural immunity and combine that with the vaccination roll out and we have a degree of herd immunity. Deaths and hospitalizations are way down, at my large hospital we only have a few COVID patients now (just months ago we had around 200). Covid will now be like a nuisance more than anything. The fact that some states /countries are locked down and hurting people in other ways (economics/depression/suicide/drugs/alcohol) .Do they want to achieve perfection before they release their grip on people? I cant believe when people allow themselves to be controlled to this degree. Texas and Florida are examples of how to do it right, along with Arizona here. We are living normally now pretty much.
I think Arizona did a good job, TBH. If there was a state during this winter where I would have lived (aside from the tarantulas and the scorpions hehehe), is your state.
My bother owns a house in Florida, and although he's anti mask, sanitary measures, etc. he too thought Florida wasn't handled great everywhere.
His business suffered a lot because of Covid. Lost 40 pcent of his revenues. So he would concur with your post for sure.
And you're right : perfection will never be attained. As long as the health system is OK, I believe it should be good to open up.
Last fall, some US states were in bad shape. Not the case anymore. I hope our central govnmt got the lesson : stop relying on importations for our basic needs. Let's learn from this. If Pfizer or any other co. still had installations here, we'd probably be more like Israel today.