The Flu virus mutates constantly, each annual Flu shot consists of a mixture of vaccines targeted at the 3, or 4 most common Flu variants.
SARS variants such as Covid will not be eliminated this century, so we will have to learn to live with it.
After all, Flu already kills up to 20,000 people in the UK every winter and no-one stays locked up at home because of that.
But we have grown up with these - just as we accept cars hurtling towards each other at a closing speed 120mph, separated by only a painted line.
With something new, the precautions will be far more extreme. There will always be another mutation (several thousand so far) and another expert happy to have their 15 minutes on TV claiming that we must never exit lockdown and anyone who says otherwise is a murderer. The Lancet considered the effects of vaccines and suggested this was the "new normal" back in October, and I still see no reason to disbelieve them.
As for how long people will "live" like this - I personally know one who decided they couldn't, and anecdotally, several others. They decided that they envied the dead and did something about it. It may well be that the government decides that they should facilitate this as we can't pay furlough money forever, and that means 6 million+ whose jobs simply no longer exist. It's unlikely society could stand that level of unemployment. There are 8 million single-person households in the UK. If you encourage those without children (including me) to "do their civic duty", then that would solve a lot of those problems.
(And before someone says the government would never say that - 100 years ago, the option for many young men was run at German machine guns, or be shot for cowardice by your own side)
