I think part of their hesitancy is that there still a lot of questions, and these are some of the ones I ask myself. (To be clear, I'm getting shot up at the first chance, but how willing I am to go back to "normal" depends on these answers, all of which I don't think they know.)
1. Can the vaccinated spread it?
2. If you start saying the vaccinated can go maskless in public places, who's going to enforce that? How are you going to make sure that people aren't saying they're vaccinated when they aren't? We already have issues enforcing masks and that's an obvious thing to enforce. Who's going to be carding people, other than airlines and cruise ships and maybe your employer? Will the
walmart? I doubt it. That opens up a can of worms that no one wants to deal with.
3. It's wonderful that the vaccines prevent death and hospitalization. But what about long covid? Do the vaccines prevent that? If I get a minor infection, is there still a chance that I'll end up with clotting issues, loss of taste and smell, brain fog, extreme exhaustion, diabetes, and all the other knownpossible issues/debilities months down the road? (This one alone is the one that's likely to keep me masking up and keeping my distance long after vaccine penetration is high. Until they know your odds of ending up disabled even if vaccinated, I still won't be willing to take too many chances of getting it.)
4. And then there are the questions around the variants, and with new ones popping up, they have to be careful how far they go in letting people think it's a free for all after being vaccinated. If they say sure, go buck wild and a variant turns up that doesn't respond to the vaccine, then how hard is it going to be to rein people back in? It's probably best to push things out slowly and test the waters as we go rather than having an "Oh, crud" moment and then trying to get people back into protocol behaviors. That's likely the hold up is how far to let people go now, knowing you'll likely never get them back in if this doesn't work as planned.
