Back Where We Started Or Further Up the Creek?

With news that England is going back into a full lockdown (with comparable arrangements in the other UK countries), there is a tendency to say "Here we go again" (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/05/covid-lockdown-in-england-likely-in-place-until-march-gove-warns). There is no doubt, given record numbers of positive tests for Covid-19 and with hospitals creaking under the pressure of record influxes of Intensive Care patients, something (rather predictably?) draconian had to be done. This was after initial insistence that we could 'go back to work', take foreign holidays and have a furlough for the initially five days of Christmas. It was also said, until very recently, that schools, colleges and universities (now deemed to be super-spreader centres) must be openned, so as not to imperil education (true, but was this ever an option, given where we find ourselves?). So, are we simply going back to measures, forced on the country, by the first 'wave' (the pandemic is actually more like a wild fire, flaring up all over the place)? The situation here is now actually worse. This is not just because the prevailing weather, means that activities in the open air are less easy (although we surely always knew that winter would arrive). It's not even down to the development of new, more infective (like the 'English variant') or more infective and possibly vaccine-resistant (like the 'South African variant') strains of Sars-CoV-2. I must emphasise here, that the labels are somewhat arbitrary, as they generally refer to the country that first identified them. The main problem is that we have the virus in large numbers of people and people (even with variable levels of self-isolation, lockdowns and travel bans) remain highly interconnected. Each human infection (and I sincerely hope the virus doesn't substantially get into domestic, companion or wild animal populations), is a potential incubator for further viral mutations. The early arrival of the vaccines is very important but it's a race against time, if it's actually going to be a 'game changer'. Even if you vaccinate your entire population (a very considerable undertaking), they will not be 'safe', if they are later exposed to vaccine-resistant variants, arising elsewhere but inevitably rapidly transported in. Israel has apparently vaccinated record numbers of its own citizens but its failure to do likewise for Palestinians, within its borders, is likely to come back to bite it (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/03/palestinians-excluded-from-israeli-covid-vaccine-rollout-as-jabs-go-to-settlers). I'm sure that similar short-sighted calculations are evident in other areas of the world (e.g. the predicted late receipt of vaccines by poorer countries). I have said it before but there seems every possibility that Covid-19 could become like seasonal influenza, needing a new vaccine every year.