Remember, before we had any results from any of the trials, the benchmark for a successful vaccine was 50% efficiacy in stopping serious illness. Not infection or mild illness, but serious illness. If the participants still got infected but got seriously ill at a rate of 50% or less than the placebo group, that would have been considered a success and enough to get authorisation from most international bodies. Considering all the current signs are that even against the variants all the current vaccines massively exceed this and protect almost fully against serious illness or death, so why is there all this talk that the variants may require further restrictions? The sell of restrictions in the first place was to protect the NHS and save lives, so why may we still be in them if/when the vaccine starts doing that bit for us? Why are the goalposts being moved? I get it's not great that the protection against mild and moderate illness seems to be reduced against some variants, but the protection against hospital admissions and death's look to be beyond even the most optimistic best case scenario's.