In the US (and in many spots around Europe as well), some have pointed to skepticism surrounding the accelerated development process for the myriad COVID vaccine projects as a potential obstacle to achieving herd immunity, since a lack of public confidence might force some governments to try and unduly pressure citizens to accept the vaccine.

With all this in mind, policymakers and economists are struggling to pinpoint an acceptable trade-off between public health, economic health and personal freedom. Some analysts have taken to calling these conflicting priorities the coronavirus "trilemma". However these conflicts are resolved will be critical to the economic outlook in 2021, and with Wall Street increasingly expecting the US economy to slide back into contraction during Q4, speculation about the timing and pace of the rebound has been pushed out to next year, and 2022.

To be sure, the timing of the COVID-19 vaccine rollout will be critical in deciding how all of this plays out. But there's another issue, more closely related to the "personal freedom" leg of the "trilemma", that epidemiologists and policymakers may have underestimated. And that's the question of public confidence in the vaccine.