I'm not anti-vax by any stretch. I fully understand how "normal" vaccines work, and I agree with you that we very much desire to get back to normalcy, and away from lockdowns, masks and all the other restrictions currently imposed.
That said, we don't know how these vaccines will work long-term. We also don't know what it will take, or what else we might be asked to trade off to resume a normal lifestyle again. Leftists have already let the proverbial cat out of the bag--they want to use COVID-19 to initiate all kinds of programs and restrictions on life as we know it. You've heard people talk about "resets" and NOT "returning to normal." You think that was coincidental?
We have a pretty good idea. The lipid shell is just fat and it's gone as soon as it merges with the cell membrane. If it doesn't hit a cell, it'll slowly break apart over time. It's just fat; your body is full of it. The mRNA inside is inherently unstable with a half-life of hours. Within a few days, it's gone whether the shell it's in encounters a cell or not. The ribosomes don't care what's encoded in the mRNA, so they're unaffected. The glycoprotein itself has no properties that could harm anything; it just triggers an immune response.
All the side effects (headaches, pain at the injection site, fever, body aches, etc.) are immune system responses. It's the immune system trying to slow down or kill the "infection" while the dendritic cells and T-cells figure out what to do with it. Once the appropriate B-cells are activated, antibody production commences. The antibodies will be present in the system for a few months. After which, 90% of the B-cells producing them will die (mostly of exhaustion). 10% will remain as Memory B-cells and provide lasting protection against SARS-CoV-2 barring major immunity-breaking mutations.
This is all normal stuff. This isn't like the bad old days of gen 1 (inactivated or attenuated pathogens) vaccines where one mistake at the lab and you've got live polio running around in your body. This is a bunch of harmless components that break down quickly and go away. Why do you think Moderna was started 10 years ago to exclusively develop this platform? Because it's the future of all vaccines. No gen 1 or gen 2 vaccines will be able to compete once these are further developed.
It's no coincidence that two different gen 3 vaccines were completed with successful human trials before the over 200 competitors. No one can match the speed of producing these because once you have the tools to do this work (which we finally have today), there is no faster process.
"We also don't know what it will take, or what else we might be asked to trade off to resume a normal lifestyle again."
Whatever plans people like Fauci or Cuomo or Newsom may have, the reality is smacking them in the face right now. Already you have people ignoring the second lockdown orders around the world. People are fed up with lockdowns and shutdowns and watching their families and friends be destroyed economically by these ineffective idiots. People are done listening to them and that's before we even have vaccines. Once we have enough people vaccinated that cases and deaths dwindle to near-nothing, then everyone else who's still listening to them will rapidly start asking "why"?