Short of the virus dying out of its own volition, herd immunity is the only way to go, and whether that is achieved by vaccination or other means is the focus of legitimate debate, especially when any such discussion must balance many social and economic factors. It is not simply a debate about health. And, as anyone with a grasp of the subject will understand, even after the vaccine is fully rolled out (whatever that means, because that is also subject to much discussion), people will continue to contract the virus and some people will die of the complications that contracting the virus brings. Just as they do from many other viruses that have vaccines and are treatable.
McNally is being very selective in his "facts" in this opinion piece - just as selective as he accuses others of being. There is, for example, no evidence that family pets transmit the virus to humans. The same is true of mink - studies show that the mink virus has not been shown to infect humans. He is promoting wildly hysterical views of shielded people being at risk from their pets, a view that is, in his words, "scientifically flawed" and "there is no data to support it".
It's really easy to find opinionated scientists who have all the answers that one is looking for. It's much harder to find one that is "right". We are dealing with unknown factors here, and hindsight will be the ONLY clear vision.
I'm not remotely going to defend the government - on any front, never mind this one. I think they are a shambles. But we need to be careful that we are not simply selecting the news we want to hear that reinforces our own fears and prejudices. Scientists have never had it so good. Nobody really cared what they had to say about anything 12 months ago. In another 12 months I doubt most people will care what they have to say again. In the meantime they are not "right" - they are opinionated and part of the debate. None of them can lay a claim to being anything more.