This has interesting implications: 61% think the govt is handling rollout of the vaccine well. That much more than the 40% that say it's handling the pandemic well overall.

There's a psychological heuristic where people's judgement of an event is skewed towards how they felt about it as it ended (eg https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9280.1993.tb00589.x)

If the UK does vaccination quickly and so gets out of stricter lockdown controls fairly soon - might that be how most people tend to remember it and how they feel about the govt?

Despite the awful death rate and the botched decision-making, maybe a successful vaccine rollout will mean lasting public memory of the govt's handling of the pandemic could end up fairly positive

Would make things hard for Labour to paint the govt as having screwed up the biggest crisis of the age

Caveat 1: the heuristic also suggests people tend to remember how they felt at the peak of an experience, so not a guarantee the public will be favourable (yet govt approval has been fairly robust so far despite everything)

Caveat 2: I'm not saying everyone will follow this heuristic or think the rollout is going well. Some people will still hate the govt / won't forgive them.