I guess we would have just learned to live with it and accept people dying. I am from Kosovo and go there often despite not living there. The life for most part has gone as normal there. There are the masks, and weddings or other meetings with a large number of people were kinda banned (will be open during the summer), but for most part, the restaurants, schools, bars, shopping malls and everything else has been open. The number of deaths per capita is around the same as that of most European big countries like Germany, Spain, France and so on (though it has a far younger population, but also a far worse medical system).
A better example might be Sweden who had much less restrictions and still in the end were kinda fine. I do not think that permanent lockdowns would have ever been in card, vaccines or not.