Can we just stop and appreciate the state of the vaccine?

[dreamshark]

Yes, the pandemic saga has taken a grim turn this month, but can we just take a moment to give a big HOORAY for Science here?  It's less than a year since the outbreak began, and in this country alone we have not one but two highly effective vaccines on the threshold of release! Worldwide there are dozens under development and several that have already been deployed (albeit with varying degrees of safety protocols).

This is not like the dreary old flu vaccine which is just the same old thing each year tweaked to work (minimally well) against the new strains. There are multiple types of vaccine under development, some of them (like the two on the verge of release in the US right now) using brand new technologies. And it's not just the same old Big Pharma controlling the development and supply. Sure, Pfizer is big, but Moderna is a "biotech upstart" marketing its first vaccine. 

And vaccines aside, virologists and immunologists and epidemiologists around the world have probably learned more about how viruses work and how diseases spread in the past year than in the previous 30. This is exciting! 

Comments

[maruad]

This is incredibly exciting. I suspect we will be hearing of other vaccines over the next few months.

My dream would be there would be enough viable vaccine distributed in time for the 2021 Winnipeg Folk Festival but I suspect that is asking a bit much.

[dreamshark]

Entirely possible, IMHO. Remember, public health experts are professional Debbie Downers - they ALWAYS predict the worst case scenario. Up until about 10 days ago, every official prediction regarding vaccines was predicated on the assumption that any vaccine would be at best 75% effective, probably much less so. Well, surprise! The first 2 out of the gate seem to be 95% effective! That changes all the calculations.

Then there's the frequently repeated assertion that 70% of the population has to be vaccinated to produce herd immunity. That's just plain not true. 70% of the population has to BE IMMUNE. That includes not just people who have been vaccinated but people who have had the disease (plus an unknown number of people who are naturally immune). I heard an expert on the subject say just yesterday that probably 15% of the US population has now been infected and it will probably be twice that by the time the vaccine is in general distribution. By my count that is 30% of the population that won't need to be vaccinated, assuming they can be identified.