Vaccines should end the pandemic, despite the variants, say experts

Right, but are all vaccines equal ? Take the chinese Sinovac one for instance, which several countries have been using for their mass vaccination program. Preliminary data in Brazil showed an efficacy of about 50% in preventing asymptomatic infection[1].

Are we sure that it will be able to "end the pandemic" in these countries as well as the mRNA ones? I remain a bit skeptical. In a CDC simulation[0] back in June 2020, the conclusion was that:

  > This study found that the vaccine has to have an efficacy of at least 70% to prevent an epidemic and of at least 80% to largely extinguish an epidemic without any other measures (e.g., social distancing).

Could someone more educated than me in the matter chime in?

[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7361120/

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-55642648

That also depends what "normal" means to you.

If normal just means you get to hug your grandmother who lives an hour away it might be safe right now (in a bunch of countries) or permitted but perhaps unwise (in a lot more countries) and it's likely that for most HN readers it will become a reasonable thing to do around mid-2021.

If it means snogging random strangers at a crowded nightclub after a night of drinking that is safe in a very few places (only a handful of countries with elimination or close enough have "crowded nightclubs" in the first place, those aren't a thing on tiny Pacific islands many of which are COVID free) and legal but unwise in some parts of the world right now but it might not be a reasonable thing to do until late 2021 or after for most of us.

If it means spending a week on safari in some poor country to see exotic wildlife, that likely will not be a reasonable thing to do until at least 2022 and maybe later, it may be technically safe for you earlier, but it probably needlessly exposes the locals to a virus they have yet to receive immunisation for so you shouldn't do it.

The treatments for HIV are incredibly effective, if you can afford them. It can even reduce your viral load to undetectable. There is a campaign that Undetectable=Untransmittable, to reduce the stigma associated with it. I have to admit I don't know if I'm comfortable with having unprotected sex with someone who had the virus, but the data says it's safe.

There is also pre exposure prophylaxis, which isn't a vaccine but does dramatically reduce the risk.

Between the two, the disease just isn't the problem it used to be -- assuming you can afford it. In poor counties it's still a problem.

The United States has administered 2.3 million vaccination doses.

Oh, lol no, not cumulatively. I mean Yesterday. We administered 2.3 million doses in about 14 daytime hours on March 12th.

Naturally, the number of vaccinated individuals grows every day. That's what vaccinations do. But the number of doses we are administering every day is growing every day. One week ago, on March 8th, we administered about 2.05 million.

There's no point to harvesting plasma. Why would we, as a society, try to do that on any meaningful scale when we have working vaccines, produced and administered on a global scale that humanity has in our entire history as a species never before reached?

People give Trump shit for his statement that, one day, the virus will just magically disappear. He deserves it, but not because it won't disappear; it will disappear, but it won't be because of magic. The effort that the Trump administration, the Biden Administration, Project Warp Speed, the CDC, and other Federal and State Health Agencies, have put into this is something that, in 100 years, our history books will write paragraphs about. Its invisible to most of us. We still feel the legitimate and necessary fear that kept people isolated and society going over the past year. That fear isn't forever; the US was hard-hit, but the US will be one of the first countries back to normalcy, and the rest of the world will quickly follow.

These articles are missing an important aspect of the vaccine: the immunity gained is non-sterilizing. [1] The vaccine stops the infection from becoming severe and spreading throughout the body, but it doesn't actually stop infection (and transmission) in the upper respiratory tract.

So we don't have any evidence showing we can achieve herd immunity even with a 100% vaccination rate (this article is wrong). The only thing we know for sure is we can dramatically reduce the severity of infection.

Beause vaccine efficacy is never 100%, some experts predict that we will see more deaths this year as we attempt to resume normal societal activities while SARS-COV-2 continues to circulate. [2] Although I think if we develop very good antibody tests and vaccines against the latest variants there should be a path towards minimizing deaths and severe complications and effectively turning this virus into a cold and effectively ending the pandemic.

[1] https://drhyman.com/blog/2021/01/27/podcast-ep155/

[2] https://dalewharrison.substack.com/p/covid-year-1