The uptake rate required for herd immunity depends mostly on how contagious the virus is (the famous “R value”). For herd immunity against the measles virus, which is very contagious indeed – much more so than SARS-CoV-2 – you need to vaccinate around 95% of the population, but the last estimates I heard for SARS-CoV-2 hovered around 50-60%. That should be easier to achieve, but antivaxxers will obviously still be an issue.
The BioNTech/Pfizer mRNA vaccine basically works by introducing genetic material that codes for the spike protein into the body’s cells so they will manufacture the spike protein and thereby prime the body’s immune system for it in case the real virus shows up. (The spike protein by itself won’t make you sick, so the vaccine is likely to be very safe, and the clinical trials seem to bear that out.)
This means that if the spike protein changes significantly, the vaccine will have to be tweaked accordingly. But that’s not a huge deal; we do it every year for the influenza vaccine. The story goes that it took BioNTech a couple of days to come up with the vaccine from scratch, given the SARS-CoV-2 genome, so evolving it along with the virus should be eminently doable if needed.
Did massive anti-vaxxer movements exist when polio, diphtheria and tetanus vaccines were developed and administered? I fear your “good vaccine acceptance” might be difficult now.
Will there be a massive health disparity between Republicans and Democrats in the next couple years? Is there one already? How massive? How will this interact with existing health disparities?
Oh, that goes back a very long way.
It is very vocal right now, and Trumpism has made it more empowered, like a lot of other shitheaded movements. You are correct, vaccines do not save lives, vaccinations do. It will be a slog, but we know how to do this. It would move the struggle back onto familiar ground, for me, at least.
Already happening
Please let this be accurate. 
A little deeper dive into what is known so far about this. As I said above, it is really encouraging, but it ain’t over yet.
As usual with Ars, as opposed to, well, everything else on the interwebs but here, the comments are worth reading.
Sputnik V is showing results too
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