Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/12/13/trucks-carry-first-u-s-coronavirus-vaccine-shipment-from-pfizer-facility-in-michigan-video.html
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Well, that’s the beginning of the process of vaccinating… 15% of the population. I can’t get too excited about this because the way things stand right now, there’s no path to vaccinating enough people for herd immunity. Lots of things could go wrong and prevent that, in fact. Not to be a Debbie Downer, but when the vaccine was announced, too many people acted as if the pandemic was over. Instead we’re entering the most challenging period and need to be extra-careful, not relax. We’re still in it for the long haul. I don’t expect I’ll be able to get a vaccine before next summer.
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Contagion (2011) seems more and more like a historical documentary.
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Indeed, it’s worth keeping in mind we need 12 billion doses of this vaccine to achieve complete herd immunity. All three approved/pending candidates require two doses closely spaced. Current global vaccine production is around 2 billion vaccine doses a year and we can’t stop making all the other ones to make this one. Put this all together and it could be years before average Boingers can get immunized.
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So we have de-funded our national mail service so badly that we rely on these private companies to transport the juice. What if they pull a Shkreli and up the price of their service by 5,000%?
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- What if well-armed Covid deniers set up roadblocks to stop the trucks?
- What if well-armed vaccine pirates set up roadblocks to raid the trucks?
- …
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Well those would be some of the illegal possibilities, yes.
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Yeah, I was just thinking of vaccinations in relation to the US population, but globally the problems are even worse. And even just looking at the US, as long as the virus circulates around the world, it continues to potentially still be a risk for even a vaccinated US population (which, again, won’t happen for a long time even if enough Americans accept the vaccine, which right now they aren’t), as we don’t know how long the vaccine is effective. Its protective efficacy could decline just as another wave of covid hit the US. Plus, the longer the global vaccination program takes, the increased chances that a mutation will arise that could spawn a whole new pandemic (that could be deadlier than the first) that requires a whole new vaccine. This is the beginning of a very long and fraught recovery
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Except, the more people who get vaccinated, the more that are safe, and hopefully, the less the burden on the medical system.
The whole “flatten the curve” was abkut not overloading tye medical system.
But nine months later, they know more abiut it, can better treat tye serious cases. By the time the issues you bring up come along, even more may be known, to deal with it.
Let’s not be pessimistic. 100 years ago the flu pandemic faded out, and realistically medecine is way more advanced.
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What a missed opportunity for a heist! One is bound to come along sooner or later, simply for the purpose of making fake black-market providers having a supply be plausible.
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After it killed 50 million human beings.
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Even optimistically, both of @shuck’s points are valid: that vaccines only approach 100% efficacy, and that the biggest threat that remains is a mutation that makes the vaccines ineffective or less effective. And frankly, that’s one of the things that makes the shitshow the US has made of the pandemic even more frightening; 25 million opportunities for the virus to mutate.
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Great, more good news!!
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This isn’t pessimism, it’s managing expectations. @Shuck also had a meta point there that people are likely to get complacent because “the vaccine is here, it’s all over”. However if the first year is spent vaccinating front line workers and other critical folks (likely), another 200,000 will die in the meantime because people won’t wear masks or stop throwing dinner parties. We need to message the timeline of this vaccine correctly to prevent those deaths.
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Right now, for the US, we only have enough vaccine, for the foreseeable future, for 15% of the population. That’s not enough for herd immunity, by far. (Multiply it by five, then we’re talking.) The vaccine will only protect those people, and possibly not for the remainder of the pandemic, even.
In the US, we’ve failed at that. We did the opposite. We continue to do the opposite. We’ve spiked the curve, and since a sizeable percentage of the population still isn’t taking the situation seriously, it’ll continue to get worse. Hospitals are now turning away covid infected - they don’t have either the bed space nor the staff to care for new patients. That means they can’t “better treat the serious cases.” They literally can’t treat them at all. We’re going to see what the death rate is for untreated covid - evidence indicates it’s at least 10%.
100 years ago the flu pandemic faded out because: mandatory mask wearing (good luck with that in the US now that mask-wearing has been politicized), lower transmission rates, and permanent immunity for those who got sick and survived (covid re-infection is a thing - surviving the infection may not provide more than five or six month’s protection). The flu came in seasonal waves in the US; covid’s been unrelenting. We could very well end up with a comparable mortality rate to the 1918 flu pandemic, over a shorter period of time, thanks to how badly the Trump administration screwed the pooch here and set the stage for next year. And that’s assuming we get the vaccine distributed in a timely and effective manner, that enough people agree to get it to achieve herd immunity, and we don’t get any mutations that render the vaccine ineffective. None of those are givens.
Those would just be the excess deaths over the next couple months, while they’re vaccinating only 50 million people, if the death rate stayed where it is now. Except it won’t - we’re seeing 3000 people dying every day and we haven’t hit the Thanksgiving death spike yet (much less any potential future Christmas death spike), nor seen the increased death rate now that hospitals are filling up. We’re going to see the death rate multiply before Biden takes office, and we still won’t have enough of the population vaccinated to make much of a dent.
Mass deaths and Biden making aggressive moves might reduce the complacency, but that’ll take a month or two beyond that point to have any effect on the infection rate and death toll. Next year will be ugly, whatever happens now, just because we’ll be dealing with the fallout from the current situation.
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Well we know somewhere that will not be vaccinated soon
Covid-19: Trump rejects plan for early vaccines at White House
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I’d be surprised if the USPS has any refrigerated trucks.
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Quick! Proud Boys, MAGAots and Militiamen, intercept that librul commie shipment, for Merica!
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I’d be surprised if they didn’t. (Regular reefers that is, not T1000-B-Gone tankers.)
