If you're pinning your hopes on a Covid vaccine, here's a dose of realism

[Northerner]

For those holding on to hope of an imminent Covid-19 vaccine, the news this weekend that the first could be rolled out as early as “just after Christmas” will have likely lifted the spirits.

The UK’s deputy chief medical officer, Prof Jonathan Van-Tam, reportedly told MPs a vaccine developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca could be ready for deployment in January, while Sir Jeremy Farrar, Sage scientific advisory group member and a director of the Wellcome Trust, has said at least one of a portfolio of UK vaccines could be ready by spring.

Much has been said about how the world will return to normal when a vaccine is widely available. But that really won’t be true. It is important that we are realistic about what vaccines can and can’t do.

Vaccines protect individuals against disease and hopefully also against infection, but no vaccine is 100% effective. To know what proportion of a community would be immune after a vaccination programme is a numbers game – we must multiply the proportion of a population vaccinated by how effective the vaccine is.

If you're pinning your hopes on a Covid vaccine, here's a dose of realism | David Salisbury

A targeted immunisation programme may offer some protection, but it will not deliver ‘life as normal’

www.theguardian.com

 

[grovesy]

I am not pining my hopes up, not decided yet whether I would have one yet either.

 

[Sharron1]

I believe any vaccine will work in a similar fashion to the flu vaccine. Covid will be with us for a very long time and any vaccine will simply mean people will be less ill. But washing hands, face masks and social distancing will be a way of life. Covid normal. But I do think there will be some sort of vaccine early 2021, if only because the economy and the mental health of a population cannot exist with the current stop start life.But hey, what do I know.

 

[grovesy]

Only time will tell.

 

[Eddy Edson]

This is pretty much garbage, IMO. Worst thing, it can read like "The vaccines won't work so don't bother".

Nobody knows yet what kinds of efficacies any of the vaccine candidates will have. The optimal strategies will depend on the answers to this and despite the impression this article might give, experts are well aware of this & actually have brains which they are using to work up plans.

See https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/10/21/science.abe5938 for a great discussion just published.

Availability of a COVID-19 vaccine will initially be limited, and so several expert committees are exploring strategic prioritization plans. Health care workers are a common first-tier group (14), which in turn preserves health care systems by protecting those who run them and need them. A next priority is to directly protect those who are at highest risk of death or hospitalization when infected: specifically, those over 65 and people with certain comorbid conditions. This strategy may be optimal for reducing mortality even if the vaccine is somewhat less effective in these groups (2). But if a vaccine offers little to no protection in high-risk groups yet is able to reduce infection or infectiousness in younger adults, an indirect strategy could be preferred as vaccine supplies become large enough (1, 2). A worst-case scenario for an effective vaccine is one that reduces disease in younger adults but provides neither direct nor indirect protection to high-risk groups, leaving the most vulnerable at risk. Knowing these vaccine characteristics is important when evaluating the relative merits of other products. Fortunately, there are many vaccine candidates in development that use a mixture of innovative and existing technologies. Although vaccines may vary in their characteristics, having reliable evidence on direct and indirect protection can help plan how to use these vaccines in a coordinated way.

 

[Bruce Stephens]

This is pretty much garbage, IMO. Worst thing, it can read like "The vaccines won't work so don't bother".

I think that's unfair. It reads OK to me. It's just saying having a working vaccine doesn't mean life's back to normal and explaining why we'll be stuck with quite a bit of distancing, mask wearing, etc., for months afterwards. (Maybe years, depending.)

 

[Eddy Edson]

I think that's unfair. It reads OK to me. It's just saying having a working vaccine doesn't mean life's back to normal and explaining why we'll be stuck with quite a bit of distancing, mask wearing, etc., for months afterwards. (Maybe years, depending.)

Well, I woke up grumpy 🙂

But I still think it was pretty bad. AFAIK the efficacy of the vaccine candidates just isn't known so how much of a combined silver bullet they represent with what strategies isn't either. But IMO it's very likely that with the right strategy they'll be at least *pretty* silver-bulletish over time. I actually don't recall anybody saying they will be a day-one silver bullet except maybe for some journalists, but who cares what they say?

My perspective is from a bubble of a place with no locally transmitted virus for months & where life is totally "normal" except for being in a bubble. We don't even wear masks, mostly, because there's no need, not even for flu, which doesn't exist here at the moment. I can easily imagine scenarios where vaccines let that continue when borders re-open, if the vaccines test out with a good efficacy mix. If other places closed borders and locked down for long enough to get local transmission down to zero, the same scenarios would apply to them. Without that, it'll take longer to get it down to just another endemic virus not really interfering much with everyday life, but vaccines will surely (?) allow that over time.

I'd also point out that the govt push to get vaccinated will be a lot stronger than it is for flu, supply permitting, and it's probably incorrect to use flu as a benchmark for vaccination rates. In some jurisdictions (eg here) there's likely to be arm-twisting if not outright compulsion; there will be huge social pressure; and in any case the messaging will be constant and inescapable.[/QUOTE]