This is only one of 11 vaccines now in phase III efficacy tests.[1] Six vaccines already have "partial approval", but those are the ones in Russia and China, which may or may not be working, and the governments decided to try anyway. All of those provoke an immune response. Whether it's enough of the right immune response is found out in phase III testing.
Something is probably going to work. The big question is how well. A 50% effective vaccine might be an overall lose - only half are protected but more than that abandon masks and social distancing.
The Johnson and Johnson vaccine, if it works, is the easiest to use of the early leaders. One dose, and it doesn't need to be refrigerated to dry-ice temperatures like some of the others. The Merck/IAVI vaccine is only in phase I, but it's a pill. If that works and is highly effective, it will be possible to wipe the virus out worldwide in a second round of immunizations.
> A 50% effective vaccine might be an overall lose - only half are protected but more than that abandon masks and social distancing.
I remember a similar argument being used against face masks. (That they are not perfect, and may cause harm by giving false sense of security.) Perhaps we should be more careful about perfect being the enemy of good.
The availability of masks is far higher than vaccines, though. You can order a box of masks on the internet and have them same-day delivered to your home. The scarcity and logistics of delivering a vaccine once it becomes available are both factors that make the effectiveness that much more important.
Not happening, recent polls suggest that in Germany, 55% percent of the population is willing to get the vaccine.
That isn't enough for herd immunity (at around 60%) and real vaccination rate will be even lower.
There is also no chance in hell that Germans will allow a government-mandated vaccine. It's unconstitutional and there is heavy opposition to government-mandated anything throughout all of society.
So we will be stuck with this virus. But you're free to get the vaccine yourself for your own protection.
Well, the rest will become immune the natural way fairly quickly: By contracting the virus.
Once a vaccine is available and a large share of the population either has been vaccinated or has the opportunity to be vaccinated maintaining the current measures can't be justified anymore.
Nooooooo - how are people still saying this. There is little evidence at this stage that immunity can be gained in this way, for this particular virus.
There absolutely is evidence of this. It's just not "immunity for life", which is what people commonly seem to think of when they're talking about immunity.
When you've had an infection with one of those rather harmless yet still pesky other coronaviruses - otherwise known as the common cold - you're also immune, for a limited period of time, that is.
There are plenty of cases of people being reinfected quite quickly and frequency of exposure also seems to correlate with serious illness ... the science is still very much “out” on this.
“We conclude that neutralizing antibodies are stably produced for at least 5-7 months after SARS-CoV-2 infection,” the team of researchers, lead by Deepta Bhattacharya, an immunobiologist at the University of Arizona College of Medicine, wrote in their report."
Interesting. This research is apparently just a few weeks old. I look forward to seeing it corroborated and replicated!
EDIT no mention of it in Nature's covid roundup [0]. They must be censoring the research. I've tried googling the author and he seems to be some form of contrarian.
It seems likely that percentage will increase as more people are vaccinated and do not have adverse side effects, so people gain trust in the vaccine.
The same is true for other vaccines. See for example [the figure on this page](https://www.gavi.org/vaccineswork/qa-ola-rosling-gapminder): in this survey, in Germany, 13% said they believe vaccines are not safe in general, but only 3% of babies are not getting the measles vaccination.
So let's hope many of the people that currently are not planning to get the vaccine, will change their mind and actually do so in the end. I think good information campaigns in the media and testimonies of friends that have received the vaccine will do a lot to mitigate this problem.
At a considerable cost. There's a large number of people for whom the vaccine won't work when it has been taken correctly or who cannot take the vaccine because it will react very badly with their chemotherapy or whatever.
This "let Darwin deal with the anti-vaxers" solution, though initially attractive, ends up being sociopathic when you dig into it.
I'm not saying it is attractive. Just that that will be the consequence, it is not sociopathic on my end, it is on theirs. By not taking the vaccine they are also risking the lives of others who do take it and for whom it isn't effective or who can't take it.
What percentage of the population needs to be vulnerable for the entire population to be forcibly inconvenienced for their needs? When is it the responsibility of the vulnerable to protect themselves vs forcing society at large to protect the vulnerable? Certainly there is some threshold, considering that we didn't shut down society in the past for the tiny percentage of bubbleboys with no immune system. To call people sociopathic is to close your mind and not see the real gray areas. So to ask again, what percentage of society needs to be vulnerable in order for it to be ethical to coerce everyone to do something?
> Certainly there is some threshold, considering that we didn't shut down society in the past for the tiny percentage of bubbleboys with no immune system.
Well, thankfully we haven't done this today either. This virus appears to affect more than just those that die from it, and that group of victims already includes more than a "tiny percentage of bubbleboys."
The virus kills on the order of 1% of people who contract it, and can cause serious illness or death even for healthy people, so anyone who is able to get the vaccine should get the vaccine. It's not like you're being asked to give up an organ or something; you're being asked to protect yourself, and protect those unfortunate enough not to be able to get the vaccine themselves as well. Rather than quibbling over percentages, why not ask yourself what ethical foundation a healthy person could have to not get the vaccine once it's been proven safe and effective.
The alternative is to make vaccination a precondition for a lot of government services, particularly public education. Also there needs to be a heavy advertising campaign advocating for vaccination.
No, but neither is that an issue of bodily autonomy.
Bodily autonomy is about being in control of what happens to your body — it does not mean you have carte blanche to do whatever you want with your body.
So, logically the solution is not to mandate the vaccine, but to restrict what unvaccinated people can do, where necessary to protect others. For example, if not vaccinated, you should continue to wear a mask while indoors in public (as long as local virus cases are above a given threshold), as well as avoiding large gatherings.
That's clearly no choice at all. It either is a choice or it is not, and restrictions that severe clearly indicate that no, it would not be a choice. You realise how transparent that is, right?
Masks and social distancing are not sustainable forever. A lot of people are going to abandon them regardless of whether a vaccine is available, so any safe vaccine would be a win even if effectiveness is low. Seasonal influenza vaccines are sometimes as little as 20% effective when the circulating strains don't match predictions, but even 20% is a lot better than nothing.
Something is probably going to work. The big question is how well. A 50% effective vaccine might be an overall lose - only half are protected but more than that abandon masks and social distancing.
The Johnson and Johnson vaccine, if it works, is the easiest to use of the early leaders. One dose, and it doesn't need to be refrigerated to dry-ice temperatures like some of the others. The Merck/IAVI vaccine is only in phase I, but it's a pill. If that works and is highly effective, it will be possible to wipe the virus out worldwide in a second round of immunizations.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/science/coronavirus... (or https://archive.is/D6C68)