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>Though vaccine development is proceeding at a historic pace, in a best-case scenario a product won’t be available for the general public for at least 18 months
by toohotatopic 7y ago
>Though vaccine development is proceeding at a historic pace, in a best-case scenario a product won’t be available for the general public for at least 18 months, and likely longer.
Without a vaccine, the limiting factor are ICU beds. If 1% of sick people need an ICU bed, then the number of infections has to be limited to 100 times the number of ICU beds.
Now, if people need 30 days to heal, and you have 100,000 ICU beds, that means you can treat 1,200,000 people per year and let 120,000,000 people be infected. There are 300 million people in the USA, so it takes roughly 2 years to reach something like herd immunity.