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It’s arguable the point of the vaccine is secondarily about protecting individuals due to the immunity it confers, and primarily about accelerating herd immunit
by gfodor 6y ago
It’s arguable the point of the vaccine is secondarily about protecting individuals due to the immunity it confers, and primarily about accelerating herd immunity to kill the virus off, which would counterfactually save thousands of lives per day in perpetuity. (It’s in either case very close between the two.) Given this, it makes prioritization pretty tricky under a supply constraint after you’ve immunized people who are objectively in a revere risk pool. For example, if we knew someone would be a super spreader, but would be at a low risk of severe covid, the margin of lives saved by prioritizing them over others that are at more risk of severe covid may be much higher. (Fwiw, I am skeptical the current prioritization regimes are designed around this optimization problem.)