The vaccine could have been rolled out to the most vulnerable groups much sooner than it was. If you vaccinate only those groups (and the vaccine works), you pr

The vaccine could have been rolled out to the most vulnerable groups much sooner than it was. If you vaccinate only those groups (and the vaccine works), you prevent the vast majority deaths. >When we talk about this as a natural process in a population and allowing it to happen the people it happens to in the summer rather than the winter live 6 months less. They may have written a book or a play or helped their grandchildren become the people they need to be in that time span. As for your last point, that's not how it works. To the extent that the disease runs its course through the population anyway, then there's also people aging (and infirming) INTO the vulnerable group too, who would have lived if they caught it in the summer but upon catching it six-months later die. Another way to look at it is that it's not any better or worse that a pandemic hits one year or the other (putting aside population growth). A flu pandemic in 1905 is no better than a flu pandemic in 1904. It just kills a different set of people. And actually, by extending the period where the virus is in pandemic circulation, and to the extent that it will spread through the population anyway, you probably kill more people by stretching the pandemic out. Virus survivors die for other reasons, "wasting" their immunity, and like I said above, more people become newly vulnerable to the virus.