3 ms·
> Not enough people are vaccinated Is it not the case that we essentially need to vaccinate everyone in the whole world within a small time period, like 4 week
by daveevad 5y ago
> Not enough people are vaccinated
Is it not the case that we essentially need to vaccinate everyone in the whole world within a small time period, like 4 weeks, to prevent mutation and vaccine escape?
- azakai 5y agoThat would let us eradicate it entirely. It's worth trying. But we can still get mostly back to normal without that. If we get enough immunity that the worst COVID causes is a small bump in hospitalization and deaths once or twice a year then we could live with that and just wear masks during those weeks perhaps. We are much, much closer to that goal today than we were a year ago.
- nradov 5y agoIt's not possible to eradicate the virus. The vaccines are pretty good at preventing deaths, but they don't reliably prevent infection or transmission. There are also multiple animal reservoirs and those can't be vaccinated at all. The only human viruses we have managed to eradicate are smallpox and (almost) polio. The vaccines for those are generally much more effective, and there are no animal reservoirs.
- azakai 5y agoYou're probably right. We'd need a new type of vaccine that is more effective for that to be realistic. There is still hope for that though.