The US is one country, with the world’s best technology all in-house, one govt, nobody else to negotiate with. Once the US gets rolling, nothing is going to stop it.
And this is the biggest challenge since probably Apollo, and that was sorted 51 years ago.
MedEwok wrote:
probably able to offer every adult who wants it a full vaccination by the end of july.
The question may well be, will we see mutations up to then which will make those partly redundant? And how many are those who want? As long as we get less than 70% of the population vaccinated, not much is going to change, as the remainder will continue getting sick and spreading the germs.
This whole thing is a race against the mutations.
If you can vaccinate say 80% of the population, and 90-100% of the oldest (and the UK has vaxxed nearly all of the oldest, with only 5% anti-vaxxers reported) then the hospital system is pretty well protected no matter what happens, so long as you get the Mk2 vaccine out for late in 2021.
And the Mk2 will be needed, because
I am sure the new vaccines are being developed right now. But even if they are not, the existing ones offer a lot of protection from serious illness. Maybe 80%, but that makes all the difference.
* presumably they can have Pfizer, so I don’t understand what the big current argument is about (maybe the UK can’t get enough Pfizer due to EU blocking it?)
Mooney_Driver wrote:
The question may well be, will we see mutations up to then which will make those partly redundant? And how many are those who want? As long as we get less than 70% of the population vaccinated, not much is going to change, as the remainder will continue getting sick and spreading the germs.
The BioNTech vaccine, which will ultimately be the most used in Germany, has been shown to work against all mutations that appeared so far. Of course you are right, this does not exclude a new variant popping up which is capable of infecting vaccinated people. The great thing about the mRNA technology is that a vaccine could easily adopted to such a mutation’s RNA, so a “booster” vaccine could be developed and deployed within weeks. Once we have all those vaccine factories up and running, distribution of such a booster will be quicker than before. Only the regulatory framework needs to be in place to avoid time consuming re-certification.
Peter wrote:
If you can vaccinate say 80% of the population, and 90-100% of the oldest (and the UK has vaxxed nearly all of the oldest, with only 5% anti-vaxxers reported) then the hospital system is pretty well protected no matter what happens, so long as you get the Mk2 vaccine out for late in 2021.
The only problem is, in many parts of the world, the quota will be much much lower.
What do we do with countries which only vaccine 50% or less?
What do we do with countries where we still will get a 30% or more population which will carry, distribute and breed the virus and fill up the health system all the same?
We may well achieve something akin to what you postulate within the UK and some European countries, but a lot of places won’t see anywhere close to 80%. In Europe, some countries have a notoriously high anti vaxxer population, others simply lack the ressources. But I guess to reach a goal of maybe 60-70% Europe wide may be reachable within 2-3 years from now.
But what about Africa, Mid East? South America, where Brazil is the biggest producer of mutant viruses? Those countries will vaccine how many? 10%?
As long as travel is free, those mutants will invade Europe sure as hell, in fact they already do.
I am carefully optimistic about Europe in the sense that we may see some kind of relaxation of measures maybe late 2021 or rather in 2022 or 23MedEwok wrote:
Once we have all those vaccine factories up and running, distribution of such a booster will be quicker than before. Only the regulatory framework needs to be in place to avoid time consuming re-certification.
MedEwok wrote:
Once we have all those vaccine factories up and running, distribution of such a booster will be quicker than before. Only the regulatory framework needs to be in place to avoid time consuming re-certification.
I am sceptical as the whole bureaucratic nightmare of certification and distribution is not likely to change much…. but let’s hope for the best.
My guess is that travel to/from these countries will be tightly controlled. That’s the obvious solution.
If they want to see Buckingham Palace or [insert your favourite] then they will need to get vacced. Hmmm… guess what… just like people are gonna have to do here in N Europe if they want to fly to Greece, etc.
With rights (or only privileges 
) come obligations The problem we have right now is that a lot of people don’t get that.
My guess is that, in the end, entry to the Shengen zone or UK (individually) will require proof of vaccination for entry by those having no right of residence, and individual EU countries will slowly, slowly be coerced by the EU government into giving up their current power grabs. Travel within the Shengen zone will thereby be the same as in 2019.
In the US it’s not clear to me what may be regulated for visitors, it won’t be a vaccine passport and obviously the current recent negative test result for entry by air is cumbersome. My guess is that the current requirement will stand until American residents are by and large immune and no requirement for entry is necessary. Either that or after foreign tourist visitation is resumed the current requirement will continue and so everybody will fly to Mexico to cross the border by land instead 
Yes that is probably what will happen.
I think a test is probably ok for long haul trips.
The real gotcha, and I am not sure anybody in the media dumbo circus appreciates this, is if a test is needed at the country of departure before you fly back home. That has the potential to really shaft you… Remember the teenagers caught in Italy last year? Nobody with a brain is going to risk potential months of solitary confinement in a foreign country, for anything. So I reckon the existing proposals (vacc passport + tests both ways) are fiction.
MedEwok wrote:
This week, vaccinations at GP practices started (so far they were only carried out in vaccination centres).
One of the most stupid things politicians in Germany have done so far – nut we have general elections later this year and unfortunately politicians have lots of bad ideas to pleas people they think they could elect them.
The limiting factor so far has always been vaccines – not physician capacity in the vaccination centers. There is not a single (!) person who could ever explain how a problem caused by shortage of a single resource by spreading this resource even further amongst physician practices. What happens now is that it is even more difficult to get vaccinated (except you are a good friend of a GP or willing to pay the price he asks for).
I’m honestly happy for your wife – but she is in group 2 along with many others who did not have a chance to get vaccinated yet. So nothing got better except the GPs (and their friends and family) now got the opportunity to jump the line.
Peter wrote:
The real gotcha, and I am not sure anybody in the media dumbo circus appreciates this, is if a test is needed at the country of departure before you fly back home. That has the potential to really shaft you
Hence my mention of an EU visit from the US flying from/to Mexico, which requires nothing for entry, and crossing the border back into the US by land, which requires nothing. Sounds a bit far fetched and you have to connect through Mexico City but it’s more straightforward than it sounds.
(We have a ‘significant family event’ in Germany this summer, may have to visit)
