Re:The experiment that proved airborne disease transmission
by xorcist on Saturday October 03, 2020 @08:21PM
(#24675716)
A vaccine is unlikely to wipe out the virus for good. They just aren't that effective. We can't wipe out other coronaviruses or the common cold by vaccination even if we wanted to.
It will continue to circulate in the population, just in a less explosive manner. This also means it is possible we will never reach herd immunity in some absolute sense much like we haven't for other coronaviruses.
Re:The experiment that proved airborne disease transmission
by nradov on Saturday October 03, 2020 @08:07PM
(#24675654)
Only New Zealand, Taiwan, Vietnam, and maybe a couple other countries are actively avoiding herd immunity. Regardless of their public statements, other countries aren't actually trying to minimize the number of sick and dead. The public health measures in place are generally insufficient to contain the pandemic, so I predict that many areas will reach a significant level of herd immunity before a safe and effective vaccine is widely available. We won't know whether that prediction is accurate until about a year from now.
Most countries are rather waiting for a vaccine to become available and try to minimize the number of sick and dead in the meantime without interfering with economy too much.
(54.4k was number of newly confirmed cases on friday 10/2 by the John-Hopkins University btw. I'm aware that the US has inadequate testing [0] and that the real number is going to be a lot higher than this.
[0] https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-testing#the-positive-... )