However since most countries in the world are in the middle of a 2nd/3rd wave, it makes absolute sense to vaccinate the vulnerable first rather than try race against the curve with a vaccination programme. Especially when the vaccination lag is longer than the spread.
This is a reasonable strategy, but I disagree with it.
> the least vulnerable who are most likely to be the main spreaders
[citation needed]. To my main point, we just don't understand how it spreads well enough to really say.
> The other thing to remember is that we have a poor understanding of how it spreads. I don't mean that it's airborne, but that there isn't much evidence to suggest vaccinating the elderly and first responders is the best way to stop the spread.
Fatalities, not infections. Average age of death is in the high 70s or 80s, so vaccinating the elderly is definitely the best way to drop that particular metric.
Vaccinating these retirement homes, even with a single dose, should rapidly decrease the load on hospitals.
That's why I think people aren't being optimistic enough about recovery times. When 40% of the hospitalized cases are gone we can handle even a huge surge without overloading health systems. Since most lockdown metrics are based on hospital load, this means taking the country out of lockdown
Once the vulnerable are vaccinated, hospitalization and fatality rates will plummet rapidly. Even if infection rates get far worse hardly anyone (relatively) will die. It will be COVID lite, more like a bad flu season
As others have said, there's more lag than you think, so it'll be more like 6-9 weeks, especially with a Christmas surge. The other thing to remember is that we have a poor understanding of how it spreads. I don't mean that it's airborne, but that there isn't much evidence to suggest vaccinating the elderly and first responders is the best way to stop the spread. It's not an unreasonable choice, but there's a lot we failed to understand going into the winter.