With the Alpha variation of the virus that would have been good enough. The study numbers showed someone vaccinated and exposed to Alpha had such a low risk of spread that even while fighting off the virus they were still safe 'enough' to be around.

If we had gotten 80% (some magic number between 70% and 95% I pulled out of nothing) of the US adult population vaccinated, and quarantine locked down the borders we could have snuffed covid out and been in a bubble paradise like New Zealand managed to do with just hard and long enough quarantines.

We didn't get there, and Delta and Omicron did get to us; two variations that are each insanely more viriliant and spread despite the vaccinations which are now only good enough to prevent serious infection and death most of the time.

The USA has never had secure borders before. How could anyone believe that would be possible now? Have you ever actually been to the borders?

In my adult lifetime I have legally crossed a northern border by car; they checked ID on the way back. Canada mostly only cared that I had sufficient ID to go back home. In both cases there was a controlled crossing that law abiding citizens used. During much of the pandemic that crossing was closed (mutually).

Yes, physical borders are long stretches that are difficult to secure, and I have seen the TV footage. Doesn't mean that a policy can't be _sufficiently_ effective to make a difference.

Also, reflexively speaking of borders; effective policies probably involve a mix of carrot and stick. The carrot being a legal path to do what people are going to do anyway, but in ways that are documented and regulated. Exact details of either side of that are far, far off topic in this thread.

It COULD have been "get your 2 shots and everything goes back to normal", but vaccine adoption stalled at about 60%. That's not nearly high enough.

The virus stuck around and we got Delta, and now Omicron.

And we're STILL at less than 70% vaccinated. I don't know what's required for herd immunity, but it doesn't take a Ph.D in virology to know that 70% isn't it.

It doesn't take a Ph. D in virology to know that 100% isn't it either, now that omicron is in the picture.

So I'm not sure what the intended end game of the people trying to limit the spread is. "Flatten the peak so hospitals are less likely to be overwhelmed" may or may not be realistic, but at least it's a coherent goal. "Keep vaccinating and closing things until COVID goes to zero on its own" just seems like denying the reality that COVID is endemic at this point, so any non-acute mitigation measures we want to take now had better be mitigation measures we're willing to keep taking forever.

To a certain extent, I blame the use of the term "reaching herd immunity" instead of "reaching an endemic state" for giving people unrealistic expectations.

> Keep vaccinating and closing things until COVID goes to zero on its own" just seems like denying the reality that COVID is endemic at this point

At this point, yes.

But last year? In Spring and early summer? Look at COVID cases compared to vaccination rates. Case counts were dropping fast, but then vaccination stalled. A couple months later, Delta began ripping through and we got our second wave.

I sincerely believe that we could have been through with this if we had reached 95% vaccination by July.

I'm undecided if we should still continue masking and any restrictions at this point. I want to say "Fuck it. Everyone who wants a vax can get one, if you don't, I will have zero pity if you get infected.", but the fact is, ICU's are still being overrun.

> I sincerely believe that we could have been through with this if we had reached 95% vaccination by July.

All omicron cases in the US can be traced back to infections from outside of the country. Getting 95% of eligible people vaccinated and getting cases within the country to zero prior to omicron being introduced would have been nice, but that alone would not have stopped the current omicron wave. We'd be in a somewhat better place now, but since a significant factor in hospitals being under load now is vaccinated medical personnel being out with covid, we'd still have a hospital load problem.

I can see maybe some justification in instituting restrictions to try to flatten the peak of the omicron wave, until such a time as case numbers start to decrease again. But such restrictions, if put in place, should be done with the understanding that all we're doing is shifting infections in time, not changing the total number of infections.

> I want to say "Fuck it. Everyone who wants a vax can get one, if you don't, I will have zero pity if you get infected.", but the fact is, ICU's are still being overrun.

This is basically where I'm at, except at this point it doesn't seem like there's any coherent idea of when the inevitable infections that occur won't overrun ICUs, and I don't particularly think it's worse to have ICUs overrun for a few weeks right now than it is to have ICUs overrun for a few weeks a month from now.

> I sincerely believe that we could have been through with this if we had reached 95% vaccination by July.

It would not have made a difference.

Singapore, Israel and a large chunk of Western Europe had very high vaccination rates before they got pummled by a Delta wave.

And for anyone wondering if boosters are enough to quell Omicron: Israel is the perfect case study as they're currently being pummled by Omicron after having finished their booster campaign (they're onto their 4th dose now).

Are lockdowns the answer to Omicron? Well the Netherlands went into a preemptive lockdown several weeks BEFORE Omicron took off and I think their case trajectory paints a very clear picture now that Omicron has taken off (they are still in lockdown).

To me, it looks like the vaccine's efficiency in terms of reducing transmission wanes after 3-5 months and it's quite clear when you look at the different waves countries are experiencing around the world.

'I sincerely believe that we could have been through with this if we had reached 95% vaccination by July.'

Do you understand it crosses between humans and animals such as deer and even house cats? You can sincerely believe in the Easter Bunny along with sincerely believing all animals can be vaccinated on approximately the same week, but sincerely believing in something does not make it possible.

In the U.S. it's mostly kids that aren't vaccinated at this point. Among people over 18 years of age, 73.3% have at least 2 doses and 86.4% have at least 1 according to the CDC. Two shots and a booster is obviously better, but the number of adults that haven't been vaccinated at all and haven't gotten Covid at least once is dwindling.

Covid seemed to be on track to have be almost entirely wiped out in the U.S. until Delta and Omicron came along, and now it's not clear that even 100% vaccination rates would be enough.

https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccinations_vacc-...

If enough people had got their shots worldwide that would have worked. However enough is at least 80% of the world population, and maybe as much as 95%. There wasn't enough supply in the world. If the 95% number is correct kids young enough still are not approved to reach that, mutations keep making the number higher, though we might need to get a new vaccine that covers new variants.

>If enough people had got their shots worldwide that would have worked.

One of the theories on the origin of omicron seems to be that it evolved in animals for a while before jumping back to humans (the weirdness being that it's not evolved from Delta, and it has a number of mutations all at once). [1]

And even if it's not the origin of this variant, it could easily be the origin of a future variant (that's why they're considering it).

And it's quite unlikely we could vaccinate every animal on the planet, so this idea that if we had just gotten all our shots this variant would have never happened is pretty ridiculous.

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/how-did-omicron-covid-varian...

If we had vaccinated soon/fast enough we could have prevented the to animal transmission in the first place

I don't think that's a realistic expectation. If millions of people have a highly infectious disease, then it's very likely to spread to any wildlife (that aren't naturally immune) in the same general area as those infected humans. By the time the vaccines were available, Covid was basically everywhere.

It is clearly impossible for supply reasons.