With two COVID-19 vaccines on track for approval by the end of the year, the country is preparing to inoculate frontline health-care workers and the most vulnerable.
I’ve been wondering about this myself.
I think masks will be with us for a while.
Oh, what a bunch of worry-warts! Everyone’s going to die and then spend 85,000 Septillion years living in utter and final Paradise! Who cares what happens to our friends and loved ones? 
I would think of equal concern is how long does the vaccine confer immunity? That aspect seems a bit murky, with some researchers pegging it as low as 3 months depending on the vaccine being discussed. We’d need a helluva lot of stock to vaccinate the populace multiple times a year.
“I’ll have the typhoid rudy vaccine, please.”
Scientist here. It’s a good question but secondary to whether a vaccine protects an individual.
Research takes time.
I don’t wanna be a Debbie Downer, but I keep telling my wife that people are putting way too much faith in these vaccines as a panacea. There’s just too much we don’t know, not only about the vaccines, but about the virus, itself.
We know masking works, but how many Americans can’t even be bothered to strap a piece of cloth over their nose and mouth?
My worst fear is that vaccine approval will give people an excuse to take even more selfish risks. (“It’s OK – there’s a vaccine now!”) What follows the upcoming holidays might make the Thanksgiving Massacre seem like a cake walk in comparison.
(ETA: I am available for children’s parties.)
I’m curious to know this too, My state is planning to vaccinate students a the University where I teach, but from reading the state plan, not faculty. I’m part time, and if I don’t feel safe, I’ll just quit. Also, how long does the vaccine provide protection? Is this something people will need every year?
Agreed. I saw some odd traffic at the hardware stores this week that didn’t make a lot of sense. Deferred twice due to the crowds and this is middle of the work week. Finally dove in to get what I needed for a garage door repair and a lot of the folks, older men, were simply wandering the aisles and generally getting in the way. Masked yes, but not paying much attention to distancing as well as simple manners.
I understand the name Penny Wise is already taken.
This isn’t how it works folks. If you get a vaccine you cause your immune system to ready itself for the rapid destruction of the agent you were vaccinated against. In a sense you’ve “primed” your immune system so that when very low levels of the virus are present ( like an original infection ) you get a rapid kill denying the virus the ability to reproduce to pathological levels. You kill it off.
You will get immunity via infection but it will rise slower than the disease’s morbidity so you’ll have to beat the disease and that morbidity to get immune. While doing that you can spread the virus. If you’ve acquired immunity via vaccine you will have a slight proliferation of the virus until the anamnestic ( immune response ) kills off the virus. That usually denies the virus the ability to reach levels sufficient for transmission.
If you’ve been properly vaccinated and have a competent immune system the chances of you becoming a Typhoid Mary are slim. That’s the point.
I think you’re wrong on that. The primary purpose of the vaccine is to wipe out the virus by stopping its spread, thus the willingness to accept a vaccine with as low as 50% efficacy.
The endpoint goal of the vaccines is to prevent disease. Whether or not they prevent transmission will not be known for quite some time.
That is fucking insane. And stooopid, too.
To answer your other questions, we really don’t know, and we really don’t know. We suspect there will be protection that lasts 3-6 months and perhaps longer. Until the plague is significantly reduced, if protection is not permanent, then boosters would be advised…unless you want to get sick.
A Critical Question?
Oh there are many
What is the true and accurate prevalence in the population - we have been testing primarily for diagnostic purposes … we need to do extensive documentation testing to determine what portion of the population has had it (quantify the amount of the population that has passed through the Covid experience asymptomatically - or - mildly enough that it was not recognized as Covid
what do we know about getting COVID a second time?
should somebody who has had COVID still seek to get the vaccine?
and yes- if you have the vaccine - if you encounter a contagious COVID patient can you still be simply an asymptomatic transport mechanism to spread the virus to others … if this is possible … (ugh!) can it jump from vaccinated person to vaccinated person to vaccinated person until it finds a vulnerable host ? or can it be viewed as being like a honeybee & dies after attempts to sting the first host?
how long will the vaccine provide benefit?
what do we know about how the virus in mutating?
A Vax with a 50% efficacy is not considered worth giving. 90 to 95% is where it’s at.
The vaccine does not produce a carrier state. It ushers the immune system to clear the virus rapidly.
That’s true and why the Rump’s hissy fit with Pfizer is a great blunder. Canada, with our approximate 35 million people, has secured enough to inoculate 10 times. We also funded Pfizer and its partner in the vaccine BioNTech has a facility in BC.
Actually we know a lot about vaccination. The modality is 100 years old. If you want numbers like you would get with machinery you’ll be disappointed. 50% or 100%…that’s not how to look at it. There’s no down side to getting vaccinated. Everyone should do it. Maybe you’ll fall into the 5% that don’t respond. That’s no reason not to do it. If you don’t get vaccinated you’ll be in the 100% “no response” group that make that unwise choice.
We should get vaccinated and stop chipping away at the process with “what ifs” and “we don’t knows”. Ask Polio or Small Pox about that.
You’ll have remortgage or sell several of your relatives.
I couple of weeks ago I was watching NHK Newline late one night and the female presenter was talking about COIVD-19, but especially in the US. Now I realize that non native English speakers can sometimes come across sounding not how they think they are sounding, but in this case snotty. And what she was talking about is how we don’t wear masks, or not enough of us wear masks. I then remembered that in some Asian countries people habitually wear masks, and some also glove up in the winter time. I’m not sure when they started, but I can see how coming from a region that takes being a member of society as an important part of their lives they could think that we are stupid., or some of us are dangerous and stupid.