look wrote:I think the discussion about vaccine to be mandatory is bs.
the first problem will be how to prevent confusions in the rows when all want to be vaccinated before the others.
and if the vaccine is all that good the vaccinated guys don't need to be worry if others didn't take the vaccine.
Sadly, this is not quite correct. If enough people don’t take the vaccine the chances of getting the incidence down sufficiently to effectively kill off the spread disappears. The virus will circulate in an unvaccinated population and if and when immunity wanes in the previously infected and the vaccinated the virus will still be in Gen pop, perhaps in enough quantity to start this all over again.
This course of events means we will all be stuck in a continuous loop of needing the vaccine for ever more, just as we are stuck with the flu as not enough people are immune/vaccinated at any one time to eradicate it.
Measles was all but eradicated in many countries but recent anti vax sentiment has brought it roaring back. Polio has never quite gone. Only smallpox has been totally eliminated, through 99% population vaccination.
Of course it will be almost impossible to eradicate Covid, especially if immunity is fleeting, but getting it really really low in incidence means we could live with it without too much risk. But if 20% of the population don’t get vaccinated everyone else will need to be vaccinated all the time. Hopefully over time all this vaccination and infection created immunity will weaken the effects of Covid and it will become much more flu like.
But here lies another reason to do all we can to eradicate it, and in the process also develop a better flu vaccine and try to eradicate that too. It seems to me we are as a race too accepting of the number of flu deaths - how many people on this very thread have compared the death rates of Covid and flu and even where incorrectly asserting they are the same, nowhere have I seen anyone saying “and the flu number is really bad too”! Do we not want to eliminate all of these killers? Do we not try to make roads safer, airlines safer, to stop murderers, strive to reduce heart disease, stroke, cancer?
If one good thing is to come of this Covid mess I fervently hope it is that nations and scientists/doctors see the potential for grand projects of a similar scale to our Covid fight. How quickly could we eradicate malaria if enough money and effort was thrown at it. And the flu. And many genetic diseases.
All that aside, getting the incidence of Covid to very low levels is essential to a full return to normality. That, or we just accept that 1% of our population is going to die from it pretty much every year from now on, and we need to spend a crap load more money on hospital capacity.