There can be no denying that 2020 has been an absolute sh*tshow, but the one thing that has kept everyone going is the hope that a vaccine can and will eventually be found. Of course, the sooner that happens, the better and millions of dollars have already been pumped into the pursuit of that. According to one disease expert however, the Covid-19 vaccine could be far less effective than we expect it to be.
Dr Anthony Fauci, the foremost expert on infectious diseases in the US, has come through with the rather sobering reality that an approved coronavirus vaccine could end up only being effective 50 to 60 percent of the time. Yup. While that’s about one in two, it’s considered rather low.
Speaking at a webinar hosted by Brown University, Fauci said “We don’t know yet what the efficacy might be. We don’t know if it will be 50 percent or 60 percent. I’d like it to be 75 percent or more,”
“But the chances of it being 98 percent effective is not great, which means you must never abandon the public health approach.” he added.
With the virus infecting over 20 million people worldwide, with five million of that number coming from the US alone, Fauci has emphasised that social distancing measures are pivotal if we are to make it out of this in one piece. I know most of us aren’t very fond of SOPs but unfortunately there’s a big chance that social distancing SOPs are here to stay even with a vaccine.
This is worrying because the lockdown measures and social distancing SOPs to keep the virus from spreading have absolutely battered the world economy, and many businesses are still waiting for things to go back to “normal” before being able to open again. What if the new normal is here to stay though? Forget about our economy recovering, can our economy adapt to this new normal? That is the question.
At the current rate its going, Fauci says that studies of Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine, one of more than 150 vaccine candidates around the world, could produce definitive data by November or December of this year. He also elaborated that he expects tens of millions of vaccine doses to be ready by early 2021, with a billion doses targeted for the end of that year.
