[gadders]

Given the low fatality rate for COVID, wouldn't you just want to concentrate vaccination on those most at risk? i.e. the elderly, people with underlying conditions etc.

You don't need to eradicate the virus, just stop it affecting the most vulnerable. Everybody else can then carry on as normal (albeit with a slight chance of getting a nasty flu-like illness).

[warp]

There some risk of permanent or long lasting damage even if you do not die from the virus. (So it is more risky than just a nasty flu).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Covid

[anoncake]

There is evidence that recovery sometimes takes more than a few weeks, but none for permanent damage (except in rare cases). The risk is overblown.

[majewsky]

SARS-CoV-2 relies on superspreading much more than e.g. the common cold. When you hear, for example, that each patient in a given area infects 1.2 other people on average, this doesn't mean that everyone spreads it to one or two people. It means that out of 10 infectious patients, 9 patients don't spread it to anyone else and the tenth patient spreads it to a dozen people at once.

Because of this high dispersion rate, it may make sense to earmark a certain amount of vaccine doses for people who are not themselves at risk of complications when contracting Covid, but who are at risk of becoming a superspreader.

(Disclaimer: I'm not an epidemiologist.)

[gadders]

I'm not saying don't give it to them as well, just do the vulnerable people first.

At least then we stand a chance of getting the economy back on its feet.

[majewsky]

"Just do the vulnerable people first" has the significant advantage of being easy to explain and implement, but it does not maximize the speed of economic recovery.

For instance, I'm a vulnerable person because of preexisting conditions, so I'll likely be offered a vaccine relatively soon after approval. But that won't have a large impact on economic recovery: I'm in the home office in a single-person household and don't have any care obligations, so I'm at a comparatively low risk anyway. And I won't change my current behavior until the disease is fully gone anyway.

[gadders]

My thoughts in treating the vulnerable first wasn't because I thought the vulnerable would then be able to go back out to work, but because the vulnerable would be relatively safe the people with no pre-exisiting conditions wouldn't have to stay home to stop the spread.

[input_sh]

Even if we vaccinate every vulnerable group, no vaccine has 100% success rate. That's why every vaccine we ever had relied on a huge majority of people having it to prevent the virus from reaching those whose vaccine failed.

Not to mention that we already know about long term side effects that have nothing to do with a specific age group, and that there's a chance of re-infection.

[rhino369]

Sure but it would reduce the number of deaths by a lot.

If we just vaccinated 65+ year olds, we'd cut deaths by 80X%, where X is the effectivelness of the vaccine. Even if the vaccine was only 80% effective, that's still 65% reduction.

Add in people with dangerous conditions, heart conditions, cancer, morbidly obese, etc., and you could probably knock it down further.

And as the percent of the population with immunity rises, the spread will slow quite a bit.

We don't need heard immunity to open back up.

[Jemm]

Vaccination is not 100% (more like 50%) effective and will really only help if we achieve herd immunity.