[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.