[maxerickson]

That's not evident at all. The vaccines appear to be effective enough against the existing 'notable' mutations, and we don't really have much information about what rate of concerning mutations to expect.

And then on the other side of it, Moderna has a vaccine against the South African mutation in a trial. And production capacity on the mRNA vaccines is pretty clearly not maxed out in any long term sense (and then the other vaccines apparently have a better path to volume; J&J still sounds like they will make 1 billion vaccines this year. The viral vector vaccines aren't as immediately adjustable as the mRNA vaccines, but they are similarly targeted, choosing a protein to be expressed).

[WalterBright]

There's talk in the press about the vaccines being less effective on the mutations.

In any case, the more people who are vaccinated, the more likely a strain will arise that is not affected by the vaccine. This will reset all the vaccination efforts back to zero.

This is what I am referring to.

[maxerickson]

They have reduced but sufficient effectiveness against the mutations that are in the news.

I guess there's lots of room for arguing about definitions, but I think we don't go back to zero if there is a vaccine escape. The production capacity that has been built in the last year is a big step forward (and we can expand it), and we are building out the administrative capacity to get the vaccine in people's arms (capacity that won't just vanish).