Vaccinations in Europe Ramping Up - 70% by Sept.?

Excellent news

Interesting the comment on Serbia where the numbers have been falling the last month. I guess like Texas where we opened too soon?

I hope this is the case, and I wouldn’t be surprised. One thing that seems clear is that vaccination campaigns are slow...until they aren’t. It starts slow with glitches, everybody who cares about coronavirus worries, pundits predict very long waits, things speed up faster than seems logical in the beginning, and soon enough vaccines are widely available to all. We are there in much of the US, some places will be a few more weeks but very soon everyone who wants a shot will be able to get one easily. I’m assuming Europe will be on a similar trajectory, just a few months behind.

At one point I was told that as a healthy under-50 in the US Id be getting vaccinated in late summer or fall at the earliest. Nope. Done a month ago (first shot, second done more recently), but I had to scramble to find an appointment. Today there’s a walk in clinic 5 minutes away and everyone I know, other than children, has had at least the first shot.

Could some unforeseen event change this? Sure. But as of right now it’s looking good.

And yet, there are reports of vaccination locations in the USA where demand is starting to dwindle. Achieving 70-80% vaccination status, and “herd immunity” could be tough if more than 30% of the population refuses to get their shot(s). The Johnson&Johnson vaccine issues haven’t helped the situation, but further concerns will hopefully end soon.

If the USA winds up with a lot of unused doses, and American demand has ceased, places like Namibia might potentially wind up getting the rest of the USA supply. We can send it where it’s wanted. But we need to be protected too, or getting our shots won’t have been quite as effective as if enough people had gotten them, too.

And this sounds positive 😶

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2021/04/22/new-covid-variant-detected-at-texas-am-lab-shows-signs-of-antibody-resistance-and-more-severe-illness-in-young-people.html

The WSJ article presents some hope. I know that I won't travel until the US and countries I wish to travel to have reached herd immunity. There is that big, looming question of whether we are going to need to get the vaccine again after a year. I am exactly two months out since my last dose of Pfizer. I've had the semi-quantitative antibodies test and am at >250 which is the highest possible. It looks as though that might fall four months from now (when I will test again) and 10 months from now, I might have a "negative" result according to Pfizer. While some will just be getting their first dose, millions of the rest of us might need to get a third just like the annual flu shots. If the countries I wish to travel to reach herd immunity in ?October?, then I might have a window of opportunity to travel safely for @ four months. There are many variables at play.

Thanks to all the variants, will we ever truly reach heard immunity? I doubt it.

James, the "experts" don't expect herd immunity in the U.S. We need about 80% of the population vaccinated but 25% or them say they won't get the shot.

Herd immunity would have made life much easier for everyone but it looks unlikely. As for other countries, we have to wait and see.

As I heard the director of CDC say yesterday, herd immunity is a moving target. Everyones been throwing around these numbers of 70-80-90 vaccination rates, but the main factor impacting herd immunity is the transmissibility of the virus. Which can change due to many things, like opening up, and more ominously, new variants with higher transmissibility. The longer this drags on and with a large unvaccinated population, the more people who get infected, and the more opportunity for mutation of new, more transmissible variants. So we can congratulate ourselves for high vaccination rates in the US, UK, Israel, etc., but unless the whole world gets up to speed, the potential for an ongoing cycle remains.

Fauci at various times has used 65%, 75%, 90%. Well, the world will never hit any of those markers except through infection. Infection of all the variants in on going cycles as new ones emerge. Lockdown is the only solution. Heck, we even have a Texas born and breed killer variant now. We will need booster shots that address new variants every 3 months