60% is probably enough to kill Covid with virus hygiene in place. The problem is - as we have seen time & again - when the cases come down, so do the masks.
How infectious, exactly, do you think B.1.1.7 and other more contagious variants are, with no protections in place?
Do the math. 60% vaccinated. 95% effective. That takes you to 57% protected.
40% infected (seems slightly high to me, but CDC doesn't think so). Assume 30% overlap with vaccination. 28%. Assume 60% protective. 17%.
17% immune, naturally + 57% immune, vaccinated = 74% immune
1/(1-0.74) = 3.84 R0 required for exponential growth. (And I'm not even counting an additional ~1% of the population getting infected each month...which helps too.)
How is that level of immunity going to sustain outbreaks?
And that's just by July 4th. It's not like kids over 12 aren't going to get vaccinated - they'll start getting vaccinated next week, probably, and they're not being counted here. Those numbers will keep going up.
I'm NOT saying we're going to see zero cases everywhere, or that we won't have local outbreaks - we might. But things will be contained, and they will die out assuming the vaccines remain effective.
But, once we get to the levels above, my belief is that the masks coming down will be fine. It won't be my choice, but I think it's fine at a population level. I also think enough people will be careful on their own accord (like me), with no restrictions at all, that it will continue to snub the spread of the virus slightly. People like not having colds and not being sick.
This is exactly what happened in India. People became so callous that even most of the doctors skipped vaccines.
Totally different. Barely anyone has been vaccinated in India, partly because they simply don't have the supply and it's a financial issue for them (affluent people get the vaccine, is what I have heard from the people I've talked to about the situation). Also there were multiple people crowing about herd immunity having been reached in India through natural infection....which is just...dumb.
On the serious topic of the nanobot trackers built into the vaccine (too soon?)
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