I don't think it's possible to say a yes or no answer if somebody has immunity using a lab test today.
Though, the vaccine is only needed to last long enough to eradicate the virus. If mass application of vaccine can plunge the r-factor well below 1, it should be more than ok if its protection only lasts 3-4 months.
If it's really down to a single company not being able to manufacture enough then it's time to open up the vaccine to licensing and let other companies pile in.
The world is facing a few problems like this, where the structures of the economy are getting in the way of doing real work. Climate change is another one. If cost wasn't an issue, and everyone was paid by some infinite coffer, we'd have switched to green energy years ago and it wouldn't have been controversial at all. Only now that it's cost effective are we switching en masse to green energy, and we're having to drag economies kicking and screaming away from coal even still.
The community seems to be second to capitalism at every turn, and whilst I know it's not a new thought, it's becoming more and more prevalent that we've made societies devoid of the capacity for community effort.
Edit: Thought I'd clarify, my point is that our governments are meant to supply the community capacity through paying for work with our taxes, but often structures that benefit private businesses win out.
More specifically, you're hopeful that the company manufacturing the vaccine would actually open up to licensing, but they don't have to, and the US has consistently shown it's disdain for compulsory licensing. It would be an exception for them to force the company to license a vaccine, and it's not like pharmaceutical companies have an ethical track record in the US. If it came down to money vs community health, I would absolutely expect money to win out in the US. It already does. Worse yet, the US has bullied other countries into tightening their own compulsory licensing laws, in order to protect US pharmaceutical companies.
Either they were symptomless or with good discipline and PPE you can limit its spread quite successfully.
To be clear, higher than in other cruise ships and other meat packing plants.
There was also a swiss military study where one group only got infected after distancing implemented. Positive cases, but no symptoms. Earlier group’s cases had symptoms.
If the each contaminated person transmits it to two other people, you'll need to keep half of the people immune to each at any single time. If you are doing this by vaccines, you'll need to give it to half of the people on that immunity window.
And you must also syncronize it internationally.
Then you need to administer something like 300 doses per second globally, if you have 1B doses.
This is also assuming the virus doesn’t mutate during that time (it mutates very slowly but it could still happen).
The vaccine really needs to give multi-year protection otherwise it won’t be viable in the long run.
Source: Live in Lansing MI where the nutty politicization of this issue is out of hand and there are redneck “anti-mask” protests seemingly once a month.
[1]: https://cen.acs.org/business/outsourcing/Moderna-picks-Lonza...
https://www.fiercebiotech.com/biotech/moderna-finalizes-desi...
Moderna has plans to be able to manufacturer 1 billion doses a year. AstraZeneca has announced plans to manufacturer 2 billion doses a year, with plans to produce 300 million doses by the end of 2020. The Chinese firms Sinopharm and Sinovac are ramping up their production right now, and will produce 200-300 million doses by the end of 2020. With all the other firms developing a vaccine it seems highly likely we could produce enough vaccine to vaccinate the entire population of the Earth in a single year. Now distributing and administering that much vaccine is another story, but manufacturing will not likely be the bottle neck.
Also based on the results from the study, two doses are necessary because one dose didn’t elicit a strong enough result but two did.
But, as an alternative to synchronization, you could also require vaccinations for everyone who travels.
If a country gets it under control within its borders, it could require visitors to show proof they either (1) have tested positive for the disease and then recovered or (2) have been vaccinated recently enough (but not too recently) and also tested negative for the disease.
That way, you'd know they do not have it and have some degree of protection against picking it up while traveling to your country.
Anyway, the travel restrictions I mentioned would hardly be bulletproof. Vaccinations don't confer 100% immunity, and tests aren't 100% accurate. So countries could still reduce their risk by supporting worldwide vaccination.
Also, this might be a moot question if we can't produce enough vaccines to do it all at once.
[1] https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/publications...
It's not impossible for countries with a small population, but AFAIK the flu is the largest scale vaccination in the world, and we are talking about something 4 times larger (than those countries that vaccinate the most - how are China and India numbers?).
But then, this seems to be the worst case with a reasonable likelihood. Things will probably be better.
COVID is much scarier than flu, which should encourage people.
Thankfully the R0 of SARS-COV-2 seem to be around 1.4–2.5 (meaning you need ~30% to ~60% recovered), so a vaccine would be actually very effective. I highly suspect "Travel to Europe" (i.e. international travel) may still be delayed for a long bit until we've gotten around to ~50-60% immunized, but it's tough to say.
https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/52/7/911/299077 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compartmental_models_in_epidem...
He vaguely remembers the case as something from the 50's or the 60's and todya we have better technology all around. But yes, I understand that most labs working on vaccines do take into account the potential difficulties in production.
That will be a really interesting question for the modellers, because vaccinating those who pose the highest danger of spreading the disease might have a much greater impact. If side effects turn out big you might even end up wanting to vaccinate everybody but the elderly.
Governments essentially said "If you can demonstrate reasonable efficacy and safety, go ahead and start mass production. If your Phase III trials fail, we'll make you whole and dump the doses in a landfill."
Otherwise, you had to wait the entire Phase III duration before even starting production, whereas now you'll essentially have viable vaccine on Day 0 when the Phase III trail concludes.
I wonder will people comparison shop.
Governments have too much incentive to purchase and distribute all they can get their hands on.
Is anyone optimistic about that?
The "r-factor" (also called R_0, or attack rate), described the rate at which people once exposed to the virus move from S->I. The proportion of patients in (R) should not fundamentally change the r-factor.
That said, I do think your fundamental assessment in that moving more people from (S) directly to (R) would decrease the rate at which the disease spreads.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compartmental_models_in_epidem...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_reproduction_number#Effe...
It being artificially reduction is kind of given as it a vaccine, but as the basic reproduction number is being used to measure the number of reproductions from each [known] infected person within population groups it seems like THE measure of a vaccine's impact.
You seem to be talking about something else entirely.
https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/coronavirus/article24377546...
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-fauci-...