STAT-Harris Poll: Share of Americans who want Covid-19 vaccine ASAP is dropping

Note that not all vaccines prevent you from being infected. That's called "sterilizing" immunity. Many vaccines simply prevent you from getting sick, but you can still catch and spread the disease. Where COVID-19 vaccines will fall on that range (it's not a clear binary) isn't yet known, and will likely depend on the type of vaccine. This is why the relatively dangerous (https://www.who.int/csr/don/01-september-2020-polio-sudan/en...) live-Polio vaccine is still being used in some areas: the safer options protect you, but don't provide enough immunity to actually wipe out Polio entirely.

There's also the issue that the fatality rate for the <19 year age group is very low, about 0.003%(1), and even lower for the slightly older school aged crowd (approximately 0.001%(2), 1/10,080 of the 85+ demographic). It'll take time and large studies before we can actually prove that a vaccine is safer than COVID-19 for that age group. Note how a previous H1N1 vaccine turned out to cause serious narcolepsy in a minority of people: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/history/narcoleps... There's also the problem that you need enough people in the test to be exposed to COVID-19 naturally: vaccines can in some circumstances make infections worse - an issue that has made developing the closely related SARS vaccine hard - and you need large studies to detect that in cases like young people where the disease isn't very deadly to begin with.

A safer option would be to provide vaccinations for adults working in schools, starting with those most at risk, and working down to least at risk as safety evidence builds up.

1) https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scena... 2) https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/investi...

>Whether folks want it or not, public schools will probably require it of all students.

Unfortunately this will be quite some time away still. None of the vaccines currently in phase 3 trials are targeting approval for use in children.

Not for at least a year they won't - there's just not enough supply for them to require that. And any available supply will go to elderly and essential workers first.

Very fair. We should just bite the bullet of Covid. The goal at the beginning was just to prevent overwhelming medical capacity. No one ever signed up to save everyone at the expense of everyone else!

When those in favor of the greatest restrictions lose their seats to those in favor of loosening restrictions. Regardless of which path is best for public health, it is obvious that public patience is wearing thin and will continue to do so. Eventually people will be willing to wait no longer and will replace those who are standing in the way of resuming their lives. Screams of "you're killing people" will increasingly fall upon deaf ears. Messages of "this is the new normal" and "we're never going back to the way things were" were terrible mistakes. Fear can only rule for so long before someone else offers hope and uses that to win.

Of course if people supporting either path decide to get violent and go some road other than democracy, all bets are off on how it will turn out. Doubt that happens though as much as some might fantasize about it. It's almost all downside for everyone involved.

Today if you live in a country with competent government like New Zealand.

I've always assumed that the real "end" of the covid era would come from testing, not from a vaccine. As testing gets faster, cheaper and more prevalent I would expect large gatherings to eventually become safe again.

The real dream would be a covid 19 breathalyzer test that you can make somebody blow on the way into an event or party, guaranteeing that everybody on the plane would be disease free