The longer the rest of the world population takes to achieve herd immunity the more surface we give to the virus to evolve with potentially disastrous consequences.
The vaccine may be effective against currently known strains but nothing says it is going to be effective against future ones.
Though obviously the earlier we can eradicate the virus globally the better.
Change it too much and the vaccine doesn’t work, but neither does the virus.
If this was true a single drug would be effective against all viruses. What is preventing DNA of multiple viruses to mix together and exchange some parts?
You could argue that this is rather rare occurrence, but that is exactly the point. It happens sometimes and the more chances we give to the virus the more likely this happens in reality.
Targeting the vaccine in a way that lessens the likelihood of mutations making it ineffective is a sensible approach. Thus far, data seems to show the mRNA vaccines being pretty resilient to the mutations out there.
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2021/03/24/scie...
Yes it's good to get people vaccinated quickly, there's certainly no good that will come from unnecessarily prolonging the current pandemic, but it will end.
It is true. Wonder if vaccine is the only way against COVID?