I'm slightly concerned with the medium-term effectiveness of those vaccines, since most of them target exclusively the spike protein. That's a very limited pool of antigen epitopes, some of which could likely be changed with a single base pair mutation.

The virus will be under tremendous evolutionary pressure and variants that evade neutralizing antibodies might have a chance to proliferate, though with less potency than the virus has against "virgin" immune systems.

Depending on how severe the disease still remains, especially for the vulnerable groups, booster shots might be needed. Either that or second-generation live attenuated vaccines become the gold standard for immunization.

Edit - that all is assuming cell-based immunity to the spike protein will be affected, and not counting antibody affinity maturation, which might work to prevent infection altogether no matter what. So, that might not even happen. Smallpox was flat out eradicated just by providing immunity to a different virus, after all.

Caught it just when I just had a vaccine appointment booked. Feels bad, man.

It needs to be effective long enough to get the virus to die out by keeping the rate of transmission under 1.0

Atm we need (temporary) lock downs next to transmission rate reducing measures like masks and social distancing. At first the vaccines can remove the need for lock downs and closures, then maybe relax social distancing while keeping masks the longest. (Keeping masks and extra cleaning is not a bad idea for during flu season)

Although immunization for covid-19 will probably become a long term thing, required for travel to countries where it could still be around in rural areas for years to come. The world is so big, there will be plenty places with the right population density / age distribution for the virus to hang around Rt 1.0, not escalating prompting special measures, but not disappearing either.

Treatment will get better as well, hopefully this is the last really deadly period of Covid-19 and death rates should never get close to 100K per week again.



Meanwhile
https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/225-million-jobs-were-lost-worldwide-in-2020-thanks-to-the-pandemic-report-finds-1.5281152

In a fresh study, the UN's International Labour Organization (ILO) found that a full 8.8 per cent of global working hours were lost in 2020, compared to the fourth quarter of 2019. That is equivalent to 255 million full-time jobs, or "approximately four times greater than the number lost during the 2009 global financial crisis,"

On the other hand, if we go by a very optimistic potential global death rate of 0.3%, taking worldinfo meters and assuming 10x more people (undetected asymptomatic cases) have recovered, and say potentially 60% of the world population could have been infected by now if nothing was done, about 12 million lives have been saved so far.

So 1 life is worth 21 jobs.

Of course the 10x more cases than detected likely doesn't hold true anymore today, deaths are under counted or entirely missed as Covid deaths in less developed countries, many many more lives would have been lost if the hospital systems had all collapsed, plus the longer we 'draw it out' the more effective treatments become.

Doing nothing was not an option and would have potentially led to 200 million deaths by now and the total collapse of health care in most countries, resulting in chaos leading to many more jobs lost over all.

It's shit, but it would have been so much worse without the lock downs and closures. However it could also have been better if people had co-operated more with the measures instead of railing against masks, social distancing and not having enough fun. What should be measured is how many extra jobs (and lives) were lost by people continuing to travel and go out for non essential reasons.

Even if the rate of transmission remains around 1, if the need for hospitalization falls from, say, 4% to 0.4%, that's still a win in my book. It would make Covid-19 less than half a flu.

Since we have some nasty but completely vaccinable things like yellow fever still running amok with much higher fatality rates in certain places, I think Sars-Cov-2 eradication is a step too far. Once it gets everyone and/or is vaccinated, I think it'll either hang around in the background like a seasonal cold or become a much less transmisible but still somewhat dangerous pathogen like hRSV.

So when does Biden's plan to shut down the virus go into effect? He said he had a plan

Biden will do a lot more than the nothing that Trump did in regard to stopping the Corona Virus. Trump denied the Virus and claimed the virus would magically disappear. Trump was a moron who did not care about the American people and he did nothing to save his people from the Corona Virus. Corona Virus has killed over 2 million  and 435,000 deaths in the USA. It is about time a President steps up and does something to slow down the Corona Virus.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/anal-swab-china-coronavirus/2021/01/27/cc284f56-6054-11eb-a177-7765f29a9524_story.html

Australia records 10th day in a row of zero covid-19 cases, nation-wide:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-australia/australia-set-for-10th-day-of-no-local-covid-19-cases-idINKBN29W02P

Our total since the start of the pandemic is 28,786 cases and 909 deaths.

Vaccination starts next month so hopefully we can hold it together and avoid a third wave.

So damn jealous.

In denmark we re down to ~600 infections pr day now (we hit 4000+ pr day during christmas periode), and we now down to 611 people hospitalised with covid. Even with 0,6% positivity rate, and a R0 value below 1 (~0.75), we re still worried.

We got that damn UK variant of the virus, thats 55-70% more infectious (and ~15-30% more deadly).
And dispite our R0 value being under 1 (so we get less new infections pr day), the R0 value of the new variant is still around 1,05 (100 infections = 105 new infected with variant).

This means our corona virus spread, is being taken over by the new strain.
So we need to stay in strick lockdowns for atleast another month, to get really low new daily infections numbers.
So the vaccines can do their job, and save us.

Also, denmark now has strick rules with travel (about damn time! we should have done this at the start of the outbreak).
We are now basically in total lockdown (border), your not getting in unless you have a clear purpose, and pass with a negative test. Also mandatory quarantine, and hefty fines/jailing if found to be breaking them.
The fear is getting the South African strain (which appears to get younger crowds more sick, and the vaccines dont appear to help as much against).
or the Brazilian versions (same thing, vaccines arn't as protecting against it either).

The UK version.... which sucks donkey balls (upto 70% more infectious), is still alot better than getting the South African/Brazilian ones.
We've been lucky, and havnt found either of these in denmark (we test every test, to determine strain type).

The one good thing about the UK version, is vaccines appear to be just as effective in protecting against it, as the old strain of the virus.
Getting spread of the south african/brazilian strains, could mean haveing to have a new vaccine developed + given to population.

I expect alot of nations will start haveing very tight controll over boarders, and testing people before granting entry.

I guess that'll depend on how effective the vaccines are at protecting people against moderate and severe cases of the new variants. Without exception, every single vaccine will be more effective against severe cases than mild cases. How low can you afford efficacy to go while still preventing hospitalizations?

For instance, Influenza vaccine efficacy against mild cases is suspected to be minimal or non-existent, and yet it reduces hospitalizations by a solid 40-60%. So far, all Covid-19 vaccines have been 100% effective against hospitalizations - even Novavax's one against the SA strain and Sinovac's with its 50% overall efficacy - although we do need a lot more data in that regard.

(Also, we need to be VERY grateful. That these vaccines are working at all is a small miracle in itself. It could all have spectacularly failed like our efforts in making vaccines against human respiratory syncytial virus or cat coronavirus. Or worse, backfired).