Covid: An effective vaccine will be a huge breakthrough for society and the economy. It would also be a staggering scientific achievement.
Gregory Poland of the Mayo Clinic, who is also editor in chief of the journal Vaccine, described the vaccine “as nothing short of dizzying.”
“We were all prepared to see something like 50 to 70 percent efficacy, something like that. And to be in excess of 90 percent, 95 percent, puts it on par with the best vaccines that have ever been developed — and with apparent acceptable short-term safety. I think this is really going to have a profound effect on the field of vaccinology. I hate to overuse the word ‘paradigm-breaking,’ but it is, in many ways.”
To get back to normal more quickly, the most vulnerable should be vaccinated first.
Marc Lipsitch, professor of epidemiology and director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health: “The only certain way, given what we know about the vaccine now, to get society back to being able to function is to have this be a less-severe disease. And the way you do that is to make the people in whom it’s severe no longer vulnerable.”
The New York Times