Two drug companies, Pfizer (with BioNTech) and Moderna, have announced promising results from the beginning of Phase 3 of clinical trials of their covid-19 vaccines. Both report 90% or greater efficacy at keeping vaccinated people from getting sick.
Which is good.
For months the cry of those who favor further lockdown has been “until there is a vaccine!” and now we are closer to having a vaccine.
Which is great.
Or would be, except.
The public-health focus during this pandemic has been on keeping vulnerable populations safe. We close schools not because this coronavirus is more dangerous to children than the thousand other bugs they are exposed to in an ordinary school year, but because children are disease vectors.
Premise 1: What we have done so far has served primarily the purpose of protecting those most vulnerable.
A vaccine can protect those people either directly (by keeping those vulnerable people who are vaccinated from getting sick) or indirectly (by keeping less-vulnerable people …