The lockdowns from Coronavirus are over in 6 months?

We now have two working vaccines in America and are starting to distribute. The goal was to inoculate 20 million by the end of 2020 and then 30 million more per month for subsequent months. We fell short of the first goal (only inoculated around 2 million), but hopefully we are on track to inoculate a million people a day for here on out. We shall see.

Assuming you can inoculate a million people a day (it is a lot), then by the end of June we should have around 180 million people inoculated. There are currently over 20 million who have been tested with the virus, so they theoretically don’t need inoculation. The number who have had the virus but not been tested is probably around 20 to 60 million. The United States is currently accumulating more than 200,000 new reported infections a day, so if it continues at that rate (and I am not sure it will decline soon) by the end of June we may have another 36 million cases (and possibly another 180,000 to 360,000 deaths). The United States has a population of 331 million.

So, in an ideal scenario we would have by the end of June 180 million people inoculated, 20 million already infected, another 36 million infected over the six months, at least 20 million infected but not tested, an additional 36 million new cases of people infected by not tested, less all those people who have been infected but get the vaccine anyway (lets say 1/2 or – 56 million). So 180 + 20 + 36 + 20 + 36 – 56 = 236 million people protected/inoculated. This is 71% of the U.S. population vaccinated or previously infected. This is close to the infamous “herd immunity” which I gather should be 80% or greater.

There may be a group of people who resist or reject the vaccine. This is not a big issue for this calculation, as it simply means other people will get vaccinated instead.

Now, there are a lot of factors that will influence these figures. First and most important is can the United States vaccinate a million people a day? Right now, they have not. If they cannot then the point of recovery may slide out until the fall or even to the end of the year.

 

P.S. In the last three days we have administered 500,000 vaccines a day. See: https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/04/health/us-coronavirus-monday/index.html

 

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Christopher A. Lawrence
Christopher A. Lawrence

Christopher A. Lawrence is a professional historian and military analyst. He is the Executive Director and President of The Dupuy Institute, an organization dedicated to scholarly research and objective analysis of historical data related to armed conflict and the resolution of armed conflict. The Dupuy Institute provides independent, historically-based analyses of lessons learned from modern military experience.

Mr. Lawrence was the program manager for the Ardennes Campaign Simulation Data Base, the Kursk Data Base, the Modern Insurgency Spread Sheets and for a number of other smaller combat data bases. He has participated in casualty estimation studies (including estimates for Bosnia and Iraq) and studies of air campaign modeling, enemy prisoner of war capture rates, medium weight armor, urban warfare, situational awareness, counterinsurgency and other subjects for the U.S. Army, the Defense Department, the Joint Staff and the U.S. Air Force. He has also directed a number of studies related to the military impact of banning antipersonnel mines for the Joint Staff, Los Alamos National Laboratories and the Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation.

His published works include papers and monographs for the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation, in addition to over 40 articles written for limited-distribution newsletters and over 60 analytical reports prepared for the Defense Department. He is the author of Kursk: The Battle of Prokhorovka (Aberdeen Books, Sheridan, CO., 2015), America’s Modern Wars: Understanding Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam (Casemate Publishers, Philadelphia & Oxford, 2015), War by Numbers: Understanding Conventional Combat (Potomac Books, Lincoln, NE., 2017) and The Battle of Prokhorovka (Stackpole Books, Guilford, CT., 2019)

Mr. Lawrence lives in northern Virginia, near Washington, D.C., with his wife and son.

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2 Comments

  1. However, “herd immunity” might not be relevant for COVID-19.

    Quoting the Mayo Clinic:

    Research suggests that after infection with some coronaviruses, reinfection with the same virus — though usually mild and only happening in a fraction of people — is possible after a period of months or years. Further research is needed to determine the protective effect of antibodies to the virus in those who have been infected. Even if infection with the COVID-19 virus creates long-lasting immunity, a large number of people would have to become infected to reach the herd immunity threshold. Experts estimate that in the U.S., 70% of the population — more than 200 million people — would have to recover from COVID-19 to halt the epidemic.

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