Getting Real About Vaccination?

David Salisbury has given a timely warning for us not to get our hopes up too high on hearing news that a Covid-19 vaccine might be available by 'Christmas', 'January' or 'Spring' (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/oct/21/covid-vaccine-immunisation-protection). As he points out, no vaccine is a 100% effective (and it has been claimed that 50% effectiveness might be deemed 'acceptable' for the Covid-19 version). Protection afforded is a product of the proportion of the population vaccinated and the vaccine's effectiveness. Salisbury also illustrates (using figures from the programmes used to deal with seasonal 'flu and meningitis), that giving vaccines only to 'at risk' groups (as is currently planned for Covid-19) neither fully protects that group nor does anything to eliminate the disease-causing agent from the population. He makes it clear, that we will only get back to anything like normality if a) the vaccine is very effective and b) all age and risk groups are vaccinated. Salisbury points out, that getting young people (who are not likely to be personally imperilled by a Covid-19 infection), vaccinated might be difficult (they would be doing this for the benefit of others rather than themselves). I suppose that I ought to add the rider that the growing antivaxx movement will make getting anything like 100% uptake very difficult (the UK has one of the best take-ups of the seasonal 'flu vaccine for over 65 year olds but this is still only around 75%).