Vaccination progress in Israel is providing interesting data. They are the furtherest along towards herd immunity (if such a thing can be made to work). It looks like they might reach this some time around easter. They have given over 40% a first shot so far and it is about five weeks afterwards that they get towards the 90% plus immunity from the studies, if we have 3 weeks between first and second vaccination and another 14 days after that for the full effect. They are proceeding at a rate that we can only dream of in the EU. Even if we speed up dramatically we might reasonably expect to get to a similar point in late summer.
There is an argument that once the vulnerable have been vaccinated (which should be far earlier) then we can go back to life as normal. Certainly as far as education is concerned I think the cost benefit is fairly clearly in favour of opening up. However as far as holiday travel is concerned the situation is rather more difficult. First of all not everyone wants to get vaccinated. Anecdotally we hear of certain groups where the take up is currently projected to be less than half. The new variant seems much more infectious and there is a chance that nearly everyone who is not vaccinated will eventually get it. This has the benefit that this group will also have immunity. But given the fact that it is not just killing the obviously vulnerable it is unlikely that people are going to rush out in order to infect themselves. So herd immunity looks a long way off.
What conclusions can we draw from the data so far? If the hospitals don't get overwhelmed mortality seems to be around one percent. It may be less but certainly not zero. At one percent we are talking about an increased mortality across Europe potentially in the hundreds of thousands. I may be wrong and would be happy to be corrected. But currently I am not sure about revalidating my Airbus rating which runs out in a couple of months.