Originally Posted by
Asturias56
All the evidence is that when politicians get optimistic and lift the restrictions cases then hospital admissions and then deaths soar - Sweden, Chile & the UK all show this
We have to wait until about 65% of the population have had the jab to think about opening up fully - at that point the much maligned "herd immunity" actually exists
Its a bit more than that. The AZ vaccine has an efficacy of 79% and COVID has an R number of 3. The formula for herd immunity is H=(1-(1/R))/E. So you need 84% of the population vaccinated to reach herd immunity. Pfizer efficacy is 91% and that brings the H number down to 73%. We have a mix of vaccines, so which number do you use?
Opening up international borders is going to be a very slow process that will take years before any kind of free travel is allowed, even if vaccinated. First we have countries like NZ which are COVID free with strong restrictions to transits etc. We will then probably look at countries with strong border restrictions with very little COVID and allow vaccinated travel with testing and maybe a short quarantine period.
I think we will be lucky by the end of this year to have more than NZ and maybe a couple of Pacific Islands. Very lucky to have somewhere like Singapore as well.