Uncertain Vaccine

Everyone seems to be assuming that a vaccine will be found for the Covid19, and that once it has been released to the world, everything that has been disrupted will return to normal. Americans assume that, even if the Chinese fail to do it, American drug companies will succeed in producing a vaccine, because Trump has made America great again. I suspect that this is humanist over-confidence. Modern nations assume every problem can be solved by human ingenuity. We have modern technology so everything will be fine.

However, there is no guarantee that an effective an economic vaccine will be discovered. If the virus was created by the spiritual powers of evil, they may be just clever enough to create one that is immune to a vaccine.

A vaccine that works in the laboratory is not always easy to get into the field. The flu vaccine is happy being carried in egg yoke, but other potential vaccines might not be so easy to deliver. Potential vaccines have to be tested carefully, as if they are not exactly right, they can make recipients more vulnerable to the disease. Therefore, we should not assume that a vaccine can be developed, as there are many viruses for which no vaccine has possible. For example, there is no effective vaccine for the common cold despite extensive research. A vaccine for Shingles took ten years to develop.

Political leaders should be thinking about how they will respond if an effective vaccine for Covid19 cannot be developed. The virus could be swirling around the world for several years. There is no certainty yet that the antibodies developed by people who have recovered from the virus will be effective for many years after the event. In the worst case, people who have been infected with Covid19 might be infected again and again, just like humans are affected with the common cold over and over again.

If the worst happens and Covid19 whirls around the world each winter, international air travel is like to be severely constrained. People who arrive on an aeroplane from another nation will probably have to be quarantined for two weeks when they arrive. That will put most people off travelling at all. International tourism will be totally impractical. Local quarantine areas might need to be established to constrain outbreaks of the virus. Our ability to move from city to city and town to town will be severely listed. Many things that we currently do will become impractical.

Here in New Zealand, by locking down the borders and imposing self-isolation on everyone, the government seems to have dramatically flattened the curve. Only fifteen infected people are in hospital and the number of new cases has levelled, and may be falling. The problem with this is that this leaves the country with almost no herd immunity, but carrying the cost of a massive shutdown.

Some experts are suggesting that the virus could come in waves, as happened with the 1918 flu. New Zealand skipped the first wave due to restrictions on travel during wartime, but was hit hard in the second wave in November 1918. If a second wave of the covid19 arrives, NZ might have to go through a second costly lockdown, which I am not sure the country could bear. The alternative would be to keep the border restricted putting all international visitors through a two-week quarantine for quite some time.