A vaccine used to give immunity or at least protection to the coronavirus. The first two for the
US came out December
2020, and there are more vaccines for other countries. A third US vaccine came out March
2021. As
time goes by, more people will get vaccinated and become eligible for the vaccine. So far the vaccines are only available for people as young as 16 but the vaccines are currently being tested on children. A vaccine for children could take up to the fall of
2021 to come out. Hopefully, the vaccine should be widely available in the spring of
2021, if not it will become widely available summer
2021. To reach herd immunity, we need 70-80% of the place, such as the US or a US state fully vaccinated. If 2 million people are vaccinated a
day, then we could reach herd immunity as late as September or October
2021, and as early as July or
August of
2021. As more people become vaccinated, things will be safer to reopen. In the spring, things with the vaccine will get better, but not many things will reopen, and hopefully the
summer should not be bad if people are vaccinated, but the fall will be much better. The 2 main things that we are worried about is vaccine hesitancy due to people not being eligible for the vaccine or people refusing to get vaccinated, and the lack of a vaccine available for children, and the second thing is the variants of the virus that could make the vaccine less effective, but it seems like the vaccines offer decent protection against the variants.