As the coronavirus pandemic enters its 14th month in the United States, there’s good news and bad.
The bad news is that a long-feared spike in infections—the consequence of the rapid spread of new, more transmissible variants of SARS-CoV-2—is here, and it’s nasty.
The good news, however, is that at least two of the three vaccines the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved for emergency use now appear to work really well. So well that some experts believe the pandemic could more or less grind to a halt in a little over two months in the United States.
ADVERTISEMENT
But that earlier-than-predicted end to more than a year of suffering hinges on three assumptions. One, that the current surge in cases doesn’t get a lot worse. Two, that America’s vaccination efforts continue to expand. And three, that people keep wearing masks and social distancing for a few more weeks.
Welcome to Rabbit Hole, where we dive deep on the biggest story. It’s for Beast Inside members only. Join up today.
“This is now a race between virus spread—due to a general relaxation of compliance with social measures by the general population, particularly the younger population—and vaccination ramp-up,” Edwin Michael, an epidemiologist at the Center for Global Health Infectious Disease Research at the University of South Florida, told The Daily Beast.
The good news about the vaccines appeared Monday on the website of the U.S. Centers for Disease and Control. A CDC-commissioned survey of around 4,000 people found that the messenger-RNA vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer were 80 percent effective at preventing infection after one dose, and 90 percent effective after two doses.
Those high rates of effectiveness might not sound surprising. After all, in large-scale phase 3 trials, both mRNA vaccines—which include tiny amounts of genetic material that prime our immune systems to ward off COVID-19—proved to be around 95 percent effective at preventing serious infection and death.
But the phase 3 trials took place in a somewhat controlled environment. The CDC study, by contrast, reflected what the agency called “real-world conditions.” The survey subjects were health-care professionals, first responders. and other frontline workers who frequently come into close contact with the SARS-CoV-2 pathogen—and sometimes in chaotic situations.
That the vaccines worked so well in those conditions is great news. And the news should get even better as more shots are administered. “When you have vaccines with such high effectiveness rolled out on a massive population-wide basis, the results can be rapid and dramatic,” Lawrence Gostin, a Georgetown University global health expert, told The Daily Beast.
The even better news is that the jabs didn’t just prevent serious infection and death in the CDC’s survey—they also overwhelmingly prevented any infection, period. Once you’ve gotten your vaccine, there’s a very slim chance you’ll carry COVID asymptomatically and risk infecting other people. Assuming the CDC’s findings stand up to scrutiny, of course.
The survey begins to settle a question that has vexed experts for months. “This was the big unknown: Do the vaccines protect against asymptomatic infection?” Surinder Singh, a vice president at Japan-based pharma Otsuka Pharmaceutical, told The Daily Beast.
Assuming further study backs up the CDC’s findings, we’re close to saying with confidence that the mRNA vaccines, which tens of millions of Americans have already received, stop the novel coronavirus dead in its tracks, with only a small margin of error.
“The implications are that vaccinated individuals are at much much lower risk for getting infected than some thought,” Jeffrey Klausner, a USC clinical professor of preventive medicine who previously worked at the CDC, told The Daily Beast. “The vaccines protect against infection, disease, and death.”
And that means that America’s four-month-old vaccination campaign, which has greatly accelerated under the administration of President Joe Biden, could end the current pandemic faster than many experts previously estimated.
The United States has administered more than 100 million shots so far, beating Biden’s goal by a month. And with more than 2 million (and climbing) additional jabs going into arms every day, on average, the country is on track to reach population-level immunity soon. “Our models indicate that if vaccinations are ramped up three times the current rate, we might achieve herd immunity levels during the first week of June,” Michael said.
But Michael’s models don’t take into account the new CDC data on vaccine effectiveness. Fold in those new numbers and the projections get even rosier. “With these new rates, that [herd immunity] would be achieved earlier at this [vaccine] rollout rate,” Michael added.
There’s a wrinkle. The vaccine ramp-up is running headlong into new and more dangerous forms of the coronavirus. Two variants in particular—“lineages” is the scientific term—are especially worrisome. The B.1.1.7 lineage from the United Kingdom and B.1.526, which first appeared in New York, are both easier to transmit than older forms of the virus, and also might result in more serious illness.
B.1.1.7 and other new lineages have spread across the United States. But they’re most heavily concentrated in the Northeast and Upper Midwest, where they’re driving an upturn in infections that has erased some of the progress the country made starting in mid-January. “Variants, together with less safe behaviors, could delay our recovery,” Gostin said.
New York, New Jersey, and Michigan are the hardest hit. All three states are registering around 50 new cases per 100,000 residents per day, which is roughly the same number they counted back in February.
But now the victims increasingly are younger people who haven’t had the same priority access to the vaccines that older Americans have enjoyed, and who tend to work jobs that put them in close contact with a public that is growing weary of masks and social distancing in states that are canceling public-health rules in response to political and economic pressures.
Positive and negative forces are about to collide. On one hand, more and more Americans are getting vaccinated, and the vaccines are even more effective than earlier assessments indicated. On the other hand, new lineages are infecting people who have little choice but to be out in public at a time when many Americans—and especially their elected leaders—have prematurely declared victory in the long war on COVID.
To preserve as many lives as possible while our vaccines do their work and finally strangle SARS-CoV-2, Americans must do what experts have been telling them to do all along. Wear a mask. Keep your distance. “It is likely too soon to relax all precautions,” Jennifer Reich, a sociologist at the University of Colorado Denver specializing in vaccination, told The Daily Beast.
And get vaccinated as soon as possible. “The faster we vaccinate the less overall opportunity there is for variants to spread,” Klausner explained.
Most important, don’t mistake progress for victory. Sure, the end is in sight, but that doesn’t mean the pandemic is over. Thousands of Americans could die between now and when the country records its final case of COVID-19.
