Pretty confident it's the former, which if the case, essentially ends the pandemic in a month after it's distributed, given that the R0 would drop precipitously.
The challenge will be reconciling this with the antivax crowd given that as the vaccine rolls out the rate of infection will come down correspondingly among the whole population (including the unvaccinated). They'll immediately claim that the virus is "going away on it's own" as opposed to the truth, which is that potential spreaders are being steadily removed from the susceptible population due to the vaccine.
While true, the approach they took is extremely similar to several other vaccine candidates which is a good sign that the approach works and other vaccines will be equally effective.
Not withstanding the rather enormous caveat of antivaxxers. They have grown significantly in number during this pandemic what with all the wild conspiracy theories. It’s worth checking that out.
Which is completely sufficient to vaccinate the elderly, teachers, immunocompromised, and healthcare workers in the Western world, and probably anyone else who really wants it.
There's no need to completely eliminate COVID - we don't aim for the same for regular influenza. We should aim to reopen economies as soon as possible instead.
Why aren’t we using _all_ the factories to make as many doses as possible? There should not be “companies” making these to their capacity. This should be a public effort
I would guess that a lot of the factories that are capable of producing these type vaccines also produce a lot of other important drugs and vaccines that we can't just put on the back-shelf without even greater harm.
You first: why aren't you making this in your garage right now?
For the most part the same answer as to why you aren't making it yourself also apply to most factories in the world. Only a few have the equipment, supplies, and experience to make it.
We should be clear about the goalposts. Reducing the transmission rate to a manageable level will be very easy with even just some fraction of the population being vaccinated. What exact percentage is unclear, but it's a lot less than 100%. No realistic number of anti-vaxxers can change that.
Eradicating the virus is a whole different goal, and there could be lots of different impediments to that. After all, we still get vaccinated for a large numbers of illnesses that we haven't eradicated but are just very rare. That's not a terrible endgame for COVID.
Letting this thing circulate seems dangerous given it introduces the possibility of a vaccine-resistant mutation. If anything it drives the evolution of the virus towards vaccine resistance similar to what happened with MRSA bacteria and antibiotics.
The challenge will be reconciling this with the antivax crowd given that as the vaccine rolls out the rate of infection will come down correspondingly among the whole population (including the unvaccinated). They'll immediately claim that the virus is "going away on it's own" as opposed to the truth, which is that potential spreaders are being steadily removed from the susceptible population due to the vaccine.