The United States ended the unfortunate 2020 with 2.8 million vaccinations for Covid after starting vaccination 17 days earlier. By the New Year, 20 million citizens should be given the injection. However, at the current rate, the entire American population will be protected in … 5.5 years.
Around 9.5 million doses have been administered worldwide. Assuming each unit corresponds to one person, which is a bit inaccurate because some have already received the second injection, vaccination of 7.8 billion at that rate would take about 50 years.
Of course, this data doesn’t mean much as a forecast. The whole process starts slowly and gains momentum over time. However, it is not possible to be very optimistic when the production and distribution capacity is a few millions and the demand is billions.
There is a slogan among researchers to curb proponents of startling ideas when formulating hypotheses: When you hear hoofbeats, think of horses, not zebras. The simplest and most rational scenario is also the most likely.
So when you hear about Covid at the beginning of the year, first remember to wear a mask and maintain social distance, for the time being the most important means of protecting yourself and others. Don’t rely on the vaccination excuse to lower your guard even further.
The UK, which started vaccinating, is now sponsoring a wooden horse when it is besieged by the most contagious variant of the Sars-CoV-2 virus, which has also arrived in Brazil. In less than a month, the interval between the first and second doses of the immunizer was increased from 3 weeks to 12.
The justification: to protect as many British people as possible in the shortest possible time, even without guaranteeing that the first injection will produce an adequate immune response. Those twists and turns and the lack of transparency about plans and results – in the UK, the US, China, Brazil – certainly do nothing to build confidence in vaccines.
Pictures of old people taking the protective stab create understandable hope, but there is no cause for excitement. In addition to the mental and moral exhaustion after a year of the pandemic, the perspective reopened by the vaccination has the paradoxical effect of loosening preventive measures and thus reviving the infection.
That’s the level of a thousand deaths every day in Brazil to show that we are in the worst world. People are being encouraged by a vaccine that most won’t see until 2022, unless nothing else goes wrong with the Jair Bolsonaro massacre of the epidemic.
The President does not commit to honesty, facts or even consistency. Talk about any nonsense about Covid and its tomorrow’s opposite today as long as it serves to grab attention and distract them from the amazing sonorous clatter in the children’s, woman’s and their own reports.
Even without the power to transform anything related to public order, it promotes inoperability in the Ministry of Health and discredits the only effective measures against the coronavirus. Although there are many putrefactive behaviors, putrefactive seed only produces a large crop of tanning, sealing, and rejection notes.
Bolsonaro refuses to wear a mask and to distance himself to protect us from his losers. Hope for the impeachment vaccine remains, but the roar of the hooves in Congress suggests he is as competent as General Eduardo Pazuello in acquiring syringes and needles.
There will be zebra.
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