A new analysis from Surgo Ventures — a global health foundation that provides data for health programs, projects the vaccination rate will reach a plateau in late April.
Attention will then shift to encouraging people who don’t want the vaccine to take the vaccine. And this will occur well before the nation reaches the 70-90 percent threshold for achieving herd immunity.
And, it can be said that all this has nothing to do with the CDC and FDA putting a hold on using the Johnson&Johnson vaccine until further studies are done on a potentially fatal clotting problem seen in a few vaccine recipients. This temporary time-out may ultimately have little impact on the larger dynamics of America’s vaccination campaign.
Actually, before the use of the J&J vaccine was halted, the United States was already approaching a “vaccine wall.” This is the point at which supply outstrips demand, the country’s rapid pace of vaccination starts to slow down and every American who wants a shot can easily get whatever shot they want, whether it’s Pfizer, Moderna or the one-and-done J&J.
What is going on?
According to reporting from Axios, Red states in the South are administering the lowest proportions of the vaccines received from the federal government. This could be a sign of low demand or poor health systems – or both.
However, the people most reluctant to take a coronavirus vaccine are white Republicans – and based on CNN reporting, In a Kaiser Family Foundation poll published last month, 28 percent of White adults who identify as Evangelical Christians said they definitely will not get a vaccine, 6 percent said they will only get vaccinated if they have to, and 15 percent said they will wait and see.
The bottom line is whether there will be enough Americans willing to get vaccinated — not whether there will be enough vaccines for Americans who are willing.
Herd immunity is important
According to Surgo Ventures, 59 percent of U.S. adults say they’re either already vaccinated, or plan to be as soon as the shot is made available to them. At the current U.S. vaccination rate, all of those vaccine-enthusiastic adults could be inoculated by the end of April.
Additionally, the analysis suggests that the U.S. will see 52 percent of Americans vaccinated by July. So if you add those numbers and the number of people who already got infected with COVID-19, the U.S. will hit about 65 percent immunity, which is less than what’s needed for herd immunity.
And no matter how we look at it, the U.S. has done remarkably well in getting the vaccines out to the states. Less than three months after President Biden began the vaccine campaign, the country has gone from 900,000 doses a day to 3.4 million daily doses. On Saturday, 4.6 million shots were reported — a new record.
But even with all the vaccine doses being administered today, the CDC is reporting 14 states have administered less than 75 percent of the doses distributed to them, including Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Georgia, Alaska, Wyoming, Louisiana, Tennessee, West Virginia, Florida, Hawaii, Oklahoma, Indiana, and South Carolina.
