36 months is my best-case scenario.
Worst case is that it becomes a new permanent
feature on the landscape for generations to
come.
I think we have to, first of all, put aside
this image of a wave, as a uniform tsunami
wave coming across — you know, boom, boom,
boom, boom, everybody gets hit at once, we
all are in lockdown, and then the wave is
gone, and now we can come out and hit the
beach.
It’s not like that.
If you haven’t been paying attention, it’s
already not a single isolated wave.
Parts of the country are starting to get their
first cases.
Other parts of the country are starting to
have a downturn, such as here in New York,
where our horrible, horrible epidemic is beginning
to come down.
And this is how it’s going to be for months
and months to come — sporadic outbreaks
here, there, moving towards the Southern Hemisphere,
coming back to the Northern Hemisphere, different
parts of the world hit at different times.
And the movement of humanity is going to be
the movement of virus.
So, as people come out of not just lockdown
in their homes, but out of their countries
and back on airplanes, out of sort of trying
to operate business via Zoom into business
via personal contact, as the supply chains
try to restore full-scale operation with globalized
distribution, and that means globalized human
movement, then we’re going to once again
have sporadic outbreaks.
So, it’s Italy today.
It’s Portugal tomorrow.
It’s Albania next week.
It’s Rio de Janeiro two weeks later, and
so on and so forth.
And this is going to go on for a very long
time.
Meanwhile, let’s say — my 36-month scenario
is if we have very good luck on a vaccine.
So, let us pretend that we actually do come
up with a very effective vaccine, totally
safe, and we have it, through the first stage
of development and human testing, before the
middle of this summer.
And it actually, miraculously, is a vaccine
that, number one, can be used in a single
dose, no booster required; number two, you
don’t have to use syringes, it can be administered
nasally, orally or with a patch, so we don’t
have to worry about the supply chain on syringes
and disposal, safe disposal; number three,
it doesn’t need to be refrigerated, so you
don’t have to worry about how are you going
to use it in countries without electricity
and refrigerators; and, number four, it can
be mass-produced easily, it’s not terribly
difficult to make, there aren’t huge contamination
problems, and it’s possible to rev up for
production of hundreds of millions of doses
right away.
So, then, by the end of 2020, we would be
in large-scale clinical trials.
By early 2021, if those all miraculously turned
out to have no side effects and be just super
effective — and we have to figure out how
we’re going to determine that something
is super effective; you know, you don’t
want to deliberately infect people with COVID,
so what’s the scheme there? — then, all
right, now we have a vaccine.
Groovy.
Who has it?
Who’s making it?
Where are the factories?
And who’s going to get it?
Well, obviously, it’s going to go to the
rich countries first.
And it’s going to the country that’s making
it first.
So, if China beats everybody to the mark,
then Chinese will get vaccinated.
That’s 1.4 billion people.
That’s a lot of doses to manufacture before
anybody else in the world gets vaccine.
If it’s here, you know, we’re going to
make 300 million doses.
It’s going to be Americans first.
Then we’ll help our Canadian friends, you
know?
And probably bottom of our list will be Mexico.
And this sort of scenario will play out.
But, meanwhile, it’s going to cost money.
People are going to want to make a profit
off of it.
There’s going to be patent disputes.
There’s going to be all sorts of international
distribution issues that will get in the way.
And this epidemic will keep circulating and
keep popping up all over the world, and we
won’t have a campaign for actually getting
7.5 billion human beings vaccinated.
And without vaccinating 7.5 billion human
beings, we will continue to have COVID in
the world.
And if there’s any frailty in this herd
immunity and in this vaccine protection that
we’ve built, then we’ll have waves of
it coming back over and over and over again
for years to come.
And I see no indication of a mass vaccination
campaign coming under gear that would be the
largest in the history of humanity, would
dwarf what we did with smallpox.
