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Mike's Minute: What if the Covid-19 vaccine isn't the finish line for the pandemic?

Author
Mike Hosking,
Publish Date
Mon, 15 Feb 2021, 10:48AM

Mike's Minute: What if the Covid-19 vaccine isn't the finish line for the pandemic?

Author
Mike Hosking,
Publish Date
Mon, 15 Feb 2021, 10:48AM

I think it's fair to suggest that for a government that has built a fairly serious reputation of talking a big game, and not delivering on it, the vaccine news is a major kudos win.

"By the end of the quarter,” they said vaguely. Suddenly, bang, we're on as of this weekend.

The big question now for them, indeed all governments, is what does the vaccine now actually mean? Most of us, did we not, started thinking that a jab was the answer? A jab was the finish line?

It appears now it is nothing of the sort.

Certainly, what we know currently is that those jabs cleared are effective in doing the extreme work. In other words, the old and the frail, are protected to a large degree from serious symptoms and death.

The broad idea that the ICUs of the world are not overwhelmed appears to be a realistic goal, and potential outcome of the vaccine rollout.

But as millions of Brits discovered last week, and we got informed as of Friday's announcement here, a vaccine appears to have little, if anything, to do with a border, travel, or anything much different from what we are currently experiencing.

A series of medical experts from Fauci, to the Moderna boss, to the W.H.O are now saying we are going to have to live with this. The Head of Johnson and Johnson says we'll need to be jabbed annually for years.

None of that is the end of the world, but it does make it very much a flu type virus, as opposed to a disease we wipe out. There seems, for now, no end.

So surely, the question is this, what's the plan? How do we live it? What are the boundaries?  What's the future of the border? The border with who? What are the rules? What is the timeline? How do we handle MIQ? How do we handle MIQ mistakes? Do we change our stance to lockdown?

What do we do with long term industries, like tourism, if borders are longer terms issues?

It's not hard to line up several hundred questions over a variety of industries, groups, and people, and all of which will need to be answered.

As a country isolated from the world, with the theory being a vaccine would fix stuff, welcome to an unwelcome, new reality.

It ain't happening the way we thought it would. So, what now?

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