New variants, vaccine triumphalism and the utopia of "herd immunity"

Abstract

With a world population yearning to return to "normality" prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, political discourse has focused on finding that magical percentage of a vaccinated population necessary to achieve the long-awaited "herd immunity" that would largely allow thus remove the established restrictions. But this decision does not have a solid scientific basis because the appearance of new variants increases the capacity and speed of contagion of the virus and threatens the effectiveness of vaccines by changing the established rules and the most optimistic calculations. Therefore, the possibility of defeating SARSCOV2 in the short term and only through vaccines is becoming utopian. It is essential to change the denial and relaxation message of a possible end of the pandemic in a few days for one aimed at maintaining prevention measures such as the mask, distance and hand washing, massive vaccination reinforcements, epidemiological surveillance, genomic analysis of the virus, which are fundamental pillars to adequately fight this health war that does not give up and about which we will still have much to talk about.