Global Herd Immunity

Here at "The New World," we feel pretty confident that no one has herd immunity until everyone has herd immunity.  As noted, the virus has not yet learned to respect arbitrary, human-drawn borders of any kind.

So all this talk about the US returning to normal in the summer or fall or Christmas is, on important levels, meaningless.  You know that, I know that; I've written about it before but I can't find where at the moment.  But as recently as yesterday, the New York Times published some detailed research that set up the parameters for herd immunity in the US, as if that would return us to normal.  The only important measure of herd immunity is global herd immunity.

So how's it going?  I've come here today, actually, just to share this one chart.  Here's how it's going*:

I'm a big fan of reducing social inequality, but the problem here is that we're vaccinating a small part of the world and expecting to live in that world after our handful of rich countries are vaccinated.  This makes about as much sense as sending vaccines only to states in the US whose name start with vowels.

Global herd immunity.  We need to see this phrase a lot more often, especially in rich-country policy documents.

* - COVAX, at #3, is an initiative funded by richer nations (including, post-Jan 20, by the US!) to provide vaccines to poorer nations - although it won't be enough, and richer nations (see Canada) are appropriating some for themselves).