Do We Even Need a Shot Now? COVID Is Vanishing So Quickly in the UK that Their Vaccine Test Might Be Useless

Well, North Carolina’s COVID death toll has been slashed big league. Florida was supposed to be awash with new bodies. That prediction, which was infused with a ghoulish sense of glee from liberal media folks, was made eight weeks ago. It has not happened. The curve has been flattened, deaths are dropping, and the hospitalizations have stabilized. The health care system has pressure on it, but that’s no longer the case. It’s time to re-open. The initial intent of the lockdowns was to flatten the curve. It’s been flattened. Now, to no one’s surprise, the Democrats in charge of states and localities hard hit by the initial wave of the coronavirus want people to stay inside. As this is happening, scores of businesses have suffered or closed. Millions are out of work.

For the vast majority of the country, phase one of re-opening can occur. In fact, that’s most of the country by now, even New York City. Yet, for a bit, there was talk of normal life returning when a vaccine was developed. Common sense, yes—but news out of the United Kingdom shows that this virus is fading so fast that developers might not be able to produce a successful vaccine. I guess some can be worried that no vaccine can possibly be developed for COVID, but is it really devastating news when the cause is because the pathogen is—for lack of a better term—dying out? (via Sydney Morning Herald) [emphasis mine]:

An Oxford University vaccine trial has only a 50 per cent chance of success because coronavirus is fading so rapidly in Britain, a project co-leader has warned.

The warning comes as new data reveals that there are now 224 vaccines in development around the world - almost double the total of just a month ago.

Professor Adrian Hill said an upcoming Oxford vaccine trial, involving 10,000 volunteers, threatened to return "no result" because of low transmission of COVID-19 in the community.

The eyes of the nation — and perhaps the world — are firmly on Hill and his team at Oxford University.

This week, pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca announced a $US1.2 billion deal with the United States to produce 400 million doses of an unproven coronavirus vaccine first produced in Hill's small Oxford lab. The British government has agreed to pay for up to 100 million doses, announcing that 30 million might be ready for British citizens as soon as September.

[…]

"It is a race, yes. But it's not a race against the other guys. It's a race against the virus disappearing, and against time," he said. "At the moment, there's a 50 per cent chance that we get no result at all."

Hill said that of 10,000 people recruited to test the vaccine in the coming weeks — some of whom will be given a placebo — he expected fewer than 50 people to catch the virus. If fewer than 20 test positive, then the results might be useless, he warned.

"We're in the bizarre position of wanting COVID to stay, at least for a little while. But cases are declining."

Another sign that leaders overreacted to this pandemic. And yes, I was one who did go overboard. It looks like that with every passing day. Hey, remember when President Trump said this thing would go away. Well, it's going away. Fast enough that it could render some vaccine trials useless. We want this thing to go away, but now we need to keep it around for a successful vaccine test. We're in crazy town. Some of you have noted from the beginning that we were on this trajectory.

As of now, how can one argue that we're not flying blind? On top of this, we have this face mask debate. It's gone from wear one to you don't need to, and now you should, but you can create one with a t-shirt. And after all that, it's not mandatory in some states which undercut the reasoning to ever think about face masks. The virus spreads on surfaces they said, but now actually maybe not as easily (via CBS News):

The Centers for Disease Control updated its guidance earlier this month to emphasize the coronavirus does not spread easily on surfaces, focusing more on human-to-human transmission. And new planning documents from the CDC contain more of its estimates about the transmission of the virus.

Touching surfaces and objects is now listed under the heading, "The virus does not spread easily in other ways" on the CDC web page.

Earlier, "Contaminated surfaces and objects" had appeared on the web page as a separate heading — just as "Person-to-person spread" does —even though the CDC does not believe that the virus spreads easily from surfaces and objects.

Either way, it’s time to re-open, even if a supposed second wave hits—keep it open. 

H/T Jordan Schactnel