Why vaccines alone will not end the pandemic

By Matthew Conlen, Denise Lu, and James Glanz

The coronavirus pandemic in the United States has raged almost uncontrollably for so long that even if millions of people are vaccinated, millions more will still be infected and become ill unless people continue to wear masks and maintain social distancing measures until midsummer or later, according to a new model by scientists at Columbia University.

[...]

Several infectious-disease researchers contacted by The New York Times cautioned that it would be months before enough people in the United States will have gotten the shots to allow for normal life to begin again.

Only then will the number of people with immunity — those who have had the disease and recovered, plus those who have been vaccinated — be large enough to take the wind out of the pandemic, said Jeffrey Shaman, an epidemiologist at Columbia who shared his team’s modeling calculations.

[...]

Even with current precautions, some areas of the country have let the pandemic rage so uncontrollably that it is too late for the vaccine to have a major impact, Dr. Shaman said. His group estimates that 60 percent of the population in North Dakota has already been infected. Vaccines will help, but the pandemic will mostly burn out on its own, as fewer and fewer people are available to infect, he said.

[...]

Policymakers who will have to lay down and sometimes enforce those restrictions in 2021 are already aware of the long haul still ahead, said Mayor Jenny A. Durkan of Seattle in an interview.

[...]