Read on Twitter
I tweeted earlier about the episode of How to Vaccinate the Planet with the epidemiologist Larry Brilliant, but feel moved to transcribe his final answer as it felt like a.. brilliant-if hugely sobering-assessment of where we are. Not cheery, this, but does include Swiss Cheese.
Asked by Tim Harford for his prediction for 2021, he said: "In 2021 we will reach a point of near normalcy at the end of the year, but we will have to go through the gates of hell first. In the rest of Jan, Feb, March, we are going to see some of the worst parts of this epidemic.
"In countries that haven’t yet learned the lessons of wearing masks, practising social distancing, personal hygiene, and finding every outbreak – testing/tracing/isolation/vaccination-those countries that give up – that cave into the seduction of herd immunity, it’s going to be..
"..a very rough time. Gradually, as more and more people are vaccinated, more resources are put in, more places are cleared out, we will arrive at a kind of ‘Swiss cheese’ approach.
"Every single thing we are doing, whether it’s mask wearing, social distancing, vaccinating or testing – every one is imperfect, like a single slice of Swiss cheese. But if we have a dozen of these methodologies and lay one of these pieces of Swiss cheese over another, then...
"... all the holes are covered. That is what it’s going to take, to get us to something like normalcy by the end of 2021. 2021 is going to begin on a really difficult moment, but it’s going to end better if we follow this Swiss cheese model and we stay at it.
"Everybody’s tired, and we’re asking people who have lost their livelihoods, who have lost friends, who have lost incalculable emotional losses to stick with it for another year. It remains to be seen where and how we will be able to do that."
