I'm an ICU Consultant, not a vaccine or Public Health expert. Nevertheless, I'm asked about vaccinations all the time. Here are my thoughts on this, paraphrased from @TimBuchmanMDPhD First, vaccine effectiveness is never 100%. The different vaccines showed variable effectiveness

Ranging from 60% to 95% in clinical studies and no one knows how long that effectiveness lasts. Just because one received the vaccine does not mean that one cannot become ill with COVID. We don't know which vaccine IF ANY can prevent getting infected.

There is a lot of confusion what vaccines can do, and what the global vaccination program is intended to achieve. Vaccines are intended to help individuals and populations. The reason individuals line up to become vaccinated is to reduce the risk of getting the disease.

Not prevent, rather reduce the risk. Vaccines are *never* 100% effective. The purpose of the vaccination programme is to help to reduce the community spread and the R value and also to reduce the burden on the healthcare system by preventing serious illness developing.

This would help to decompress our hospitals and ICUs so we can continue to look after patients with other, similarly significant and important illnesses.

While mass vaccination will increase individual safety&decrease population prevalence, the virus and risk of infection will be around for the foreseeable future. We should all expect to need to continue with all of the other measures like distancing, handwashing, and mask wearing

Our (biological) environment has changed, and we have to change with it. Thus continued adherence to transmission avoidance measures *plus* vaccination will almost certainly be necessary to rebuild the economies.

We will get kids back to school, get adults back to work, and get all back to having fun. We can get there. But none of us should expect to return to “the way life used to be” in the near future.

We have adapted. We are going to need to sustain these adaptations that control viral spread and add to them. Stay positive, test negative, get vaccinated, and above all do not lower your guard: the virus is mutating and looking for opportunities.