I’m writing about the covid vaccine progress again because it is still the most influential force on, not only the financial world, but on humanity itself. We are almost a full year into this pandemic and everyone wants to get back to some sort of normalcy. There has been some nice progress towards this goal already in 2021 with vaccine shots in the arm going in at a rate of 4.7 million per day worldwide and 1.5 million per day in the U.S. Big props to the health care workers and everyone working in the vaccine supply chain for cranking these shots out!
The road to getting back to normal is built on herd immunity. This occurs when enough people become immune to covid to make its spread unlikely. The percentage of the population that becomes immune to the disease, whether through vaccination or previous infections, has to reach about 75%, according to infectious disease experts.
There is a great site administered by Bloomberg that allows us to track the vaccination rate and when we can get to herd immunity. For instance, the UK can get to herd immunity in about 6 months based on their current rate. For Indonesia, Russia, and Canada, the timeline is more than 10 years 😳.
For the U.S., it will take about 10 months to get a 2-dose vaccine into 75% of our population. This timeline should decrease as we continue to ramp up the inoculation rate. Also, with the Pfizer vaccine being just a 1 dose remedy, this should help reduce this timeline immensely once it gets approved (hopefully soon!).
You can even drill down to see when your state will hit herd immunity. Here is New York:
If we can jack up the vax rate as expected, we should be looking at some kind of normal in the early fall (pleeeease!).
Let me know if you have any questions.
Joe Baker, CFP®
Baker Asset Management, LLC
joebaker@bakerassetmanagement.com
