Vaccinate the vulnerable or the superspreader first?

in covid •  4 years ago 

https://www.wired.com/story/covid-19-vaccine-super-spreaders

I post this although I'm not sure I agree with it...but a good thing to think and talk about. Suppose you only have enough vaccines to protect 10% of the US population. Do you give it to the elderly and other vulnerable people (assuming it's effective for them) to try to drop the death rate to very low levels? Or do you give it to the people most likely to cause spread, to try to stop the epidemic?

I lean toward protecting the vulnerable, because it is very, very difficult to predict who is going to be a superspreader. Doctors and nurses seem like obvious targets for stopping spread, but we see so many cases where it's some person who boards a plane, hangs out in a bar, spends an hour in a church or attends a wedding.

It seems like half the country is doing crazy high-risk things like that, and 10% would barely put a dent in it.

At least the article gets one thing clear - superspreading is an activity, not a biological characteristic. It matters less what your viral load is and more what risks you take.

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