Also, it depends on the effect of the vaccine. If it prevents the illness, but not the infection, it makes more sense to vaccinate the people most likely to fall seriously sick. If it prevents the infection as such, it makes more sense to also vaccinate people who are potential spreaders, meaning people who meet many different other people professionally.
This is an armchair theory by newspaper experts since it's pretty much accepted that any vaccine that prevents disease at least reduces transmission significantly (people not only shed virus for a shorter time period, but also shed less because they don't cough or sneeze). What we don't have are negative PCR swabs from dozens of vaccinated people taken at regular intervals to prove this with scientific rigor.
I found it interesting that
the latest study on how long immunity to covid lasts is the biggest of it's kind in the history of medicine. My theory as a sociologist is that due to the amount of data we could theoretically have, and the toxicity of the 24 hour-news cylce, we overanalyze covid more than any other disease before, with at least as many bad as good consequences. Instead of just assuming "it's a virus, there will be immunity" unless the opposite is proven, for months we chased the "no immunity" or "no long term immunity" bogeymans. Same with vaccines. Instead of celebrating the Apollo Moment of vaccine development, for the first time in the history of mankind being able to stop a pandemic in it's tracks, we focus on what we
don't know and which risks that might bring. This is not healthy, not mentally, as
@Blind_Io will confirm, but also not for the pandemic response.
And even with all the data we have now, on highly reliable vaccines (based on super amazing new technology), on lasting immunity, public health and newspaper messaging focuses on the gaps in knowledge, demand more certainty.
When the "Spanish Flu" came in 1918, it was
fifteen years before the influenza virus was established as the cause of the illness. With the "Russian Flu" of 1889, medical historians are still fighting whether it was a flu virus or a coranvirus that caused it. With the English Sweat of the middle ages we don't know what caused it until today (EDIT - according the Wikipedia, the newest speculation here is "hantavirus").
We got this. We know more than ever, and due to this knowledge we got a vaccine faster then ever. Now let's roll up our sleeves and get vaccinated.
Also, on an unrelated note,
@narf : With over 75% of people in ICUs being from high-risk groups, I understand the logic behind the German approach of vaccinating them first - you take pressure off the healthcare system and thus indirectly protect care workers, while at the same time preventing the overwhelming majority of covid-related deaths.
