Widely distributed vaccine will produce herd immunity

A coronavirus vaccine would drastically reduce the herd immunity threshold—the percentage of the population that needs to be infected or contact the disease to gain herd immunity. In data collected from a U.S. Food and Drug Administration survey, the consulting firm McKinsey and Company found that a vaccine with moderate effectiveness would still reduce the herd immunity threshold to 30 or even 20 percent. ^[1] For context, without a vaccine, the U.S. is currently at a 2.2% infection rate, the UK has a less than 1% infection rate, and Brazil has an infection rate of about 2.5%. Scientists have estimated that the coronavirus herd immunity threshold could be as low as 43% without a vaccine, but that would involve nearly half of the population having been infected with the virus. A vaccine will drastically lower that percentage. Health officials in the U.S. and India have estimated that a vaccine for the virus will be available by early 2021, with the Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan saying that one in five people will be vaccinated by July.^[2] Dr. Anthony Fauci, one of Americas most famed disease analysts, said that while a vaccine could be available by January, it will not be administered to large portions of the population until the middle of next year.^[3] If coronavirus case counts continue to steadily dimish, a new vaccine will stop the pandemic by July of 2021.