We Need a Reality Check on the Coronavirus Vaccine
The robustness and duration of immunity to Covid-19 is unknown, and vaccines are really hard to create
Anyone expecting a Covid-19 vaccine will eradicate coronavirus from our lives anytime soon or that our collective immunity will thwart the spread should, for now, keep up those physical-distancing efforts until science suggests otherwise.
Antibody tests to determine whether a person who has been infected with the coronavirus has some level of immunity and might, therefore, be able to return to work should be available in “a week or so,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID), said April 10 on CNN.
But how much immunity people will have, and how long it might last, remains unknown. Meanwhile, a vaccine could still take many months to develop and distribute, experts say, and there is no guarantee that one is possible.
“Because this coronavirus is highly infectious and causes serious symptoms, that tends to really crank up the body’s immune response to it, and so that means it’s less likely to re-infect somebody.”
