What happens after we’ve all been vaccinated?
As Spain’s vaccination campaign slowly gains traction, and as more vaccines, such as Janssen’s, arrive, we are seeing up to 400,000 people inoculated in one day at national level, which means we should be able to meet the objectives initially set. So perhaps now is a good time to think about the post-vaccination scenario.
By looking at countries far ahead of ours we can get an idea of what awaits us, and hopefully avoid misunderstandings based on unrealistic expectations. At the moment, in Spain, we have already administered 22 doses per 100 people (not exactly 22%, since there are both vaccines and people who only require a single inoculation, while others, the majority, will require two), compared to 119 in Israel, 91 in the United Arab Emirates, 63 in Chile, 58 in the United Kingdom or 56 in the United States, which may help us to grasp a few things.
First, a vaccination is not a license to return to life before the pandemic. After all, a pandemic is not an individual phenomenon, but a collective one: it does not end when you personally are immunized, but when the probability of you transmitting the disease becomes minimal, because everyone around you is also vaccinated. Vaccines are a brilliant technological development that allows our immune system to be prepared against a given infection, thus preventing most of us from experiencing…
