“In the first case, to keep the virus suppressed (i.e. r<1) we need to take measures that would have yielded rt=0.8 for the old strain. New York sustained that number (albeit never dipping below 0.7) for two months running in the spring.”
The important word here is “spring”. New York went below 0.8 at the end of March. Whether something like this could be achieved in winter is a different question (whether that distinction matters depends on how fast you assume the new variant to spread). Furthermore it depends on the prevalence of the virus in the adjacent regions which could be different than in spring 2020.
″...at which point the majority of everyone else will get the new strain.”
Í agree that in that case the majority of everyone not vaccinated will get the strain. But nevertheless a minority will not get it, and I think this minority could be huge in absolute numbers. I think almost everyone would get the new strain who
has to use public tranport, or
works in a place with constant face-to-face customer or coworker contact, or
has children in school or daycare.
I think the majority of those will not get the new strain who
work from home, and
have reduced indoor contacts outside the household to almost zero .
Because for those groups the risk is by magnitudes lower than the risk for the groups mentioned before. This is important to emphasize because otherwise—depending on the news about the new virus strain the next couple of weeks—it could lead to resignation and thereby to a self-fullfilling prophecy even for those who could still protect themselves against the new strain (assuming, of course, that the vaccine works against the new virus strain, too).
With most of this I agree. Two remarks:
“In the first case, to keep the virus suppressed (i.e. r<1) we need to take measures that would have yielded rt=0.8 for the old strain. New York sustained that number (albeit never dipping below 0.7) for two months running in the spring.”
The important word here is “spring”. New York went below 0.8 at the end of March. Whether something like this could be achieved in winter is a different question (whether that distinction matters depends on how fast you assume the new variant to spread). Furthermore it depends on the prevalence of the virus in the adjacent regions which could be different than in spring 2020.
″...at which point the majority of everyone else will get the new strain.”
Í agree that in that case the majority of everyone not vaccinated will get the strain. But nevertheless a minority will not get it, and I think this minority could be huge in absolute numbers. I think almost everyone would get the new strain who
has to use public tranport, or
works in a place with constant face-to-face customer or coworker contact, or
has children in school or daycare.
I think the majority of those will not get the new strain who
work from home, and
have reduced indoor contacts outside the household to almost zero .
Because for those groups the risk is by magnitudes lower than the risk for the groups mentioned before. This is important to emphasize because otherwise—depending on the news about the new virus strain the next couple of weeks—it could lead to resignation and thereby to a self-fullfilling prophecy even for those who could still protect themselves against the new strain (assuming, of course, that the vaccine works against the new virus strain, too).