On Vaccinations Programmes and Normality in September 2021

My thoughts on a vaccine roll out. It will be September 2021 before anything close to normality returns.
(This is one of those blogposts mostly to layout my thinking and force myself to think something through rather than an attempt to Dunning-Krueger myself or to be oracular.)
The noises from vaccine developers seem muted but nobody has reported a massive failure. Certainly not everybody has reported a massive failure yet.
So we are probably 12 months in to an 18 month process.
That would indicate some sort of effective vaccine being announced in January / February with large scale access to it starting in February / March.
My assumptions for the first round of vaccines are
1) they have limited effectiveness compared to our usual experience of vaccines - fewer people than normal will find them protective and the protection will be less than we usually expect.
2) they will have a more time-bounded effectiveness than we are used to - perhaps six months, or 12 months
3) they will have more side-effects than we usually see, making them either unpleasant for some people or unsuitable for some people.
So useful but not a complete answer to the problem.
I'm assuming that production in the West will be geared up to provide vaccines for their entire populations over a 12-month period with say 10% surplus to be shared / exported / donated with the not-West. China will probably sort itself out quicker. Ditto the South East Asian countries with experience of SARS. Other countries will sort themselves out slower.
There will be a second round of vaccines following on about a year from the first round, these will be better in terms of protection, duration and side-effects.
By the time the vaccination programme starts in the UK I think we'll have had about 5% of the population having had the virus in a way that confers some on-going immunity from the point when the vaccine programme starts. (I'm assuming here lots of asymptomatic cases which have not been spotted.) But I'm also assuming enough churn in immunity to keep that number at 5% through out.
Assume the UK has access to a total of 60 million doses over a 12-month period, or 5 million a month, or 7% of the population a month. Then our immunity level starting in March is 5%. It rises to 12% by the end of April. By the end of September 2021, it's a 60%.
In September we start to see people who only gained a short period of immunity from the vaccine they had in March / April / May become less immune. So, our rate of increase in immunity levels slows.
60% - 70% is probably not enough for herd immunity to kick in. I believe a figure of 80% of the population having some form of immunity is required for a disease as contagious as COVID-19. However, it does mean the spread will be slower. This should help Track and Trace operations.
It would also allow those who have been vaccinated to move around with more liberty and for the country to preferentially vaccinate those who are a) at the most risk of dying b) those at the most risk of spreading the disease.
So, we might see a a limited return to normality around September next year.

On Things After the US Election.

I think the Democrats are going to win the 2020 elections. I think they will win the Presidency. I think they will win the Senate. I think they will win the House. I think they will win a number of governerships or state legislatures.

They will have a brief window when they control both the legislature and the executive and have wide spread power or influence in the states. There is an opportunity to a) move the Overtone Window and b) hand out a punishment beating to the Republican Party to encourage them to return to a level of normed politics commensurate with running a liberal democracy.

So if I were them, I would do the following

Supreme Court

I'd expand the Supreme Court and I'd do so quite aggressively, and I do it twice, once in year 1 of the 117th Congress and once in year 2. Firstly, to expand the court twice in managable steps and secondly to make the Republicans vote against expanding the court twice. (This won't stop them voting to expand the Supreme Court when next they control all three sections of the legislative process but it might slow some of them down. )

I would set up investigations in to the one or two serving Justices how might have committed serious criminal acts in the past. I doubt that impeachments will follow but it will put the Republicans on the backfoot for a bit and make it harder for them to appoint unsuitable candidates in the future.

New States

I would admit Washington DC and Puerto Rico as states. Those extra 4 senators, extra two states and two extra state delegations in Congress, would be very helpful and those places should be states.

Redistricting

In as many states as possible I would set up neutral redistricting commissions and attempt to enshrine those in state constitutions.

Voter Rights

More voter rights legislation and more enforcement of it.

Trump Operation

Massive investigations in to the Trump operation targeting pretty much everyone who ever knew him. I think I'd be aiming to jail one person a day for the whole of the 117th Congress. I'd spread that as widely as possible. I'd aim to make sure that ordinary Republicans were scared to put an operator like Trump anywhere near the White House again for fear that they, personally, would do jail time.

US Constitutional Amendments

I would propose about half a dozen constitutional amendments in Congress. I doubt Congress would vote for them by the required 2/3rds majority but the aim of the exercise is not necessarily to get the Constitution amended but to make Republicans vote and campaign against things most ordinary USians think are reasonable.

Item one would be a return of the Equal Right Amendment

Then some carefully crafted amendments on voting rights, medical care, bodily autonomy, factual reporting in the media, LGBTQ+ rights, climate change or energy policy, presidential capacity, executive anti-corruption and transparency measures.

I think I'd stay away from gun control amendments but I'd hope that the demise of the NRA, Democratic influence in more states and the progressive composition of the Supreme Court would allow some practical controls to be brought in. Mind you, I'd be tempted to include an amendment on access to education that made practical gun control a live issue.

Later on in the 117th Congress I might want to look at a constitutional convention after the Republicans had voted down my slate of amendments.

(Largely the point of this is not to amend the constitution in 2020-22 but to make the Republicans expend money, time and political capital fighting these things and to normalise the idea that these sorts of things ought to be protected under the constitution. )

Policing

I would bring in measures to monitor policing, in particular a central database of deaths whilst in contact with the police and some measures to support local governments when removing serving officers who were members of newly proscribed terrorist organisations.

Anti- Terrorist Activity

I would proscribe a number of right-wing terrorist groups as terrorist groups.

That should keep the right-wing of the Republican party playing on their side of the fence for a few years.