Why vaccination timelines aren't super critical.

 Here in Canada, listening to the opposition parties in parliament you'd think that A) every American will be immunized in the coming days to weeks and B) every Canadian will be waiting months.

Unfortunately, this is woefully incorrect.

When you hear about American and UK timelines for vaccines you're hearing about the initial doses and nothing more. Secondly, Canada isn't that far behind. And thirdly the reasons why these countries are first boils down to luck more than any particular planning.

In reality, these first doses in any large country will be distributed more as a learning exercise to a very limited group of people; typically the elderly, or front line workers. And the numbers of doses we're talking about won't even cover all of those. 

What really matters is when the number of doses will reach a point that we pass 2 thresholds; when we can relax restrictions and when the general population can get vaccinated.

And both of these numbers are unlikely to vary by an substantial amount. Even for countries which literally ARE at the back of the line for a vaccine. And there are a great many reasons for that.

The biggest reasons are logistics. As time drags on 2 major things will happen; more companies will release approved vaccines and capacity at existing manufacturers will increase. 

Basically, even the US which has 10x our population and an even larger hoard of cash to throw at problems won't see the general population receiving the vaccine until well into the new year and given the size of the population may not even hit everyone who wants one until well after Canada reaches the same point. 300+ million people is a very much more difficult number to deal with compared to 30+ million.

However, it is unlikely that restrictions will remain in place until then. More likely, broad restrictions will start to lift during the 2nd wave of vaccinations with more targeted restrictions in place until at risk groups are fully vaccinated.

People seem to misunderstand WHY restrictions are in place. It isn't to stop the spread of the virus. It has already spread too far to contain it. Restrictions are in place at the moment primarily to stop the health care system from being overwhelmed. In places where this has, or is happening, people are dying both from COVID and from other illnesses which would otherwise be preventable. As the groups which are most likely to be hospitalized or die are vaccinated, the impact on the health care system lessens. 

When the rate of infection among those most prone to hospitalization decline far enough, I'm certain you will see many places easing back on restrictions. We will likely see some places opening up relaxing ahead of that which might lead to a mini-spike in cases, which would be unfortunate.

But, the bigger point here is timing. If every country used the same criteria for when to re-open. You would probably find that the point in time at which each country starts opening is much closer than the gap in timing for receiving initial doses. Because we are still likely months away from any meaningful milestones in that way, by the time we even start getting close to that global availability of vaccines will be MUCH higher than it was when the initial shipments were delivered.