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Originally Posted by ianch99
Just wondering if you even read my post? I was specifically referring to the possibility of vaccine escape in a highly infected, mostly vaccinated population. This is still a concern today ..
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It will be anyway. But whilst it doesn't exist we need not concern ourselves with it.
Considering for this to happen, you would need vaccine escape through a new variant which can evade the vaccine immunity, and this would also likely evade the immunity from infection with other variants, it would also need the transmissibility advantage over delta, so it would need to be basically delta with immunity escape. We did of course have a variant which could evade previous infection and immunity from vaccines but it lost out and doesn't really circulate any more.
The vaccines worked against the original virus, they worked against Alpha, they work slightly less against Delta but still work, perhaps not as much against Beta, but 2 doses of either AZ or Pfizer is enough to keep most people out of hospital even if they do get the virus.
A new variant could still throw that out the window but could at any time. If everyone was either vaccinated or had it, if a new variant evolved here or anywhere, then if it could defeat that then everyone would go back to being vulnerable again. But that hasn't happened yet, wasn't on the cards as any more than a hypothetical risk then as much as now, and stands as much chance of coming in from outside the country via travel as it does starting up here to begin with.