Good morning. Britain has begun vaccinations. But that matters less in the short term than you may think. |
The vaccine as a fire hose |
 | | Margaret Keenan became the first patient in Britain to receive the vaccine. It was administered on Tuesday by May Parsons in Coventry, England.Pool photo by Jacob King |
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But there is still one dark cloud hanging over the vaccines that many people don’t yet understand. |
The vaccines will be much less effective at preventing death and illness in 2021 if they are introduced into a population where the coronavirus is raging — as is now the case in the U.S. That’s the central argument of a new paper in the journal Health Affairs. (One of the authors is Dr. Rochelle Walensky of Massachusetts General Hospital, whom President-elect Joe Biden has chosen to run the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.) |
An analogy may be helpful here. A vaccine is like a fire hose. A vaccine that’s 95 percent effective, as Moderna’s and Pfizer’s versions appear to be, is a powerful fire hose. But the size of a fire is still a bigger determinant of how much destruction occurs. |
I asked the authors of the Health Affairs study to put their findings into terms that we nonscientists could understand, and they were kind enough to do so. The estimates are fairly stunning: |
- At the current level of infection in the U.S. (about 200,000 confirmed new infections per day), a vaccine that is 95 percent effective — distributed at the expected pace — would still leave a terrible toll in the six months after it was introduced. Almost 10 million or so Americans would contract the virus, and more than 160,000 would die.
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- This is far worse than the toll in an alternate universe in which the vaccine was only 50 percent effective but the U.S. had reduced the infection rate to its level in early September (about 35,000 new daily cases). In that scenario, the death toll in the next six months would be kept to about 60,000.
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It’s worth pausing for a moment on this comparison, because it’s deeply counterintuitive. If the U.S. had maintained its infection rate from September and Moderna and Pfizer had announced this fall that their vaccines were only 50 percent effective, a lot of people would have freaked out. |
But the reality we have is actually worse. |
 | | U.S. data, as collected by The New York Times. |
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How could this be? No vaccine can eliminate a pandemic immediately, just as no fire hose can put out a forest fire. While the vaccine is being distributed, the virus continues to do damage. “Bluntly stated, we’ll get out of this pandemic faster if we give the vaccine less work to do,” A. David Paltiel, one of the Health Affairs authors and a professor at the Yale School of Public Health, told me. |
 | | A funeral home in El Paso this month.Paul Ratje/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images |
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- In the past seven days, 15,813 people in the U.S. died from the virus, breaking a record that had stood since mid-April.
- Gov. Andrew Cuomo said New York would restrict indoor dining if hospitalization rates didn’t stabilize. New York City could lose indoor dining as soon as Monday.
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- Once Pfizer delivers its first 100 million vaccine doses to the U.S., the country may not get another batch until June. That’s because the Trump administration passed on a deal last summer to secure more shots, and the European Union bought them.
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| | | | THE PRESIDENTIAL TRANSITION |
 | | Lloyd Austin would be the first African-American to lead the Pentagon.Stephen Crowley/The New York Times |
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- Biden plans to nominate Lloyd Austin, a retired Army general and former commander of the American military effort in Iraq, to be the defense secretary.
- President Trump twice called the Republican speaker of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives to encourage challenges to the election results. Trump has made repeated false claims about voter fraud, in an effort to remain in office despite losing the election.
- Nearly 1,500 former federal prosecutors and other lawyers signed an open letter calling for bar associations to investigate members of Trump’s legal team for advancing those false claims. “A license to practice law is not a license to lie to the public,” they wrote.
- Georgia election officials will open just five early voting locations in Cobb County, outside Atlanta, for the Senate runoff elections, down from 11 for the general election. Republicans control Cobb County, which Biden won by 14 percentage points.
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- The Environmental Protection Agency declined to strengthen controls on industrial soot emissions. The move defies scientific research, including from the agency’s own public health experts, about the links between the pollutants and respiratory illness.
- Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain said he would travel to Brussels this week, taking control of efforts to strike a trade deal with the European Union before a Dec. 31 deadline.
- MSNBC promoted Rashida Jones, an executive at the network, to become its next president, making her the first Black woman to take charge of a major television news network.
- Chuck Yeager — the first pilot to break the sound barrier and a central figure in the book “The Right Stuff” — died on Monday at age 97.
- Paul Sarbanes, a former senator from Maryland, died at 87 on Sunday. He introduced the first article of impeachment against Richard Nixon and, decades later, helped write legislation strengthening accounting standards after the Enron scandal.
- The Puerto Rican rapper and singer Bad Bunny’s latest album, “El Último Tour del Mundo,” is the first LP entirely in Spanish to top the Billboard 200 album chart.
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 | | Western Hemlocks and Pacific Red Cedar.Brendan George Ko for The New York Times |
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The social life of forests: Do trees communicate and cooperate with one another? It appears so. Read the story in the Magazine, or listen to it on a special episode of “The Daily.” |
A debate: One former head of Medicare calls Xavier Becerra “a great fit” to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, The Washington Post reports. In his Times Opinion column, Ross Douthat says the nomination is a warning sign that Biden will abandon the moderate approach that offers his best chance for political success. |
Lives Lived: As a pro wrestler, Pat Patterson knew how to delight fans. As an executive of World Wrestling Entertainment, he introduced the Royal Rumble, a last-man-standing free-for-all that has been popular ever since. When he announced in 2014 that he was gay, Patterson’s fans remained loyal. He died at 79. |
 | | Bob Dylan performing in Los Angeles in 2012.Chris Pizzello/Associated Press |
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The Rights They Are A-Sold |
Bob Dylan has sold his catalog of more than 600 songs to Universal Music for an estimated $300 million. It may be the biggest acquisition of one songwriter’s publishing rights, and it’s another landmark for Dylan, who in 2016 won the Nobel Prize in Literature. |
Universal will now collect fees any time Dylan’s songs are sold, streamed, covered by another musician or used in ads and movies. That makes Dylan’s catalog especially lucrative: Other artists have recorded his songs more than 6,000 times, and they have appeared often in movies, including “The Big Lebowski” and “Bad Santa 2.” |
The deal is the latest in a string of such purchases: In October the DJ Calvin Harris sold his publishing catalog for an estimated $100 million, and last week the singer-songwriter Stevie Nicks sold a majority stake of her catalog for an estimated $80 million. |
As streaming comes to dominate the music market, more investors are snapping up music copyrights. “Streaming has changed the landscape, from a licensing and royalty perspective,” one expert told The Washington Post. “Even though there’s eye-popping price tags, if you look at the returns in five, 10, or 20 years, these are viewed as very good investments.” |
 | | David Malosh for The New York Times |
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Packed with apple, sausage and mustard, this lentil soup makes for a hearty weeknight meal. |
| | | | FOR NEW YORKERS, NEAR AND FAR |
New York Magazine has done something different with its annual “Reasons to Love New York” issue: It pays tribute to 500 places that have shut down since the pandemic began. |
The pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was headpiece. Today’s puzzle is above — or you can play online if you have a Games subscription. |
Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — David |
You can see today’s print front page here. |
Today’s episode of “The Daily” is about Trump’s immigration legacy. On the latest “Sway,” Kara Swisher interviews the chief executive of Cameo, the marketplace for personalized celebrity shout-outs. |
Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick and Sanam Yar contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com. |
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