Other experts have said that this scenario is not only plausible, but probably so too.
“I totally agree with the overall intellectual construction of the article,” said Shane Crotty, a virologist at the La Jolla Institute of Immunology in San Diego.
If the vaccines prevent people from transmitting the virus, “it becomes much more like the measles scenario, where you vaccinate everyone, including children, and you really do not see the virus infecting people anymore”, said dr. Crotty said.
The vaccines are more likely to prevent disease, but not necessarily infection and transmission, he added. And that means the coronavirus will continue to circulate.
“The vaccines we currently have are unlikely to provide sterilizing immunity,” the kind needed to prevent infection, said Jennifer Gommerman, an immunologist at the University of Toronto.
Natural infection with the coronavirus produces a strong immune response in the nose and throat. But with the current vaccines, dr. Gommerman said: “You get no natural immune response in the actual upper airways, you get an injection in the arm.” This increases the likelihood that infections will still occur, even after vaccination.
Finally, Dr. Lavine’s model on the assumption that the new coronavirus is similar to ordinary coronaviruses. But the assumption may not hold, warns Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiologist at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health in Boston.
“Other coronavirus infections may or may not be applicable because we have not yet seen what the coronaviruses can do to an older, naive person,” said Dr. Lipsitch said. (Naive refers to an adult whose immune system has not been exposed to the virus.)