Biden’s Vaccine Plan Calculator

Joe Biden, the President of the United States, announced that the next goal for the US government would be to vaccinate at least 70% of the adults in the US with at least one COVID-19 shot before the 4th of July — US Independence Day. This announcement marks the determination of the US government to bring its people back to a normal life.

It is evident that ever since the President took office, beating the pandemic has been the primary goal of his administration. And so far, the performance has been promising. The President has even surpassed his target of getting 100 million US citizens vaccinated in the first 100 days of his presidency. However, the question now is — can he deliver again?

Another issue is how fast we need to produce vaccines to have enough doses for the whole population. We addressed it in the vaccine production calculator, so be sure to check it afterwards.

Now that the US has bought enough vaccine supply, vaccine shortage is no longer a problem. The main problems that the US government plan to solve now are:

• Encourage the younger generation to get vaccinated

According to Biden's administration, there is a higher percentage of younger people, primarily between 20 to 30 years old, who believe that they are strong enough to fight the disease and hence do not need to get vaccinated. This poses problems for the US government in reaching its COVID-19 vaccination goals.

Moreover, besides young people, many of Donald Trump's supporters are also unwilling to get vaccinated. So, to achieve the target stated above, the US government needs to put more effort into convincing these people that vaccination is not only crucial for their health but is vital for society and the economy as well. The vaccine efficacy calculator concludes this issue in detail with numbers.

• Make the vaccine more widely accessible

Besides targeting young people, President Biden has laid out his plan to expand the vaccination program to more rural areas of the country. This initiative is also crucial, as many citizens might not take the vaccination due to convenience alone.

Specifically, the President claimed that 20,000 pharmacies would be added across the nation to increase the vaccine's penetration rate. The US government is also working on approving more pharmacies to accept walk-in appointments for people who want to take the COVID-19 shot.

In this place, we would also like to mention two tools that might help you work out the date differences, namely the deadline calculator and date calculator. You should be able to precisely determine the missing information, such as Biden's goal deadline, with their help.

In the past year, most of the people heard the term 'herd immunity' for the first time in their lives. It is usually given with a defined percent value, like '60%', '90%', etc. For example, herd immunity for measles required 95% of the people effectively protected.

But what is herd immunity? In fact, it is a concept, where there is enough of immunized people (either by vaccination or convalescents) that they make a blanket of protection for those who cannot be vaccinated. The structure ensures that the virus slowly stops circling over time and perishes.

So, where do the 70% and 85% thresholds come from in our calculator?

70% of people vaccinated with at least first dose is President Joe Biden's goal. In the early days of the pandemic, we all thought that immunizing 70% of the society would be sufficient to reach herd immunity. Sadly, now it is almost sure that it won't do the trick.

It is still a good number, giving us an extra point in the match with the coronavirus. But with all the mutations and easiness of getting infected, it is not enough. Doctor Anthony Fauci, top infectious diseases doctor in the US, points out that right now, 'Let’s say we get 75 percent, 80 percent of the population vaccinated (...), by the time we get to the end of the summer, i.e., the third quarter, we may actually have enough herd immunity protecting our society (...)'.

In the UK, they even take a step further and are currently planning to vaccinate everyone – 100% of the people.

1. Select the vaccination goal you wish to examine

The first thing you need to do is to choose your vaccination goal. You have three options here:

• Biden's goal, which aims to vaccinate 70% of the US population;
• Herd immunity, which aims to vaccinate 85% of the US population; and
• Custom, which allows you to customize your own vaccination goal.

Click the advanced mode button to set the one/two shots vaccination proportions in the custom option, or to check which proportions we have used in the predetermined options. The advanced mode also opens the Current situation tab, where you can change even more parameters.

2. Select the state

By default, we calculate everything for the entire U.S. population. If you want to check what the progress towards goal certain states is, select the appropriate option in the second field.

2. Choose the goal deadline

The next thing you need to do is to define the goal deadline. By default, the date is set to the 4th of July 2021, which is the target date announced by the US President. The goal deadline is coupled with the remaining time field, which tells how much time remained from today to the deadline.

Now, our calculator will tell you how many doses would need to be administered between the given period, and what should be the vaccination rate to achieve the goal time.

3. Define the vaccination rate

You can check if the set goal is realistic by adding the expected average vaccination rate (check the expected value calculator to see how this value is calculated formally). You have two options here:

• Use the current estimation, which we update regularly from the ourworldindata.org site.
• Customise your own vaccinate rate by choosing the Custom option

4. Amaze at the results

Finally, our Biden’s vaccine plan calculator will tell you if the vaccination goal can be achieved at the defined vaccination rate. If yes, then hooray! 🥳 The displayed message will tell you when we would achieve the goal and how many days sooner than the planned deadline.

In case we wouldn't meet the goal, the calculator will show you the predicted date for the goal accomplishment with the number of delay days. Additionally, you can check what would be the goal progress as a percentage of vaccinated population on the deadline date.

We also check how many states will accomplish the set goal in time.

Overall, the US government seems to have a solid plan to move forward and achieve the target. They have already done it once; why not again? But then again, it all comes down to if President Biden's administration is capable of implementing it as planned. Guess we will just need to wait and see!