Alex Tabarrok makes several excellent points on ways to bring an end to the pandemic as soon as possible in his recent Washington Post article “What are we waiting for?” The best mechanism to get there is to reach herd immunity through vaccination.

He outlines several strategies in this piece to greatly speed the arrival of that day. At a high level they are

• First doses first: this is the practice of spacing the second dose by as much as 12 weeks, to give more people their first dose. Dose 1 gives people about 80% protection, while the second boosts that to 95%. "Ethics and efficiency both suggest that it’s better to protect two people well than one person maximally."
• Approve more vaccines for use. J&J, AstraZeneca, and Novavax all have decent (not amazing) protection, but getting more people *some* protection is infinitely better than no protection. And when we consider that the protection is greater than 60% we’re not talking about fig leaves. While we’re at it we should seriously consider looking at Sputnik V (V for vaccine, not 5) and others.
• Approve J&J and AstraZeneca because their logistics don’t require the extreme cold as Pfizer and Moderna. This will make it significantly easier to reach people where they are. It will enable any pharmacy and any doctor’s office to administer vaccines.
• Use fractional doses. Instead of giving everyone a full dose, give them only 50%. There is strong evidence that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are effective at 25% doses.
• Quit it with all the complicated prioritizations. It is slowing distribution significantly, and confusing millions of people. I love the idea of making things more equitable
  but this focus on equity is costing lives, including the lives of the disadvantaged people we’re trying to help.

In my opinion, the decisions we’re making today do not reflect science, they reflect bureauocracy, they reflect politics, they reflect a desire to look good.

Our decisions need to be about saving lives, we need to tell our leaders to start doing things to save lives.