Other experts said that this scenario was not only plausible, but probable.
“I fully agree with the general intellectual construction of the article,” said Shane Crotty, a virologist at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology in San Diego.
If vaccines prevent people from transmitting the virus, “then it becomes much more like the measles scenario, where you vaccinate everyone, including children, and you really don’t see the virus infecting people anymore,” said Crotty.
It is more plausible that vaccines prevent disease – but not necessarily infection and transmission, he added. And that means that the coronavirus will continue to circulate.
“The vaccines we have now are unlikely to provide sterilizing immunity,” the type needed to prevent infection, said Jennifer Gommerman, an immunologist at the University of Toronto.
Natural coronavirus infection produces a strong immune response in the nose and throat. But with current vaccines, said Dr. Gommerman, “you are not getting a natural immune response in the actual upper respiratory tract, but you are getting an injection in the arm.” This increases the likelihood that infections will still occur, even after vaccination.
Ultimately, Dr. Lavine’s model is based on the assumption that the new coronavirus is similar to the common cold coronavirus. But that assumption may not hold up, warned 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 haven’t seen what these coronaviruses can do to an older, more naive person,” said Dr. Lipsitch. (Naive refers to an adult whose immune system has not been exposed to the virus.)