Wouldn’t a shorter healthy –> very sick –> dead time actually reduce the time that a person is able to spread the disease? The problem with COVID is that people can be walking around for a week with mild flulike symptoms, spreading the virus.
As far as a vaccine … even if mutations partially escape the vaccine, the vaccine may not prevent spread, but it should still reduce the severity of illness. If you can keep the 20% most vulnerable from landing in hospital, that’s 90% of the battle right there.
