Yeah so I guess the question is do we just need the racers and crew vaccinated? How much of the world's population vaccinated is good enough and safe enough to go out?
I think only racers and crew have to be vaccinated. They can go to corona epicentrums then and they should be safe, I guess. The question now is... Would all of the racers agree to get vaccinated? They can not force them...
If the racers want to be on the show, they can absolutely force them. it's been shown before that the legal agreement that teams sign has them agree to take any shots or medications that the producers deem necessary to travel in certain countries. A covid vaccine will certainly be added to the list. If they resume 33 from where it left off and a team doesn't want the vaccine, they will just not invite them back, and either shorten the race, or maybe just add another NEL.
I think we're still a long ways off from TAR. That lengthy Bertram interview was the key - he didn't say they were waiting on finding a handful of countries that are safe to film in. He said they were waiting for the virus to be gone. While that may not be practical since it appears the virus could be with us forever, at the very least it will require vaccines to be readily available worldwide to really mitigate the risk, and have world travel back to some sense of normalcy.
You have to keep in mid that these seasons go through months of planning. Bertram/production go to every place beforehand to scout and get the production companies in line, long before the race happens there. Given the lengthy pre-production timeline, it's hard to plan a season right now because countries that have low virus numbers right now, have no guarantee of being low 3-6 months from now when they actually film. Countries that looked safe over this past summer are now spiking just like the US is...it's a mess, and is why I think TAR won't film anytime soon.