🧵 Having Trouble Explaining an Idea
Anonymous at Sun, 7 Jul 2024 22:45:39 UTC No. 16272106
I was trying to explain how a vaccine that is 70, 80, or even 90% effective will hardly effect contagion rates at all, and that for a vaccine to be effective at preventing the spread of disease it needs to be at least 98% effective.
I am fairly certain of this, but am having difficulty explaining my reasoning, from a logical or mathematical standpoint. Are any anons here who agree with me able to explain it better?
I am sure there are people who disagree and your free to express your opinions on the matter, unsolicited as they may be, just please be polite and rational, I'm not looking for a debate.
Anonymous at Sun, 7 Jul 2024 22:49:12 UTC No. 16272113
All vaccines in human history have a success rate of 50%, they either work or they don’t. That’s good enough to eradicate smallpox and polio.
Anonymous at Sun, 7 Jul 2024 22:55:05 UTC No. 16272122
>>16272113
okay chatgpt
Anonymous at Sun, 7 Jul 2024 23:16:04 UTC No. 16272148
>>16272106
It depends on the transmission rate of the virus, whether on average each infected person is infecting at least one other person before the infection ends.
Anonymous at Sun, 7 Jul 2024 23:17:44 UTC No. 16272153
For something like a rhinovirus or influenza, yeah anything significantly below 100% is worthless, and it’s an issue of sheer population numbers. Those viruses travel through several vectors and mutate rapidly. So if you’ve got a million people in close proximity, and all of them get a vaccine that only works 95% of the time, that’s a pool of 50k that can catch it right off the starting line and a reservoir big enough to harbor the virus until it evolves past the vaccine’s defenses.
For something like ebola that is very hard to spread and doesn’t mutate much, a lower success rate is fine because the areas of high transmission are going to be quarantined rapidly and only the personnel going into those areas will need vaccinating.