Posted on 08/08/2020 9:56:15 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
An approved coronavirus vaccine could end up being effective only 50-60% of the time, meaning public health measures will still be needed to keep the pandemic under control, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top US infectious diseases expert, said on Friday.
"We don't know yet what the efficacy might be. We don't know if it will be 50% or 60%. I'd like it to be 75% or more," Fauci said in a webinar hosted by Brown University. "But the chances of it being 98% effective is not great, which means you must never abandon the public health approach."
The novel coronavirus has infected nearly 5 million people in the United States and killed more than 160,000.
Lockdown measures imposed to keep the virus from spreading have devastated the economy, which suffered its biggest blow since the Great Depression in the second quarter, with gross domestic product dropping at its steepest pace in at least 73 years.
As infections have spiked around the country after states started to open up, public health experts, including Fauci, have stressed the importance of steps that each American can take, including social distancing, washing hands and wearing masks.
Fauci said on Friday that studies of Moderna Inc's COVID-19 vaccine could produce definitive data in November or December of this year.
He told Reuters earlier this week that he expects tens of millions of COVID-19 vaccine doses to be available by early 2021, and a billion doses by the end of that year.
(Excerpt) Read more at jpost.com ...
It means it’s possible that it might only prevent 50-60% of cases. Still a huge win even if it’s true. Also, there are multiple vaccine candidates in phase 3 clinical trials right now, so it’s unclear what he’s even basing any of that off of, but even if that’s the case, if everyone gets the vaccine and it’s 50% effective, and 20% of the country has already had COVID-19, we’re right at the 70% needed for herd immunity.
So whether what he’s saying is true or not doesn’t matter. When one or more vaccine candidates is approved becomes available in large quantities (and they’re already mass producing doses during the trials), this whole thing ends. That’s why President Trump has been pushing so hard for months now to get a vaccine going. He knows that’s how this whole thing ends and he emerges as the hero who ended it.
I can’t tell if that’s intended as a joke or not. It’s definitely not what it means in either case.
They’re never 100% effective, but it’s irresponsible for someone in his position to speculate about this without a lot of context around it. For one thing, which vaccine? There are several candidates in phase 3 clinical trials. It’s likely multiple vaccines will be available before the end of the year. The free market will lean toward the best of the bunch. And even if the best is only 50% effective, that’s a lot better than the 0% effective vaccine we don’t have today.
How exactly is this vaccine, that does nothing for 50% of the people, if that, better than doing nothing, which has a 95%+ success rate?
You’re suggesting we not use a tool that will prevent millions of hospitalizations and hundreds of thousands of deaths because it isn’t 100% effective in every case?
If 100% effectiveness is the bar now, we can just shut down every hospital and send home every doctor right now. No treatments or preventative measures for anything because nothing is 100%.
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