Originally posted by: Kevin Lewis
NO vaccine is even close to that effective---the best numbers are about 90%. And the other two are more like in the 70-80% range. Quite a few fully vaccinated people have nonetheless contracted Covid, just as some have recovered and then been reinfected.
You have to remember, 50% of Republican men (and 9% of Democratic men) said that they were going to refuse the vaccine. (Women in both parties report much higher vaccine intention, but still, about 30% overall intend to refuse.) So assuming relatively even demographic distribution, even when vaccines are widely available to everyone, about 40% of the people you encounter will be potentiallly infectious. That's not enough for herd immunity. And sooner than they should, the airlines are going to stop requiring that people wear masks. (Plus, there will always be the people who don't cover their noses, or the "chin bra" clowns who nurse a drink for two hours just so they can keep it pulled down.)
So we're safer. But safe? No frickin' way. Not until the brain-dead right-wing no-vaxxers stop watching Fox News or whoever's telling them that the vaccines are a liberal conspiracy to take over the world.
Out of about 71,000 dosed subjects in the two major trials, one had a serious case, zero were hospitalized due to Covid, and zero died due to Covid.
Here's the arithmetic: 100 - (71,000/1) = 99.9999859155% did not have major issues.
Also, you (and almost everyone else) misunderstands what a 95% efficacy rate actually means. No, it does not mean that a predicted 5% of those vaccinated will get it. In this case, it's more like 0.05%. So I'm about 100 times less likely to get it than your previous estimate, right?
