5 ms·
90% is still a ginormous reduction over 0%. And as with most communicable diseases, once their incidence falls below a certain threshold, they fail to spread in
by pm90 9y ago
90% is still a ginormous reduction over 0%. And as with most communicable diseases, once their incidence falls below a certain threshold, they fail to spread in effective numbers to keep themselves alive.
- neaden 9y agoYou're misunderstanding though, it only works on certain strains of HPV, for the unaffected strains we wouldn't expect a reduction in incidence. You are thinking of Herd Immunity, which is what allows for a disease to be wiped out and protects unvaccinated/immunocompromised individuals in a population.
- sjwright 9y agoThe article indicates that the vaccine provides a minimum of 50% reduction in all variants of HPV.
- masonic 9y agoNo, it projects a 50% reduction in disease caused by HPV without giving supporting science. The bivalent vaccine does not prevent infection with other strains (it can't; it doesn't work via recruiting the immune system like most vaccines do).
- masonic 9y ago90% is still a ginormous reduction over 0% But those aren't the numbers. The pre-vaccine infection rate was 22.7% (not 96% nor 90%), and the vaccinated infection rate was at least 4% (probably much higher; the 4% represents the cases where the vaccine failed to protect and the subject proceeded to develop HPV-caused disease), using their figures. So, you're looking at a best-case 18-point difference, not 90 points. Still valuable, but hardly eradication.