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Is NNT a good number to use when evaluating effectiveness of vaccines during a pandemic? It'll change substantially over time as the virus waxes and wanes and f
by tgb 6y ago
Is NNT a good number to use when evaluating effectiveness of vaccines during a pandemic? It'll change substantially over time as the virus waxes and wanes and from location to location. So it won't be comparable across different vaccines. Moreover, the fact that cases create more cases means that preventing 1 case could prevent other future ones.
- virtuallynathan 6y agoI would agree, it probably not a good metric. Just providing some standard numbers for treatments. Keep in mind the definition of a case here is having symptoms, so we don’t know if the vaccine prevents lightly symptomatic or asymptomatic cases, which may or may not result in transmission.
- jrumbut 6y agoI've seen this NNT argument a few places now, and no it doesn't make any sense because most of us will be living in a society for years and years to come so if we resume normal life at some point and it's out there we all will be exposed at some point. Its current prevalence is irrelevant because if we live how we want to live it will be everywhere (assuming no vaccine).