4 ms·

over 7 billion human population, a 90% effectiveness is what? alright? please enlighten me. does anyone know what was the effectiveness of the smallpox vaccine

over 7 billion human population, a 90% effectiveness is what? alright? please enlighten me. does anyone know what was the effectiveness of the smallpox vaccine that we did actually manage to eradicate successfully?

bawolff 6y ago
Google claims that the smallpox vaccine was somewhere between 90-97% effective (they didnt do fully controlled studies back in the day) Keep in mind, that controlling covid is a giant win. We don't need to eradicate it, just get things under control.
- threeseed 6y ago
  > We don't need to eradicate it, just get things under control Based on what we've seen there is no grey area. Either you fully control it which then ends up basically eradicating it e.g. Australia/NZ or you don't and then you end up like EU/US and going in and out of infection waves.
  - dbetteridge 6y ago
    Absence of evidence does not imply evidence of absence. Anything that reduces the R rate sufficiently will mean fewer outbreaks and reduce the strain on the hospital system.
  - SilentBan 6y ago
    From what I see you are a braindamaged lockdowncel.
  - oblio 6y ago
    Not really. We haven't (yet?) eradicated the cold or the flu, but we manage to live with them. We need to be able to protect the most vulnerable (probably something like 30% of the population) and reduce load on the healthcare system. Right now if every activity would be fully available (concerts, conferences, airlines, etc.) every healthcare system across the world would probably be overwhelmed within 2 months, max. Once we reduce the rates to a trickle, things are probably good enough. I'm not saying that we shouldn't try to eradicate it, but as with everything, unfortunately, things are frequently taken to a point where they're "good enough" and no further.
  - bawolff 6y ago
    In an unvacinated population, yeah, it spreads like wildfire. In a mostly vaccinated population having small pockets, well not good, is not the same level of existential threat. Think about how concerned you are personally about measeles vs how much someone 100 years ago would be.
  - FeepingCreature 6y ago
    The thing with the EU is that we have variable, externally controlled infection rates. We could eradicate it, but there's no point because we have land borders to countries we can't control. So we're just trying to keep local rates below crippling. (With mixed success.) The point of a vaccine is that you can't scale it back for populist appeasement; once you have broad immunity you keep broad immunity for long enough that you end up eradicating the virus almost involuntarily. In comparison, a lockdown is much more vulnerable to feel-good measures reducing the effectiveness.
    - bawolff 6y ago
      Eradication means elimination across the entire world. The last 1% is very hard and expensive, requiring sustained funding long after the crisis has passed. To date, we have only managed to eradicate two diseases (smallpox and rinderpest. Not counting diseases that never really managed to spread like SARS) in the entire history of humanity. Ever.
ilogik 6y ago
this is different for each disease based on how quickly it transmits. for SARS-COV-2 you need around 70% immunity in the population to achieve herd immunity
- kuu 6y ago
  > you need around 70% immunity in the population This is the required immunity of the population, but not the effectiveness of the vaccine. Inside the population there are groups that you cannot put the vaccine (smallest babies, immunosuppressed people, etc).
howlgarnish 6y ago
Dr Fauci stated earlier that he was hoping for 70% efficacy. So these results are still good, not just as good as the 94% seen earlier for Moderna's vaccine.
Tomminn 6y ago
The key point is that if you lower the replication rate-- the number of people each person with the virus goes on to infect-- below 1, the number of active cases exponentially decays to zero. The business-as-usual replication rate of covid appears to be somewhere around 4-6, meaning that if we have universal vaccination with something like 80% efficacy, the number of active cases will exponentially decay with no other measures taken (social distancing, masks, lockdowns, quarantines etc).
_Microft 6y ago
The disease will 'die out' (in quotes because it will not actually) if there are not enough targets that are susceptible to it. People infected by SARS-Cov2 seem to infect two to six other people [0]. Reduce this number by 90% and we are well below one infection per infected, so it is not sustained. This assumes that everyone would be vaccinated. Currently we are doing something similar: each measure like wearing a mask, social distancing, meeting fewer people, ventilating rooms, finding infected people before they can infect someone else ("contact tracing") contributes to reducing the number of follow-up infections a bit. (This is why "but masks do not really work" is an ill-informed argument. They do not have to because they are meant to be used together with other measures to achieve reduction in spread) A vaccine will protect us passively instead of requiring us to actively following these measures and will therefore be a lot more convenient. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_reproduction_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_reproduction_number
- jaclaz 6y ago
  Yes. In case of need, the Swiss cheese model: https://mobile.twitter.com/sketchplanator/status/1312728941631803393 https://mobile.twitter.com/sketchplanator/status/13127289416...
  - _Microft 6y ago
    This and "layered defense" are good search terms for this topic in general (not limited to the pandemic).
    - Vecr 6y ago
      "defense in depth" and "[the] hierarchy of controls" as well.
unlikelymordant 6y ago
This depends on the r0 of the virus, an r0 of 2 means a 50% effective vaccine (and 100% vaccinated pop) will defeat the virus. With measles and a r0 of 18, youd need an effectiveness of 95%. Considering not everyone can or will take a vaccine, the effectiveness needs to be higher than this. Covid is apparently around 3, and if you can vaccinate 90% of the population then an effectiveness of 75% would be the minimum you could get away with.
- jbb67 6y ago
  This is if everyone is equally likely to spread the virus. Probably 20% of people are responsible for 80% of infections. (People who work in shops or public places, people in large extended families, people who socialize a lot). If you can identify and vaccinate those people it will be much more that 20% effective. (It might be hard to identify those but it's probably easy to identify people at low risk of spreading it and infer)
rpedela 6y ago
> One dose of MMR vaccine is 93% effective against measles, 78% effective against mumps, and 97% effective against rubella. Two doses of MMR vaccine are 97% effective against measles and 88% effective against mumps. MMR is an attenuated (weakened) live virus vaccine. From: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/mmr/public/index.html#:~:text=One%20dose%20of%20MMR%20vaccine%20is%2093%25%20effective%20against%20measles,(weakened)%20live%20virus%20vaccine https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/mmr/public/index.html#:~:te....

bawolff 6y ago

Google claims that the smallpox vaccine was somewhere between 90-97% effective (they didnt do fully controlled studies back in the day) Keep in mind, that controlling covid is a giant win. We don't need to eradicate it, just get things under control.

threeseed 6y ago
> We don't need to eradicate it, just get things under control Based on what we've seen there is no grey area. Either you fully control it which then ends up basically eradicating it e.g. Australia/NZ or you don't and then you end up like EU/US and going in and out of infection waves.
- dbetteridge 6y ago
  Absence of evidence does not imply evidence of absence. Anything that reduces the R rate sufficiently will mean fewer outbreaks and reduce the strain on the hospital system.
- SilentBan 6y ago
  From what I see you are a braindamaged lockdowncel.
- oblio 6y ago
  Not really. We haven't (yet?) eradicated the cold or the flu, but we manage to live with them. We need to be able to protect the most vulnerable (probably something like 30% of the population) and reduce load on the healthcare system. Right now if every activity would be fully available (concerts, conferences, airlines, etc.) every healthcare system across the world would probably be overwhelmed within 2 months, max. Once we reduce the rates to a trickle, things are probably good enough. I'm not saying that we shouldn't try to eradicate it, but as with everything, unfortunately, things are frequently taken to a point where they're "good enough" and no further.
- bawolff 6y ago
  In an unvacinated population, yeah, it spreads like wildfire. In a mostly vaccinated population having small pockets, well not good, is not the same level of existential threat. Think about how concerned you are personally about measeles vs how much someone 100 years ago would be.
- FeepingCreature 6y ago
  The thing with the EU is that we have variable, externally controlled infection rates. We could eradicate it, but there's no point because we have land borders to countries we can't control. So we're just trying to keep local rates below crippling. (With mixed success.) The point of a vaccine is that you can't scale it back for populist appeasement; once you have broad immunity you keep broad immunity for long enough that you end up eradicating the virus almost involuntarily. In comparison, a lockdown is much more vulnerable to feel-good measures reducing the effectiveness.
  - bawolff 6y ago
    Eradication means elimination across the entire world. The last 1% is very hard and expensive, requiring sustained funding long after the crisis has passed. To date, we have only managed to eradicate two diseases (smallpox and rinderpest. Not counting diseases that never really managed to spread like SARS) in the entire history of humanity. Ever.

ilogik 6y ago

this is different for each disease based on how quickly it transmits. for SARS-COV-2 you need around 70% immunity in the population to achieve herd immunity

kuu 6y ago
> you need around 70% immunity in the population This is the required immunity of the population, but not the effectiveness of the vaccine. Inside the population there are groups that you cannot put the vaccine (smallest babies, immunosuppressed people, etc).

howlgarnish 6y ago

Dr Fauci stated earlier that he was hoping for 70% efficacy. So these results are still good, not just as good as the 94% seen earlier for Moderna's vaccine.

Tomminn 6y ago

The key point is that if you lower the replication rate-- the number of people each person with the virus goes on to infect-- below 1, the number of active cases exponentially decays to zero. The business-as-usual replication rate of covid appears to be somewhere around 4-6, meaning that if we have universal vaccination with something like 80% efficacy, the number of active cases will exponentially decay with no other measures taken (social distancing, masks, lockdowns, quarantines etc).

_Microft 6y ago

The disease will 'die out' (in quotes because it will not actually) if there are not enough targets that are susceptible to it. People infected by SARS-Cov2 seem to infect two to six other people [0]. Reduce this number by 90% and we are well below one infection per infected, so it is not sustained. This assumes that everyone would be vaccinated. Currently we are doing something similar: each measure like wearing a mask, social distancing, meeting fewer people, ventilating rooms, finding infected people before they can infect someone else ("contact tracing") contributes to reducing the number of follow-up infections a bit. (This is why "but masks do not really work" is an ill-informed argument. They do not have to because they are meant to be used together with other measures to achieve reduction in spread) A vaccine will protect us passively instead of requiring us to actively following these measures and will therefore be a lot more convenient. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_reproduction_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_reproduction_number

jaclaz 6y ago
Yes. In case of need, the Swiss cheese model: https://mobile.twitter.com/sketchplanator/status/1312728941631803393 https://mobile.twitter.com/sketchplanator/status/13127289416...
- _Microft 6y ago
  This and "layered defense" are good search terms for this topic in general (not limited to the pandemic).
  - Vecr 6y ago
    "defense in depth" and "[the] hierarchy of controls" as well.

unlikelymordant 6y ago

This depends on the r0 of the virus, an r0 of 2 means a 50% effective vaccine (and 100% vaccinated pop) will defeat the virus. With measles and a r0 of 18, youd need an effectiveness of 95%. Considering not everyone can or will take a vaccine, the effectiveness needs to be higher than this. Covid is apparently around 3, and if you can vaccinate 90% of the population then an effectiveness of 75% would be the minimum you could get away with.

jbb67 6y ago
This is if everyone is equally likely to spread the virus. Probably 20% of people are responsible for 80% of infections. (People who work in shops or public places, people in large extended families, people who socialize a lot). If you can identify and vaccinate those people it will be much more that 20% effective. (It might be hard to identify those but it's probably easy to identify people at low risk of spreading it and infer)

rpedela 6y ago

> One dose of MMR vaccine is 93% effective against measles, 78% effective against mumps, and 97% effective against rubella. Two doses of MMR vaccine are 97% effective against measles and 88% effective against mumps. MMR is an attenuated (weakened) live virus vaccine. From: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/mmr/public/index.html#:~:text=One%20dose%20of%20MMR%20vaccine%20is%2093%25%20effective%20against%20measles,(weakened)%20live%20virus%20vaccine https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/mmr/public/index.html#:~:te....