What exactly does the "efficacy rate" mean when it comes to vaccinations? I had to double-check this for myself.
The usual efficacy number used is the Relative Risk Reduction (RRR) rate, which you see in the product description and marketing.
For example, when CDC says that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is 95% effective, it's using the RRR rate (this is the official estimate after Phase 3 trials).
Then there is the Absolute Risk Reduction (ARR) rate, which doesn't appear that often for the simple reason that it portrays the reality in a less marketable manner.
For the Pfizer jabs, the ARR rate after Phase 3 trials was 0.98%.
This means that the Number of people you Need to Vaccinate (NNV) to prevent one corona case is 117 (NNV = 1/ARR).
The latest results from Israel - the country with the most vaccinations - show that the actual ARR for Pfizer is closer to 0.46%.
That gives an NNV of 217.
(NOTE: These numbers come from LANCET, the world's oldest and best-known peer-reviewed medical journal.)
In other words, for one jolly joker to avoid corona, 217 people have to get the jab.
It gets messier when we look at the infection fatality rate.
With an infection fatality rate of 0.05% (in people under 70, according to PANDATA), 200,000 need to be infected by the virus to produce one fatality.
So, to avoid one corona death, we need to vaccinate 217 x 200,000 = 43,400,000 people in total.
That would be fine, I suppose, if there wasn't the other side of the coin, namely the "extremely rare" adverse cases related to the vaccinations themselves.
Using official National Vaccine Information Center numbers in the USA for 14th of May, 2021:
- 155,251,852 million vaccinated in the USA
- Total of 269,309 adverse effects registered by VAERS in the USA. Out of these, 90,133 are deemed "Not Serious," which leaves 179,176 "serious" cases (see table below).
- 4,201 dead in the USA (of these, 38% died after getting ill within 48 hours of vaccination).
Let's scale these numbers to the 43,400,000 figure (the number of vaccinations required to prevent one corona death according to the published ARR rate).
43,400,000 / 155,251,851 = 0.28 multiplier (with two-decimal rounding).
- 0.28 x 179,176 Serious Adverse effects = 50,169 adjusted
- 0.28 x 4,201 deaths = 1,176 adjusted
In summary, based on existing published numbers, it looks like we need to vaccinate 43,400,000 people to stop one corona fatality, with the bummer that it may cause 1,176 jab-related deaths and 50,169 serious adverse effects (if the past trends hold).
It would be great to double-check this logic. The numbers seem a bit dizzying to me. Feel free to break it apart. I think it's important to use precise language when inoculating the world population so that everyone can assess the risk profile for themselves.
(NOTE: These numbers do not take into account long-term vaccination effects, which may take up to a year to manifest. They also don't take into account the fact that there is no proof that covid vaccines confer immunity. Or that according to NIH, the VAERS numbers may be underreported by a factor of between 1/10 or 1/100.)
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