News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Pfizer and BioNTech Conclude Phase 3 Study of Covid-19 Vaccine Candidate. Parent comment

Re:Pfizer and BioNTech Conclude Phase 3 Study of Covid-19 Va... by civilized on Wednesday November 18, 2020 @11:52AM (#25139052)
Unfortunately there is some pessimism about whether a coronavirus vaccine is likely to provide "sterilizing immunity" which would prevent spread, as opposed to just reducing the severity of the disease. https://www.statnews.com/2020/05/22/the-world-needs-covid-19...
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Pfizer and BioNTech Conclude Phase 3 Study of Covid-19 Va... by ptaipale on Wednesday November 18, 2020 @03:30PM (#25142064)
I'm a complete layman here, but I would expect that the "prevent spread" is not binary, it's a spwetrum [0,1].

Thus, even if it does not completely prevent spread, if just a part, or even a smallish part, is prevented, that also helps others.

(Same thing in mask discussion. Lots of people dismiss masks because they may not completely prevent an infection; that is stupid, because masks still decrease the probability of infection (and more importantly, spreading to others).

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Pfizer and BioNTech Conclude Phase 3 Study of Covid-19 Va... by ummonk on Wednesday November 18, 2020 @01:56PM (#25140802)
Would this mean we are having a bunch of asymptomatic reinfections resulting in retransmission? Surely we would have seen a lot of examples of this already with test and trace?
[ Parent | on HN ]