How many swimming pools full of vaccine do we need?
More or Less
BBC
4.6 • 3.7K Ratings
🗓️ 17 April 2021
⏱️ 9 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
If we brought together all the Covid 19 vaccine needed for the whole world, how much space would it fill up? An Olympic size swimming pool? We do some back of the envelope sums.
Plus - we look at the increased risk of clots from pregnancy. Last week we looked at the increased risk of getting a clot from taking the combined contraceptive pill and compared it to risk of possible rare clots identified following the Astra Zeneca jab. How does pregnancy compare?
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to more or less on the BBC World Service. We're the show which aims |
| 0:05.5 | to provide full nerd immunity, and I'm Tim Halford. Those of you who are truly loyal |
| 0:11.6 | will remember a recent episode where we tackle the extremely pressing question of just |
| 0:16.5 | how much SARS-CoV-2 virus there is in the world. If you were to add together all the coronavirus |
| 0:22.9 | particles which cause Covid-19, how much would you have? We got two number crunching |
| 0:28.9 | slutes to work it out. I am quite struck by the fact that your estimates are, well, |
| 0:40.2 | kit, it's a glass of wine, matte, it's more like a spoonful of cough medicine. It's like |
| 0:45.3 | a shot glass, maybe. It's a pretty small shot glass, you're Australian, I guess you don't |
| 0:49.2 | really go for the strong drinks. Either way, it's not a lot, and yet this virus has shut |
| 0:55.0 | down the world and it's killed millions of people. Kit, what does it tell us about how efficient |
| 1:01.3 | viruses are at messing with us? It's quite astonishing, isn't it, that you could shut down |
| 1:05.9 | the whole world on the basis of having a glass full of this virus. They are incredibly |
| 1:11.4 | efficient replicating machines. When we got the following email from LoyalListener |
| 1:16.4 | Kevin recently, it seemed the obvious follow-up in our series of not that important, but |
| 1:22.2 | still interesting Covid-19 factoids for use next time you're making small talk with |
| 1:27.6 | someone, in the queue for your vaccine perhaps. So here's Kevin's question. Just having |
| 1:33.0 | an RT break discussion. How much vaccine would it take to vaccinate the entire world? |
| 1:39.2 | Would Wunnelimpic size zooming pool do it? We contacted Anna Blakeney, assistant |
| 1:44.0 | professor at the University of British Columbia in Canada. She has her own TikTok account |
| 1:49.4 | trying to find amusing ways to explain science to people. We thought she might like to take |
| 1:54.4 | on Kevin's important question. |
| 1:56.4 | Okay, so here's how I've done my calculation of what volume of vaccine it would take to |
... |
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