Vaccine numbers
More or Less
BBC
4.6 • 3.7K Ratings
🗓️ 14 November 2020
⏱️ 9 minutes
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Summary
A vaccine which has shown in a clinical trial to be 90% effective against Covid 19 has been widely welcomed. But what does it mean and how was it worked out? Although experts and politicians urge caution, how excited can we be about the results of this trial of the vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech? Tim Harford explores what we know about this new vaccine candidate with Jennifer Rogers, vice president of the Royal Statistical Society in the UK, and she also works for Phastar, a consultancy which specialises in analysing clinical trials. Presenter: Tim Harford Producer: Charlotte McDonald
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to more or less, where your weekly guide to the numbers all around us |
| 0:04.3 | in the news and in life, and I'm Tim Halford. |
| 0:07.8 | And this week, wow, some good news for a change. |
| 0:10.5 | That is not very on-brand for 2020. |
| 0:13.8 | US drug maker Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech have announced their coronavirus |
| 0:19.5 | vaccine is more than 90% effective in preventing the disease. |
| 0:25.2 | But just how good is it? |
| 0:27.4 | Should we be getting excited? |
| 0:29.5 | Some people are definitely urging caution. |
| 0:32.4 | I just want to be clear to the house. |
| 0:34.7 | We do not have a vaccine yet, but we are one step closer. |
| 0:39.9 | There are many steps still to take. |
| 0:42.9 | And for the sofas statisticians out there who hear a number on the news and are immediately |
| 0:47.6 | skeptical, what does this vaccine trial really tell us? |
| 0:52.8 | There are dozens of research teams both in universities and pharmaceutical companies |
| 0:57.1 | scrambling to find a vaccine for COVID-19. |
| 1:00.2 | But it's not just about developing one that you think might work. |
| 1:03.8 | You need to run a series of experiments culminating in what's known as a Phase 3 clinical |
| 1:09.1 | trial, where you test to see if it works in a big group of people. |
| 1:13.6 | Without a successful Phase 3 trial, the US authorities and indeed many other regulators |
| 1:18.6 | will not let you deploy the vaccine. |
| 1:21.9 | So clinical trials are important. |
... |
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