What a 95% Effective Vaccine Actually Means

Curiosity Weekly

Warner Bros. Discovery

Science

4.6 • 964 Ratings

🗓️ 11 March 2021

⏱️ 13 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Award-winning journalist Tim Harford explains what it means when you hear that a COVID vaccine is 95% effective. Then, learn about Sentinel Island, home to the last uncontacted people on Earth; and what we can learn about our solar system’s theoretical “Planet Nine” from the newly discovered planet HD 106906 b.

Additional resources from Tim Harford:

Pick up "The Data Detective: Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics" on Amazon: https://amzn.to/3ad1dQ4
Tim Harford's website: https://timharford.com/
Tim Harford on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TimHarford

North Sentinel Island Is Home to the Last Uncontacted People on Earth by Reuben Westmaas

Kane, S. (2016, May 15). This isolated tribe has rejected contact for centuries and remained hostile toward outsiders. Business Insider. https://www.businessinsider.com/sentinelese-uncontacted-island-tribe-photos-2016-5
Sen, S. (2009). Savage bodies, civilized pleasures: M. V. Portman and the Andamanese. American Ethnologist, 36(2), 364–379. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1425.2009.01140.x
North Sentinel Island History. (2019). North Sentinel Island. https://northsentinelisland.com/north-sentinel-history/
McDougall, D. (2006, February 12). Survival comes first for Sentinel islanders – the world’s last “stone-age” tribe. The Guardian; The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/feb/12/theobserver.worldnews12
Alastair Jamieson, Fieldstadt, E., & Associated Press. (2018, November 21). American killed by isolated tribe on India’s North Sentinel Island, police say. NBC News; NBC News. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/american-killed-isolated-tribe-india-s-north-sentinel-island-police-n938826

Scientists discovered a solar system with its own version of the theoretical "Planet Nine" by Grant Currin

Planet X. (2019, December 19). NASA Solar System Exploration. https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/hypothetical-planet-x/in-depth/
Hubble identifies strange exoplanet that behaves like the long-sought. (2020). EurekAlert! https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-12/eic-his121020.php
Nguyen, M. M., De Rosa, R. J., & Kalas, P. (2020). First Detection of Orbital Motion for HD 106906 b: A Wide-separation Exoplanet on a Planet Nine–like Orbit. The Astronomical Journal, 161(1), 22. https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-3881/abc012

Subscribe to Curiosity Daily to learn something new every day with Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer. You can also listen to our podcast as part of your Alexa Flash Briefing; Amazon smart speakers users, click/tap “enable” here: https://www.amazon.com/Curiosity-com-Curiosity-Daily-from/dp/B07CP17DJY

Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/what-a-95-effective-vaccine-actually-means

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hi, you're about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from
0:04.8	Curiosity.com. I'm Cody Goff. And I'm Ashley Hamer. Today you learn about what it
0:09.1	means when you hear that a COVID vaccine is 95% effective, with award-winning journalist Tim Harford.
0:16.0	You'll also learn about the island that's home to the last uncontacted people on Earth, and how scientists discovered a solar system with its own version of the theoretical Planet 9.
0:26.0	Let's satisfy some curiosity.
0:28.0	Yesterday, Tim Harford showed us how to better make sense of the numbers we see in the news and on
0:33.7	social media. And maybe the most commonly heard number right now is 95, as in a 95%
0:40.6	effective COVID vaccine.
0:42.8	That's a statement a lot of people get wrong,
0:45.0	so I ask Tim how we can figure out what it really means.
0:48.8	Tim Harford is an award-winning journalist, economist,
0:51.7	and broadcaster,
0:52.7	an author of the new book, The Data Detective,
0:55.3	10 easy rules to make sense of statistics.
0:58.1	Here's a clip from our conversation.
1:00.0	Can we do a little exercise with a piece of statistics?
1:03.2	I mean, I know one that's going around a lot
1:05.0	is that the vaccines are 95% effective.
1:08.6	So that suggests that they have a 5% failure rate, right?
1:11.8	So if I saw that, how would I investigate that?
1:15.0	That's, I mean it's a great example. The first thing to say is, well, what do they mean by effective?
1:22.0	So often we fool ourselves by not asking what the actual definition is.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Warner Bros. Discovery, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Warner Bros. Discovery and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.