The hall No evidence required
95 per cent
The trial counted symptoms. The slogan counted immunity. Transmission was listed under unknowns.
The Pfizer vaccine will prevent symptomatic COVID-19 in 95 per cent of recipients.
25 January 2021. The TGA provisionally approves Pfizer. The SMH reports the number that stuck: 95 per cent. Buried in the same paragraph is the Australian “97”: a 97.5 per cent chance the efficacy is at least 90.3 per cent. That is a confidence interval. It is not a second vaccine.
Same page, same day, under “Many unknowns”: unclear if it reduces transmission. Unclear on asymptomatic infection — the trial only tested people who had symptoms. Unclear how long it lasts. Scott Morrison: “not a silver bullet.” Greg Hunt: “safe and effective.”
This card files that slide. It does not file “the jab did nothing.”
What did have a receipt:
- The 95 was against symptomatic COVID in the phase-three cohort, original strain. 170 cases in the interim cut: 162 of them placebo.
- Transmission, silent infection, and duration were listed as unknowns on approval day. The slogan that followed — you will not get it, you will not pass it on — is a different sentence.
- The folk “97% effective” is mostly a US line. In Australia the 97.5 sat next to 90.3. Coverage later hit 97 per cent in some age groups. Three different 97s. One slogan.
Grammar: symptomatic, trial strain, two months’ follow-up. Logic: that is not “stops the virus.” Rhetoric: 95, then 97, then immunity.