Can’t Explain by Oze

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95 per cent

content/entries/ninety-five-per-cent.md

From Can’t Explain On GitHub

title: "95 per cent" claim: "The Pfizer vaccine will prevent symptomatic COVID-19 in 95 per cent of recipients." caption: "The trial counted symptoms. The slogan counted immunity. Transmission was listed under unknowns." status: featured example: false published: 2026-08-15T09:30:00+10:00 person: Therapeutic Goods Administration claimType: no-evidence-required year: 2021 tags: [covid, vaccine, tga, hunt, "95-percent", "2021"] source: url: https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/pfizer-covid-vaccine-provisionally-approved-for-australian-use-20210125-p56wko.html date: "2021-01-25" publisher: The Sydney Morning Herald title: "Pfizer COVID vaccine provisionally approved for Australian use" quote: "The TGA’s analyses puts the vaccine’s effectiveness at preventing symptomatic COVID-19 at 95 per cent – or, to put that another way, there is a 97.5 per cent chance the vaccine’s efficacy is at least 90.3 per cent." evidence: path: 2021/ninety-five-per-cent/source.md kind: note captured: "2026-08-14"

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.