Hacker News Reader

What's the rate for the unvaccinated group? So a comparison can be made vs. the vaccinated one.

The fact that they leave this out is a bit weird, sloppy journalism I guess.

Looking at https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11733696/ it seems like the base rate was 0.04 per 100,000. So ~70 female deaths per year in a population the size of the USA. That link suggests the mortality rate was reduced by a factor of 2-4, so vaccinating 2 million (?) girls per year saves 30-50 lives.

Some back-of-the-napkin math puts the price tag per life saved in the 8 digit range.

The problem with armchair back of the napkin math is that you make elementary mistakes like comparing the cost of a vaccine that provides decades of protection to the mortality statistics from a single year.

This is a vaccine that does contribute to herd immunity, if enough people get it then transmission goes to 0 and it dies out, even unvaccinated people wont get it, because of the vaccine. The article says "0 cases" in the entire population, in this case the people who get vaccinated are carrying the unvaccinated

Reply on news.ycombinator.com