What a 95% Effective Vaccine Actually Means

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