CNN was caught making a major error in an article titled “How to fly safely a year into the pandemic,” originally reporting that studies show the vaccines are “only 90% protective against the coronavirus, not 95%. Translated into reality, that means for every million fully vaccinated people who fly, some 100,000 could still become infected”:
Isn't this wrong, @cnn?!? " Studies show (the vaccines) only 90% protective against the coronavirus, not 95%. Translated into reality, that means for every million fully vaccinated people who fly, some 100,000 could still become infected."https://t.co/cbd9FAykRE
— matt carmichael (@mcarmichael) April 10, 2021
They’re so, so off it’s comical:
For reference, from the lancet: 95% vaccine efficacy means that instead of 1000 COVID-19 cases in a population of 100 000 without vaccine… we would expect 50 cases. https://t.co/C0mPISfjBa
— matt carmichael (@mcarmichael) April 10, 2021
And if that were even close to being true, we’d have seen thousands and thousands of infections from flying right now and that hasn’t happened:
CNN article on how to safely fly claims that 90% vaccine efficacy means that? for every million who fly, we could have 100,000 infections. NO NO NO. That’s not what that number means. Also, this didn’t even happen when millions flew unvaccinated. So how could it make sense now? pic.twitter.com/4MLW5oFw4f
— zeynep tufekci (@zeynep) April 11, 2021
Here’s what the article says now: “In addition, real world studies of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines show they are still 90% protective against the coronavirus — but that means it’s still possible to get infected”:
I realize it’s tough. Everyone is suddenly writing about the pandemic, no matter what their topic. And vaccine efficacy is a relative measure, so those are always pesky. But we’ve had the vaccines for many months now, and by now one would hope for a slightly better understanding.
— zeynep tufekci (@zeynep) April 11, 2021
But the whole premise of the article is wrong!
by the time i looked up the story, i saw that it had been corrected:
"The risk is much lower than stated in the original version."https://t.co/LlNIWLCRUr
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) April 11, 2021
This just isn’t good enough:
Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly extrapolated vaccine efficacy and the probability of becoming infected with Covid-19 aboard airplanes. The risk is much lower than stated in the original version.
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