95% protection means you get 95% less infections in a test group that got the vaccine compared to a placebo test group. It doesn't have much to do with the mortality rate.
But if you use that number on the whole population: Instead of a 5.4% mortality in 100.000 infected people of 70+, you end up with 5.4% mortality in 5.000 infected people of 70+, or basically having 270 death instead of 5400.
For the other age groups the mortality rate looks good, but "not dying" doesn't mean you're having a great time. A sizable amount of people end up in the hospital (in some places more than there are beds available), that costs huge amounts of money. So if we could reduce that by 95% there is going to be way less pressure on the hospitals and less costs.
Thanks for clarifying instead of downvoting. There's a lot of confusion about these numbers and it seems asking a question about them here is being taken as inherent criticism.
For HN that usually gets you upvotes. But apparently the virus is heavily politicised, particularly in America from what I can tell. So the result now is a thread full of dead/buried comments.
No problem. I think a lot of people respond very strongly to the "mortality on young people is only 1%" data, because it can be taken as a reason not to take the virus serious.
Small correction: it means you get 95% fewer cases. People might still get infected, but never show enough symptoms to prompt them to get tested - and therefore never become a "case." This is the difference between "protective" (no disease) and "sterilizing" (no infection) immunity. The latter is the gold standard that you'd ideally like to shoot for, but the former is what the studies are actually measuring.
The distinction matters because there are vaccines (such as the original polio vaccine) that protect individuals against disease, but which still allow the vaccinated individuals to act as carriers and infect others. Those vaccines do not create herd immunity, because vaccinated people still contract and spread the virus. They do, however, protect the people who get vaccinated.
But if you use that number on the whole population: Instead of a 5.4% mortality in 100.000 infected people of 70+, you end up with 5.4% mortality in 5.000 infected people of 70+, or basically having 270 death instead of 5400.
For the other age groups the mortality rate looks good, but "not dying" doesn't mean you're having a great time. A sizable amount of people end up in the hospital (in some places more than there are beds available), that costs huge amounts of money. So if we could reduce that by 95% there is going to be way less pressure on the hospitals and less costs.