It helps to look at some figures to bring it into perspective instead of making off hand comments about how it's not a lot. Remember these are human lives!
replyAfter some searching, I found estimates ranging between 600 thousand to 1.6 million people living with Hepatitis B in the US.
If we can help 20% of those people, that means significant life improvements to somewhere between 120 thousand and 320 thousand people.
If we take the upper end, that's half the population of Wyoming.
It is also worth noting that others were helped, too, just not to the extraordinary level of a functional cure.
replyYes! Always run some numbers in your head. People will sometimes pick percentages or numbers in an attempt to bolster their arguments. Don’t buy it, work it out for yourself.
reply19% vs 15% would be "not a lot". But this is 19% vs 0%!
replyQuote: "233 of 1220 people who had received bepi had functional cures—both undetectable HBV DNA and surface antigen—versus zero of 614 participants in the placebo arm."
This is a HUGE deal because low virality now doesn't mean low virality in the future.