Pfizer recently announced that its covid vaccine was more than 90 percent “effective” at preventing covid-19. Shortly after this announcement, Moderna announced that its covid vaccine was 94.5 percent “effective” at preventing covid-19. Unlike the flu vaccine, which is one shot, both covid vaccines require two shots given three to four weeks apart. Hidden toward the end of both announcements, were the definitions of “effective.”
There is no evidence, yet, that the vaccine prevented any hospitalizations or any deaths. The Moderna announcement claimed that eleven cases in the control group were “severe” disease, but “severe” was not defined. If there were any hospitalizations or deaths in either group, the public has not been told. When the risks of an event are small, odds ratios can be misleading about absolute risk. A more meaningful measure of efficacy would be the number to vaccinate to prevent one hospitalization or one death. Those numbers are not available. An estimate of the number to treat from the Moderna trial to prevent a single “case” would be fifteen thousand vaccinations to prevent ninety “cases” or 167 vaccinations per “case” prevented which does not sound nearly as good as 94.5 percent effective. The publicists working for pharmaceutical companies are very smart people. If there were a reduction in mortality from these vaccines, that information would be in the first paragraph of the announcement.
Iffy definitions are common in pharmaceutical products. Many drugs for serious immunology or oncology conditions may define "effective" as an improvement in a laboratory parameter or clinical scale without certifying the link it has to a tangible clinical benefit. I can understand the concern around the vaccine, but you have to consider that COVID-19 symptoms are not binary. You may start with mild symptoms which progress to severe if nothing is done and then result in hospitalization or death. So even if it unclear whether the vaccine prevents hospitalizations or deaths (which in itself, is challenging to define or predict), it essentially guarantees a reduced symptomatic progression or faster recovery in 90% of patients. I think people are a bit taken aback by COVID-19 itself, but if you get a flu and do absolutely nothing to improve things (no rest, not eating well, not taking anti-inflammatories and ignoring symptoms) you may very well land in hospital with influenza-related complications. Bottom line is, the vaccine is far from perfect but is effective and safe. Please take it so you can prevent the vulnerable from suffering and help society get back to normal ASAP.
Makes sense man. Thanks for the reply.
Idk why you got MS. It's a legit concern that you have. Definitions the media uses are very iffy (fuck the media in this way. They are always fuzzy about these definitions. Like do they think people are too stupid or sth?).
I'm sure there are lots of info on what they mean by "effective" in medical journals if you can get past the medical jargon.
There also is a JRE podcast with Nicholas Christakis, a Yale professor and an MD, who explains some of these definitions. From what I remember, both companies are yet to conduct studies on efficacy of the vaccines in terms of preventing hospitalization and death.
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