The top is so vaccines Pfizer and Moderna are 95% and 94% effective respectively. That means that there are still some people who will get sick even if they are vaccinated and some of those will die.
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For sure, vaccinated people will get sick and die because the drug companies report “relative” risk rather than “absolute” risk ... very misleading. They do this all the time in their drug advertisements .... mathmatical jiu-jitsu.
Examining a statistic called absolute risk reduction — the number of percentage points that an individual’s risk goes down if they do something “protective” — the two companies’ COVID vaccines barely make a dent at all, reducing someone’s risk of experiencing COVID symptoms (the clinical trials’ endpoint) by less than 1%. This is the practical number that people are likely to care about most.
Knowing the paltry real-world impact of the injections on someone’s risk of developing COVID symptoms, how many people swayed by the misleading “95% effective” mantra might instead have decided to refuse the vaccines ....
In November — just before the FDA issued its initial Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for Pfizer’s COVID vaccine — Doshi cautioned the public that Pfizer’s and Moderna’s efficacy results seemed dramatic only because the companies derived them from relative risk data.
Absolute risk, simply explained, is “the likelihood that an outcome will occur.” Relative risk “compares the risk of a health event … among one group with the risk among another group.”
Pfizer told the FDA that eight (of approximately 22,000) volunteers in its vaccine group developed a PCR-confirmed case of COVID-19, versus 162 of 22,000 volunteers in the placebo group. Moderna reported a similar spread — five out of 15,000 in the vaccine group versus 90 out of 15,000 in the placebo group.
When one does the math, the Pfizer clinical trial numbers showed: “The risk reduction in absolute terms [was] only 0.7%, from an already very low risk of 0.74% [in the placebo group] to a minimal risk of 0.04% [in the vaccine group].” (Dividing 0.7 — the difference between the two groups — by 0.74 is the mathematical calculation that produced the touted “95% effective” number).
Excellent information clearly communicated. Thanks.
Sounds like a simple chi square and I may do the analysis tomorrow if I can figure out how to do it in python
Great recap/reminder/explanation of the experimental shots’ relative vs absolute risk, used by these drug cos.
Ping!
Actually I’d calculate the risk the same way that the drug companies did. Unless they deliberately exposed the 22,000 to COVID in both groups which I’m pretty sure they did not, they calculated it correctly with an expected response of 162 vs 8 in the treated group given g a 95% reduction. You don’t understand how clinical trials work. You don’t know how many were actually exposed in the 22,000, it the assumption is that in two large groups ie. 22,000 each that there will be no statistically significant difference in the exposure. It would have to be all 22k to support your math, but that is extremely unlikely, so your assumption of low risk is not supported by evidence.