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%.
—
Heard this discussion of Absolute vs Relative Risk reduction talked about on a Dark Horse podcast about a month ago. Most people have very little analytic skill or even the ability to understand basic probabilities, so you can easily wow them by throwing out a statement like ‘95% effective’.
People begin to parrot that phrase without even questioning it. In their head they thin it means they have reduced their risk of catching the virus by 95%. They haven’t.
My cardiologist wanted me to go on a statin. He said that the American Heart Association says that it will reduce my chance of a heart attack by 30%. I am very athletic and my cholesterol is only marginally high.
I asked, “If you had a 100 men my age and in condition how many would die of a heart attack in the next year?” He said maybe 1. So..... taking a statin takes my risk down from 1% to 0.7%. I decided that I would rather take the 0.3% risk than have the side effects of a statin.