3 ms·
Phase 3 requires monitoring how many people get sick from the environment. That takes a LOT of test subjects and a decent amount of time -- even in major hot s
by newacct583 6y ago
Phase 3 requires monitoring how many people get sick from the environment. That takes a LOT of test subjects and a decent amount of time -- even in major hot spots covid isn't THAT prevalent. The overwhelming majority of people at any moment, after all, aren't getting sick.
If you have well-informed volunteers like this willing to break with conventional rules, you can do a challenge trial where you deliberately expose them to live virus. That can work very fast indeed.
- hcknwscommenter 6y agoOr just give major league baseball players the experimental vaccines. We'd be done with phase three in a few weeks if every MLB player who agreed to play volunteered for one of the vaccines currently entering/in phase three.
- CodeMage 6y agoI don't get it. Isn't "every MLB player who agreed to play" too small a sample size to be useful?
- im3w1l 6y agoShort answer: No. This question comes up a lot. Someone should really write a blog post about how big sample size you need, and the dangers of using a biased sample (fit men), and spam it to death here.
- hcknwscommenter 6y agoI think the "fit men" can be an issue when you are testing whether a drug works to reduce severity (treat) an infection. However, the question of whether the vaccine actually prevents infection should be relevant regardless of the level of fitness. You should probably only vaccinate half of them and when inevitably an unvaccinated person gets it, you should have very good data about protection two weeks later. This is all just a thought experiment of course (unless there are volunteers . . .)
- im3w1l 6y agoAh, challenge trials. That makes sense.