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> Although 44 vaccines have made it to clinical trials, it might not be clear which works best -- or if any work at all -- until they have been authorized and d

> Although 44 vaccines have made it to clinical trials, it might not be clear which works best -- or if any work at all -- until they have been authorized and distributed to many people, a team of experts said Tuesday. This is so different from Hollywood but so similar on how as as software engineer I solve problems. For complex problems, you find a few reasonable solution and you try them out. As you find that one is not feasible or too costly, you move to the next. > Until a vaccine is available, experts say social distancing, wearing masks and staying in your select bubble of people are crucial to helping quash this pandemic. I cannot imagine how live is going to be to 13-14 years olds that will live their most formative years in this situation. The world would go back to normal, we will forget about the pandemic, but for a few people it may always feel that is not how they grew up.

roywiggins 6y ago
The main reason why we won't know which vaccine works best is because they're being tested in separate studies against placebos, rather than in combined studies against each other. This is partly by design, because getting the various pharma companies to actually work with each other was deemed infeasible.
- mhandley 6y ago
  It's also because the only way you know your vaccine works is if more people in the placebo group get the disease than in the vaccine group, for the appropriate measure of statistical significance. If you test two effective vaccines against each other, you have a much harder time knowing if they were effective because you can't measure the cases that were avoided in a reliable manner, so it takes much longer to get a reliable positive result.
  - kgwgk 6y ago
    The idea is doing a multi-arm study with multiple vaccines plus control. You need more people than in a two-arms study but less than in multiple two-arm studies. The problem is that it's also more difficult to organize than multiple two-arm studies.

roywiggins 6y ago

The main reason why we won't know which vaccine works best is because they're being tested in separate studies against placebos, rather than in combined studies against each other. This is partly by design, because getting the various pharma companies to actually work with each other was deemed infeasible.

mhandley 6y ago
It's also because the only way you know your vaccine works is if more people in the placebo group get the disease than in the vaccine group, for the appropriate measure of statistical significance. If you test two effective vaccines against each other, you have a much harder time knowing if they were effective because you can't measure the cases that were avoided in a reliable manner, so it takes much longer to get a reliable positive result.
- kgwgk 6y ago
  The idea is doing a multi-arm study with multiple vaccines plus control. You need more people than in a two-arms study but less than in multiple two-arm studies. The problem is that it's also more difficult to organize than multiple two-arm studies.