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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
by 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 agoIt'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 agoThe 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.