4 ms·

> The analysis was based on the first 95 to develop Covid-19 symptoms. > Only five of the Covid cases were in people given the vaccine, 90 were in those given

> The analysis was based on the first 95 to develop Covid-19 symptoms. > Only five of the Covid cases were in people given the vaccine, 90 were in those given the dummy treatment. The company says the vaccine is protecting 94.5% of people. Is it me or it's incredibly light to shout victory yet and to announce any number? Unless you literally expose people to the virus in a laboratory setting you can't guarantee that both groups had equal exposure to the virus.

zzleeper 6y ago
Thats why you have a lot of people in the trial, and why its a double blind
jeromegv 6y ago
It's you. Vaccine development has been going on for more than a century and got extremely safe. Do you really think you just found a flaw in their process? Yes they still need to be validated by the FDA, being peer reviewed, etc but this process is already started and continuing.
feral 6y ago
I haven't looked it up, but the trial will certainly be randomized. Randomized trials and statistics solve this problem.
tspiteri 6y ago
The two groups would actually be the same. You can start with a number of people, randomly pick half of them to be given the vaccine, and the other half get the placebo. So there should be no difference, apart from getting the vaccine/placebo, between the two groups.
zyxzevn 6y ago
The experiments were setup to pass, so we are seeing record high numbers of successes. A lot of companies are specialized in hacking the standards for testing. Depending on the company they use some of these tricks: These are all small sample sizes (around 100) picked from huge numbers of tested people (10s of thousands). They look at short term results, long term effects failed dramatically in animal testing. They use tests that can give false positives (PCR>26 cycles), and/or false negatives. Or just look at symptoms that are similar to flu. They do not have a proper (long term) placebo group (why not also use untreated patients as well). Other factors with huge impact as health, habits, food, Vitamin-D. Big pharma wants to collect "their" billions for their medicine. Which is why we cant have nice things. (Or cheap medicine that do work well).
- StavrosK 6y ago
  This touches on a question I had. Out of the tens of thousands of people vaccinated in countries where COVID runs rampant, how were there only 90ish people in the control group? I would have expected thousands.
  - mansr 6y ago
    Both groups have (approximately) the same size, in the tens of thousands. The first evaluation is done when 90 or so cases have been confirmed, not knowing which group they belong to. The blinding of these subjects is then unsealed, in this case revealing that 90 of the 95 confirmed infections occurred in the control group. This distribution means the vaccine has been highly effective at preventing infection.
    - StavrosK 6y ago
      Sorry, I meant just 90 people infected (obviously the vaccine arm has much fewer), but after running the numbers that's actually about right for the prevalence rate we see in the US.
      - mansr 6y ago
        This isn't the final evaluation. There will be another at ~150 cases. The numbers may seem small, but this is enough for the purpose of deciding for or against approval. Anything over 80% effectiveness would likely be approved, so it doesn't matter whether the true value (insofar one exists) is 90%, 95%, or something in between. It's useful regardless.
        StavrosK 6y ago
        Oh, I didn't know that, thanks. I'm sure it's enough for statistical significance given the difference, I was just wondering why there were so few cases in 30k people, but it looks like that's just the normal case rate.
  - deleted 6y ago

zzleeper 6y ago

Thats why you have a lot of people in the trial, and why its a double blind

jeromegv 6y ago

It's you. Vaccine development has been going on for more than a century and got extremely safe. Do you really think you just found a flaw in their process? Yes they still need to be validated by the FDA, being peer reviewed, etc but this process is already started and continuing.

feral 6y ago

I haven't looked it up, but the trial will certainly be randomized. Randomized trials and statistics solve this problem.

tspiteri 6y ago

The two groups would actually be the same. You can start with a number of people, randomly pick half of them to be given the vaccine, and the other half get the placebo. So there should be no difference, apart from getting the vaccine/placebo, between the two groups.

zyxzevn 6y ago

The experiments were setup to pass, so we are seeing record high numbers of successes. A lot of companies are specialized in hacking the standards for testing. Depending on the company they use some of these tricks: These are all small sample sizes (around 100) picked from huge numbers of tested people (10s of thousands). They look at short term results, long term effects failed dramatically in animal testing. They use tests that can give false positives (PCR>26 cycles), and/or false negatives. Or just look at symptoms that are similar to flu. They do not have a proper (long term) placebo group (why not also use untreated patients as well). Other factors with huge impact as health, habits, food, Vitamin-D. Big pharma wants to collect "their" billions for their medicine. Which is why we cant have nice things. (Or cheap medicine that do work well).

StavrosK 6y ago
This touches on a question I had. Out of the tens of thousands of people vaccinated in countries where COVID runs rampant, how were there only 90ish people in the control group? I would have expected thousands.
- mansr 6y ago
  Both groups have (approximately) the same size, in the tens of thousands. The first evaluation is done when 90 or so cases have been confirmed, not knowing which group they belong to. The blinding of these subjects is then unsealed, in this case revealing that 90 of the 95 confirmed infections occurred in the control group. This distribution means the vaccine has been highly effective at preventing infection.
  - StavrosK 6y ago
    Sorry, I meant just 90 people infected (obviously the vaccine arm has much fewer), but after running the numbers that's actually about right for the prevalence rate we see in the US.
    - mansr 6y ago
      This isn't the final evaluation. There will be another at ~150 cases. The numbers may seem small, but this is enough for the purpose of deciding for or against approval. Anything over 80% effectiveness would likely be approved, so it doesn't matter whether the true value (insofar one exists) is 90%, 95%, or something in between. It's useful regardless.
      - StavrosK 6y ago
        Oh, I didn't know that, thanks. I'm sure it's enough for statistical significance given the difference, I was just wondering why there were so few cases in 30k people, but it looks like that's just the normal case rate.
- deleted 6y ago