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> I saw some conspiracy theory ... What conspiracy theory? StatNews[1]: > Pfizer and BioNTech speed up timeline for offering Covid-19 vaccine to placebo volu

by nanis 5y ago

> I saw some conspiracy theory ... What conspiracy theory? StatNews[1]: > Pfizer and BioNTech speed up timeline for offering Covid-19 vaccine to placebo volunteers > Pfizer and its partner BioNTech plan to offer their Covid-19 vaccine to any clinical trial volunteer who received placebo by March 1, several months earlier than initially planned. and NPR[2]: > Long-Term Studies Of COVID-19 Vaccines Hurt By Placebo Recipients Getting Immunized > Tens of thousands of people who volunteered to be in studies of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines are still participating in follow-up research. But some key questions won't be easily answered, because many people who had been in the placebo group have now opted to take the vaccine. [1]: https://www.statnews.com/2021/01/01/pfizer-and-biontech-speed-up-timeline-for-offering-covid-19-to-placebo-volunteers/ https://www.statnews.com/2021/01/01/pfizer-and-biontech-spee... [2]: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/02/19/969143015/long-term-studies-of-covid-19-vaccines-hurt-by-placebo-recipients-getting-immuni https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/02/19/9691430...

singhrac 5y ago
I don't see the link between these articles and the control groups receiving the vaccine after 14 days? It seems here that Pfizer gave permission for participants to get vaccinated on March 1st, which is 8 months after the start of phase 3 trials. Imagine you volunteered for a very experimental trial for the greater good and then were told that you were given a placebo and now cannot receive a vaccine for several years and will have to be more cautious. You can see in the article that a volunteer from the trial is strongly advocating for giving the participants access to vaccines. Obviously this complicates the statistical analysis (you can try to use a double-blind crossover study to get some statistical power out of this, but clearly the messaging gets more complicated), but I'm not seeing anything about a "14 day" timeline. It's also worth noting that any study participant can just freely choose to break the study and go in and get vaccinated (lowering the measured efficacy of the vaccine)_whenever they want. Giving them a concrete date is a good alternative to that.

by nanis 5y ago

singhrac 5y ago

I don't see the link between these articles and the control groups receiving the vaccine after 14 days? It seems here that Pfizer gave permission for participants to get vaccinated on March 1st, which is 8 months after the start of phase 3 trials. Imagine you volunteered for a very experimental trial for the greater good and then were told that you were given a placebo and now cannot receive a vaccine for several years and will have to be more cautious. You can see in the article that a volunteer from the trial is strongly advocating for giving the participants access to vaccines. Obviously this complicates the statistical analysis (you can try to use a double-blind crossover study to get some statistical power out of this, but clearly the messaging gets more complicated), but I'm not seeing anything about a "14 day" timeline. It's also worth noting that any study participant can just freely choose to break the study and go in and get vaccinated (lowering the measured efficacy of the vaccine)_whenever they want. Giving them a concrete date is a good alternative to that.