3 ms·

I saw some replies to the OP where people were implying that the study results have been known for some time and there's some kind of fanatical, pro-vaxx conspi

I saw some replies to the OP where people were implying that the study results have been known for some time and there's some kind of fanatical, pro-vaxx conspiracy which was suppressing this information. This is what motivated my original post. Other than that, I agree with pretty much everything you just said. One thing to keep in mind when it comes to policy however, is data quality. The vaccine trials were double blind, controlled studies, which are the highest quality of medical study. This is why the short term, vaccine efficacy results were quickly acted on. By necessity, the OP and the studies you linked are retrospective, observational studies which are considerably more difficult to analyze correctly, and usually provide lower confidence results. Which is why the Israel study is so important (they seem to have high data quality) and why we're waiting for so many of these studies to come in before changing public health recommendation. One concern I do have about the Israeli data is that the paper on waning vaccine efficacy is using de-anonymized data, which means that for privacy and national security reasons, it's more difficult for the scientific community to double check their results.

criticaltinker 5y ago
Yeah good points all around. Just wanted to mention that even in the high quality phase 3 vaccine trials they found evidence that immunity acquired from previous infection was effective at preventing subsequent symptomatic illness. Obviously that wasn't the primary goal so it was hardly even mentioned in the published papers, but you can see it in the raw data. For example, from the Moderna phase 3 RCT [1] see table S17 on page 42 [2]. Out of the people with natural immunity from previous infection: only 1 out of 337 unvaccinated people were reinfected, and 0 out of 343 vaccinated people were reinfected. Admittedly they didn't have a large number of participants in this cohort, so their statistical power was limited in this respect, perhaps contributing to their rational for not mentioning it as a primary finding. [1] Efficacy and Safety of the mRNA-1273 SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine (Moderna) https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa2035389 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa2035389 [2] Table S17. Vaccine Efficacy by SARS-COV-2 Status, Modified Intent-to-Treat https://www.nejm.org/doi/suppl/10.1056/NEJMoa2035389/suppl_file/nejmoa2035389_appendix.pdf https://www.nejm.org/doi/suppl/10.1056/NEJMoa2035389/suppl_f...

criticaltinker 5y ago

Yeah good points all around. Just wanted to mention that even in the high quality phase 3 vaccine trials they found evidence that immunity acquired from previous infection was effective at preventing subsequent symptomatic illness. Obviously that wasn't the primary goal so it was hardly even mentioned in the published papers, but you can see it in the raw data. For example, from the Moderna phase 3 RCT [1] see table S17 on page 42 [2]. Out of the people with natural immunity from previous infection: only 1 out of 337 unvaccinated people were reinfected, and 0 out of 343 vaccinated people were reinfected. Admittedly they didn't have a large number of participants in this cohort, so their statistical power was limited in this respect, perhaps contributing to their rational for not mentioning it as a primary finding. [1] Efficacy and Safety of the mRNA-1273 SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine (Moderna) https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa2035389 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa2035389 [2] Table S17. Vaccine Efficacy by SARS-COV-2 Status, Modified Intent-to-Treat https://www.nejm.org/doi/suppl/10.1056/NEJMoa2035389/suppl_file/nejmoa2035389_appendix.pdf https://www.nejm.org/doi/suppl/10.1056/NEJMoa2035389/suppl_f...