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The 'rewriting history' thing is probably a reference to this: > Vaccine efficacy is against severe COVID illness, not against transmission That is not and ne

The 'rewriting history' thing is probably a reference to this: > Vaccine efficacy is against severe COVID illness, not against transmission That is not and never has been - up until literally a few months ago - the definition of vaccine efficacy, nor was it the definition being used for COVID vaccines up until it turned out they can't prevent disease. Trying to assert what vaccine efficacy is without acknowledging that this is an entirely novel use of the term is going to come across as an attempt to confuse people/make them forget that it was only recently that high efficacy was being proudly announced in terms of "preventing COVID-19". Also bear in mind that this new definition has no real metrics or science behind it. What exactly is "severe" illness. Don't say hospitalizations because people have to choose to go to hospital and are being told that taking the vaccine means they won't have to go to hospital. That's a massive, massive confounder, and none of the public health agencies suddenly making claims about "severe" disease even recognize it exists, let alone control for it.

angelzen 5y ago
As long as 'severe' covid efficiency rates are in the same ballpark as covid deaths rates, I'm willing to accept the ballpark even if the details may be marginally off. Another credible metric is ICU utilization, because it's an expensive scarce resource, people are not sent there willy nilly.
seba_dos1 5y ago
> That is not and never has been - up until literally a few months ago - the definition of vaccine efficacy I remember something else. At least where I live, since the very beginning of the vaccination programme, people were advised to not wait for Pfizer and Moderna vacinnes that were in short supply, but use already widely available AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines because even though their efficacy against transmission was significantly lower, they still provided very good protection against severe illness; and that protection was always being explicitly stressed out as the most important.
- native_samples 5y ago
  e.g. https://www.publichealthontario.ca/-/media/documents/ncov/covid-wwksf/2021/04/wwksf-vaccine-effectiveness.pdf?la=en https://www.publichealthontario.ca/-/media/documents/ncov/co... "All of the COVID-19 vaccines approved for use in Canada are effective at preventing symptomatic SARS-CoV infection and COVID-19 related hospitalizations and death." Because the phrase vaccine efficacy just means how good is a vaccine at something it can be defined relative to any endpoint you want. Nonetheless, both the way the term "vaccine" has been used historically and the way "vaccine efficacy" was being used as recently as this spring were in terms of, it will prevent you from getting infected and sick. The original claim was that "vaccine efficacy is NOT against transmission" and that this is merely updated information, not an attempt to rewrite history. But it certainly looks that way to a lot of us because to truly accept that the previously distributed information was wrong would imply a major screwup and thus some sort of investigation and accountability. At minimum it means trial failure, for one thing. The pharma companies claimed the trials showed they could prevent COVID-19. They were wrong. That implies other claims made by the trials could be wrong, which implies the government should suspend the rollout until the true facts about what the vaccines actually do can be established. Obviously no such logic is appearing anywhere in public health. Instead the message has simply shifted to be, vaccines prevent "severe illness and death" and that's why they're awesome and always were. The Pfizer trial at least, didn't actually show that however.

angelzen 5y ago

As long as 'severe' covid efficiency rates are in the same ballpark as covid deaths rates, I'm willing to accept the ballpark even if the details may be marginally off. Another credible metric is ICU utilization, because it's an expensive scarce resource, people are not sent there willy nilly.

seba_dos1 5y ago

> That is not and never has been - up until literally a few months ago - the definition of vaccine efficacy I remember something else. At least where I live, since the very beginning of the vaccination programme, people were advised to not wait for Pfizer and Moderna vacinnes that were in short supply, but use already widely available AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines because even though their efficacy against transmission was significantly lower, they still provided very good protection against severe illness; and that protection was always being explicitly stressed out as the most important.

native_samples 5y ago
e.g. https://www.publichealthontario.ca/-/media/documents/ncov/covid-wwksf/2021/04/wwksf-vaccine-effectiveness.pdf?la=en https://www.publichealthontario.ca/-/media/documents/ncov/co... "All of the COVID-19 vaccines approved for use in Canada are effective at preventing symptomatic SARS-CoV infection and COVID-19 related hospitalizations and death." Because the phrase vaccine efficacy just means how good is a vaccine at something it can be defined relative to any endpoint you want. Nonetheless, both the way the term "vaccine" has been used historically and the way "vaccine efficacy" was being used as recently as this spring were in terms of, it will prevent you from getting infected and sick. The original claim was that "vaccine efficacy is NOT against transmission" and that this is merely updated information, not an attempt to rewrite history. But it certainly looks that way to a lot of us because to truly accept that the previously distributed information was wrong would imply a major screwup and thus some sort of investigation and accountability. At minimum it means trial failure, for one thing. The pharma companies claimed the trials showed they could prevent COVID-19. They were wrong. That implies other claims made by the trials could be wrong, which implies the government should suspend the rollout until the true facts about what the vaccines actually do can be established. Obviously no such logic is appearing anywhere in public health. Instead the message has simply shifted to be, vaccines prevent "severe illness and death" and that's why they're awesome and always were. The Pfizer trial at least, didn't actually show that however.