8 ms·

The vaccines were also lauded as 100% effective in the early days by Fauci and others, so just a reminder that time and reproducibility matter before being too

by beaned 5y ago

The vaccines were also lauded as 100% effective in the early days by Fauci and others, so just a reminder that time and reproducibility matter before being too confident about it.

xboxnolifes 5y ago
I don't recall a single instance of 100% efficacy claim. It was around 92-97%.
- jmarbach 5y ago
  You are arguing over semantics. In reality, the Pfizer vax has proven to be less than 10% effective at stopping a future infection.
  - jjulius 5y ago
    - jmarbach 5y ago
      You are completely wrong -- totally warped by the narrative. Look at the Pfizer press release, Nov 9, 2020 - the first sentence: "Vaccine candidate was found to be more than 90% effective in preventing COVID-19 in participants without evidence of prior SARS-CoV-2 infection in the first interim efficacy analysis" https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-detail/pfizer-and-biontech-announce-vaccine-candidate-against https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-deta...
      - junon 5y ago
        Your own misunderstanding of the difference between SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 do not entitle you to assert anything about the subject.
        throwawayboise 5y ago
        It matters not. The public was lead to believe that the vaccines were highly effective and safe. Now they are realized to be not so effective (against Delta/Omicron) and not so safe (J&J/Janssen recently "de-preferenced" by CDC due to clotting). We are still wearing masks, when we were once told the vaccinated didn't need to mask. Two years later, there is no end in sight. If you want to build trust, don't oversell the product when you don't really know what you are talking about.
        jjulius 5y ago
        >The public was lead to believe that the vaccines were highly effective and safe. Now they are realized to be not so effective (against Delta/Omicron)... You mean how they typically clarified they didn't know how efficacy would play out in future variants? Because that was definitely a thing.
        maxerickson 5y ago
        The vaccines are highly effective and safe. A low rate of people suffer any significant issues from vaccination, and very few vaccinated people become severely ill. They work great. If the other vaccines were not available, the J&J vaccine would make sense for most people compared to not taking it.
        junon 5y ago
      - heyitsguay 5y ago
        For the variants at the time. The spread of the delta and omicron variants was tracked so closely and garnered so much attention in large part due to their abilities to at least partially evade vaccine-induced immunity, but this was always a known risk. The larger the infected population, the more chances for such an event to occur, hence the importance of measures like vaccinations, social distancing, and lockdowns to curb the spread.
        jmarbach 5y ago
        In this case we should edit the title of the post to clarify, "for the variants as of x date" - agree or disagree? As to not spread misinformation.
        heyitsguay 5y ago
        Yeah that's a big omission that i don't see addressed in the article. In particular given the development timeline, does it have the same efficacy for the omicron variant? I doubt the trials being reported here tested it.
      - jjulius 5y ago
        First, as another user pointed out, for the variants of the time. Second, "completely" is a strong word there; your link, and the part you quoted, still clarifies that it's possible to get infected. Edit: You are also misreading what you're quoting[1]. [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29619347 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29619347
        jmarbach 5y ago
        You're right. I will never question Pfizer again. There could be infinite mutations of the virus moving forward which would impact the weight of their claims.
        jjulius 5y ago
        >I will never question Pfizer again. I didn't say you, nor myself or anyone else, shouldn't question them, just that they haven't been incorrect in this instance as you've suggested. I'm not sure why your snark is needed in your multiple responses here.
        jmarbach 5y ago
        The Pfizer vaccine is not 90% effective. That’s a fact.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        mthoms 5y ago
        They didn’t claim it would be. They claimed it was 90% effective in the (time limited) study which they performed. It’s fair that you might have misinterpreted that as meaning it will be 90% effective. Especially if you don’t know how viruses work, but that’s not what was actually claimed.
      - someotherperson 5y ago
        Maybe I'm misinformed, but as I understood it, COVID-19 is the disease brought upon by SARS-Cov-2 infection. That line on its own doesn't suggest it prevents infection, it suggests it prevents the COVID-19 disease (i.e 90% chance of being left with a asymptomatic infection).
        jjulius 5y ago
        You are 100% correct. You contract SARS-CoV-2, which then turns in to COVID-19[1]. [1]https://www.nature.com/articles/s41579-020-00459-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41579-020-00459-7
        maxerickson 5y ago
        It's a technical distinction lost on the public. Maybe that's a bad thing, but it is what it is.
        sudosysgen 5y ago
        I mean, if you're not noticing infection but noticing only the disease, it makes perfect sense to the public.
        maxerickson 5y ago
        The public pretty much just thinks of both together as 'sick'.
      - maxerickson 5y ago
        It's sophistry, but "COVID-19" in that press release means symptomatic infection with SARS-CoV-2, not just infection.
      - hamburglar 5y ago
        You seem very, very attached to a conclusion that isn’t supported by your own information. Are you really sure you haven’t been “warped by a narrative?”
        jmarbach 5y ago
      - dang 5y ago
        Please edit swipes out of your comments here. They only make things worse. Your post would be fine without the first sentence. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - vidoc 5y ago
      > They never claimed it stopped infection True, but they sure as hell implied it did. For example, this fact check appeared in the search container of google early on: note the use of the double negative in the VERDICT. https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-transmission/fact-check-scientists-do-not-yet-know-whether-the-covid-19-vaccine-reduces-transmission-of-the-virus-idUSKBN29N1UH https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-transmission/fa...
      - jjulius 5y ago
        >Scientists are not yet sure of how the vaccine affects transmission – and this is currently undergoing research. I don't know how much clearer they can get with that next sentence.
        vidoc 5y ago
        Do you not understand where the problem is here? If the scientists were, at the time, not yet sure how the vaccine affected transmission. The correct 'fact check' should have been: "There is no conclusive evidence to claim COVID-19 vaccines prevent people from spreading the disease." instead of "There is no conclusive evidence to claim COVID-19 vaccines do not prevent people spreading the disease."
        jjulius 5y ago
        In an article that says all of the following very clearly... >Meanwhile, there is currently no conclusive evidence to claim the COVID-19 vaccine stops people spreading the virus that causes the disease – nor is there for the opposite. >Scientists do not yet know whether COVID-19 vaccinations will reduce transmission because this was not tested in the trials. >With the latter, this could mean the virus continues to replicate in the nose and throat, and is still able to spread. >Scientists are not yet sure of how the vaccine affects transmission – and this is currently undergoing research. ... you are seizing on a single double-negative to claim you've been misled? A double-negative which is equally as accurate as what you would like it corrected to, because in the body of the article it says there's no evidence one way or the other? This is really the hill you're choosing to die on?
  - kadoban 5y ago
    That sounds low. Where did you get your numbers?
    - jmarbach 5y ago
      - zackbloom 5y ago
        There is very good data on this. Infection rates are roughly 5x higher, and death rates 13x higher, among the unvaccinated.
        ZephyrBlu 5y ago
        Infection rate is orthogonal to preventing people from being infected. If you're not exposed, you can never be infected. It also depends how you define efficacy/effectiveness. Does it mean for each exposure, over a period of time, etc.
        mlyle 5y ago
        > Infection rate is orthogonal to preventing people from being infected. If you're not exposed, you can never be infected. Sure, there are confounds: people who choose to be vaccinated don't behave exactly the same way that people who don't choose to be vaccinated do. Therefore, the observational data is somewhat confounded. Two directions for the confound: people who are vaccinated may choose to take more risk after vaccination. People who are vaccinated may be those who take COVID seriously to begin with and be biased to take less risk in general. Probably the latter "wins", though I certainly do a lot more than I would do if I wasn't vaccinated. However, IMO this is all moot: we have vaccines that showed massive efficacy in randomized, controlled trials (over a period of time), and case control studies that show ongoing high efficacy against Delta... and the confounded observational data shows a truly massive effect.
      - MatthewMob 5y ago
        So you are lying then. What do you gain out of misleading people with your rhetoric here?
  - stavros 5y ago
    English isn't my native language, but I thought "proven" wasn't a synonym for "I asked my friends".
    - jmarbach 5y ago
      It's a fair critique. But when the Captain of an airplane I'm flying on tells me there's an emergency problem with the flaps, I don't ask him for text book evidence, I just look out at the wings and verify the problem. Check this data in a few weeks. https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#rates-by-vaccine-status https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#rates-by-vaccine-s...
      - mlyle 5y ago
        So, you cite data showing very high efficacy of the vaccine, and are like -- look at it in a few weeks! Omicron is going to make it worse, but even unboosted folks in South Africa seem to enjoy about 30% efficacy against infection and much higher efficacy against hospitalization and death. But your gossip trumps the data, I guess...
        jmarbach 5y ago
        "Omicron is making it worse" is gossip to you and a fact for me. That's where we disagree.
        mlyle 5y ago
        No, Omicron making it worse is a fact that I already ceded.. but we have data that shows low (but still around 30%, not 10%) efficacy against infection with Omicron.. and still high efficacy (70%) against hospitalization and death. But you say "has proven less than 10% effective" ... because you are making stuff up. Further, it may be a mistake to assume South Africa predicts exactly what will happen here (30% fully vaccinated, nearly 0 boosted, 20% HIV incidence, vs. 60% fully vaccinated, 25% boosted, 0.3% HIV incidence).
      - lkbm 5y ago
  - throwaway2016a 5y ago
    The efficacy is pretty well proven to be > 90% at this point. Per your comment where you admit the number was pulled out of thin air: > Anecdotal. You do not need to be a meteorologist to know when it's raining. Look outside. I'll raise you this... where I am 100% of ICU cases are unvaccinated. Read that again 100%. And over 85% of hospitalizations. And before you say "see, 15% of them were breakthrough cases," please learn about base rates. 65% of the people here are vaccinated so to have only 15% of the hospital cases be vaccinated is even more conclusive. Please, get out of your bubble. If you think it is 10%... or even 50%... or even 70% you need to do some serious introspection. Please, actually "look outside"! Because if you spent more than 10 seconds actually looking outside, the efficacy is obvious.
    - jmarbach 5y ago
      I am vaccinated - I believe in the early vaccine's efficacy for stopping serious illness. They have saved many lives. What I am saying here is that the vaccines were marketed as 90% effective for preventing infection. Was I misunderstanding what was being marketed to me all along?
      - jjulius 5y ago
        Yes, you have misunderstood this all along, and that misunderstanding has already been pointed out to you in this thread[1]. It is effective at preventing COVID-19 infections, which you get after being infected with SARA-CoV-2. It never claimed to prevent infection of the latter. [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29619347 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29619347
        mlyle 5y ago
        > It never claimed to prevent infection of the latter. We had some early data that looked like they were probably about ~70% effective for preventing infection, ~90% effective at preventing symptoms, and >95% effective at preventing severe illness. These numbers are interesting, because they mean you have less of a chance of becoming infected, but a larger chance, if infected, of being an asymptomatic carrier. So it's difficult to predict the net effect on transmission (probably a benefit, but..) Now for 2 doses of mRNA vaccine, our best guesses for omicron are more like ~??%, ~30%, and ~70% respectively. Offsetting it slightly is that it looks like omicron may be a bit less likely to cause severe illness at baseline. But, no matter what, this is a big setback.
- 6nf 5y ago
  There's a well known tweet of Fauci saying 'all three vaccines are 100% effective'
  - junon 5y ago
    Link please.
    - 6nf 5y ago
      https://twitter.com/albertbourla/status/1377618480527257606?s=21 https://twitter.com/albertbourla/status/1377618480527257606?...
    - rglover 5y ago
      Not the exact one referenced, but incriminating enough: https://twitter.com/jamesmelville/status/1461750873445568515 https://twitter.com/jamesmelville/status/1461750873445568515 Edit: another https://twitter.com/ElnordicoBk/status/1471158531394998273 https://twitter.com/ElnordicoBk/status/1471158531394998273
      - javagram 5y ago
        Clicked through and found quotes of Fauci saying “highly effective” and “extraordinarily effective”. Not 100% Note that these quotes are in context of the US and Fauci’s publicly announced plan to approve, as part of Operation Warp Speed, vaccines that were at least 50% effective.[1] The vaccines proving to be 80-90% effective in that context certainly makes it reasonable to call them highly effective. [1] https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/09/12/911987987/a-covid-19-vaccine-may-be-only-50-effective-is-that-good-enough https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/09/12/9119879...
      - schleck8 5y ago
        "94 to 95 percent"
      - varelse 5y ago
        Now do Joe Rogan and Alex Jones...
- vidoc 5y ago
  At some point there was some PR about 100% effectiveness of the product on kids, according to, the guys who actually manufacture the product :) https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-detail/follow-data-phase-3-trial-pfizer-biontech-covid-19-vaccine https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-deta...
  - javagram 5y ago
    Note however that if you read farther down it does say “vaccine efficacy of 100% (95% confidence interval [CI, 87.5, 100.0]).” Also that press release is not by any possible definition from “early days” nor is it issued by Dr Fauci.
    - vidoc 5y ago
      To be clear, I was just merely trying to track back where this '100%' claim was coming from as I also didn't remember such a bold claim being ever made, let alone by Fauci. Now, I invite you to make google searches with a date range and you will see that such studies claiming 100% efficacy on the product on kids started to appear in the early days actually: https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-detail/pfizer-biontech-announce-positive-topline-results-pivotal https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-deta... Since 100% is a pretty awesome figure, my theory is that there must have been quite a bit of press coverage at the time and I have no doubt a lot of people got confused.
      - javagram 5y ago
        Makes sense and good point of that original press release from March 31.
- BbzzbB 5y ago
  Can't see GP's comment (flagged, like 7/11 OP ITT) so I don't know if I'm on-topic or not. After Bourla's appearance on Lex's podcast and the latter's mention of a 100% claim on the blue bird app which the former denied (w.r.t. infection I believe), searching his account I came up with these. They're from March 31st (1) and April 1st (2 & 3, quoting 4), third would be most eye-brow lifting today. It is arguably misleading, or odd, to just mention 100% in a tweet on 95% CI with 53.5-100.0 brackets in the study. 1: 100% efficacy against COVID-19 disease for 12-15 year olds in phase 3 2: 100% efficacy against severe COVID-19 as defined by CDC 3: 100% efficacy in preventing COVID-19 cases in South Africa [1] https://twitter.com/AlbertBourla/status/1377227340011483136 https://twitter.com/AlbertBourla/status/1377227340011483136 [2] https://twitter.com/AlbertBourla/status/1377586182519947264 https://twitter.com/AlbertBourla/status/1377586182519947264 [3] https://twitter.com/AlbertBourla/status/1377618480527257606 https://twitter.com/AlbertBourla/status/1377618480527257606 [4] https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-detail/pfizer-and-biontech-confirm-high-efficacy-and-no-serious https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-deta...
- beaned 5y ago
  Here you go. I don't know anything about this website (found it from a google search) but the video montage has plenty of claims of 100%, and a "virtually 100% efficacious" quote from Fauci. The montage is in a meme format making fun of the situation, which is not my preference, and I don't intend to inflame by sharing such a take, it's just the most succinct thing I found. It highlights quite clearly what I'd mentioned in my first comment, that time and reproducibility matter. I genuinely don't know why it was flagged. https://news.grabien.com/story-twitter-user-video-showing-shifting-narrative-vaccine-effica https://news.grabien.com/story-twitter-user-video-showing-sh...
  - xboxnolifes 5y ago
    I'm not a fan of the "virtually 100% efficacious" claim, but the "and others" part of your original comment, to me, meant "high ranking / respected health officials", not random internet articles and PR lines. Science article titles are rarely accurate to their content, for worse, so screenshots of said titles aren't really meaningful to me. I mean, just look at any hackernews post. Usually the first comment is complaining about the title's inaccuracy. Maybe there was a narrative shift, but I don't recall ever seeing those 100% claims back in February.
    - beaned 5y ago
      Ok, that seems then to be a matter of personal interpretation then and not completely what I meant. I don't know about "February" specifically but clearly 100% claims were being made at some point early on. People get their information from the newsmedia, and this is what it was reporting. So either our newsmedia isn't truthful or our scientists aren't, or - as my original (flagged) comment was saying - time and reproducibility matter, and may affect the efficacy ultimately reported.
junon 5y ago
Show me a single claim they'd be 100% effective by an epidemiologist, please.

by beaned 5y ago

The vaccines were also lauded as 100% effective in the early days by Fauci and others, so just a reminder that time and reproducibility matter before being too confident about it.

xboxnolifes 5y ago

I don't recall a single instance of 100% efficacy claim. It was around 92-97%.

jmarbach 5y ago
You are arguing over semantics. In reality, the Pfizer vax has proven to be less than 10% effective at stopping a future infection.
- jjulius 5y ago
  - jmarbach 5y ago
    You are completely wrong -- totally warped by the narrative. Look at the Pfizer press release, Nov 9, 2020 - the first sentence: "Vaccine candidate was found to be more than 90% effective in preventing COVID-19 in participants without evidence of prior SARS-CoV-2 infection in the first interim efficacy analysis" https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-detail/pfizer-and-biontech-announce-vaccine-candidate-against https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-deta...
    - junon 5y ago
      Your own misunderstanding of the difference between SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 do not entitle you to assert anything about the subject.
      - throwawayboise 5y ago
        It matters not. The public was lead to believe that the vaccines were highly effective and safe. Now they are realized to be not so effective (against Delta/Omicron) and not so safe (J&J/Janssen recently "de-preferenced" by CDC due to clotting). We are still wearing masks, when we were once told the vaccinated didn't need to mask. Two years later, there is no end in sight. If you want to build trust, don't oversell the product when you don't really know what you are talking about.
        jjulius 5y ago
        >The public was lead to believe that the vaccines were highly effective and safe. Now they are realized to be not so effective (against Delta/Omicron)... You mean how they typically clarified they didn't know how efficacy would play out in future variants? Because that was definitely a thing.
        maxerickson 5y ago
        The vaccines are highly effective and safe. A low rate of people suffer any significant issues from vaccination, and very few vaccinated people become severely ill. They work great. If the other vaccines were not available, the J&J vaccine would make sense for most people compared to not taking it.
        junon 5y ago
    - heyitsguay 5y ago
      For the variants at the time. The spread of the delta and omicron variants was tracked so closely and garnered so much attention in large part due to their abilities to at least partially evade vaccine-induced immunity, but this was always a known risk. The larger the infected population, the more chances for such an event to occur, hence the importance of measures like vaccinations, social distancing, and lockdowns to curb the spread.
      - jmarbach 5y ago
        In this case we should edit the title of the post to clarify, "for the variants as of x date" - agree or disagree? As to not spread misinformation.
        heyitsguay 5y ago
        Yeah that's a big omission that i don't see addressed in the article. In particular given the development timeline, does it have the same efficacy for the omicron variant? I doubt the trials being reported here tested it.
    - jjulius 5y ago
      First, as another user pointed out, for the variants of the time. Second, "completely" is a strong word there; your link, and the part you quoted, still clarifies that it's possible to get infected. Edit: You are also misreading what you're quoting[1]. [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29619347 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29619347
      - jmarbach 5y ago
        You're right. I will never question Pfizer again. There could be infinite mutations of the virus moving forward which would impact the weight of their claims.
        jjulius 5y ago
        >I will never question Pfizer again. I didn't say you, nor myself or anyone else, shouldn't question them, just that they haven't been incorrect in this instance as you've suggested. I'm not sure why your snark is needed in your multiple responses here.
        jmarbach 5y ago
        The Pfizer vaccine is not 90% effective. That’s a fact.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        mthoms 5y ago
        They didn’t claim it would be. They claimed it was 90% effective in the (time limited) study which they performed. It’s fair that you might have misinterpreted that as meaning it will be 90% effective. Especially if you don’t know how viruses work, but that’s not what was actually claimed.
    - someotherperson 5y ago
      Maybe I'm misinformed, but as I understood it, COVID-19 is the disease brought upon by SARS-Cov-2 infection. That line on its own doesn't suggest it prevents infection, it suggests it prevents the COVID-19 disease (i.e 90% chance of being left with a asymptomatic infection).
      - jjulius 5y ago
        You are 100% correct. You contract SARS-CoV-2, which then turns in to COVID-19[1]. [1]https://www.nature.com/articles/s41579-020-00459-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41579-020-00459-7
      - maxerickson 5y ago
        It's a technical distinction lost on the public. Maybe that's a bad thing, but it is what it is.
        sudosysgen 5y ago
        I mean, if you're not noticing infection but noticing only the disease, it makes perfect sense to the public.
        maxerickson 5y ago
        The public pretty much just thinks of both together as 'sick'.
    - maxerickson 5y ago
      It's sophistry, but "COVID-19" in that press release means symptomatic infection with SARS-CoV-2, not just infection.
    - hamburglar 5y ago
      You seem very, very attached to a conclusion that isn’t supported by your own information. Are you really sure you haven’t been “warped by a narrative?”
      - jmarbach 5y ago
    - dang 5y ago
      Please edit swipes out of your comments here. They only make things worse. Your post would be fine without the first sentence. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - vidoc 5y ago
    > They never claimed it stopped infection True, but they sure as hell implied it did. For example, this fact check appeared in the search container of google early on: note the use of the double negative in the VERDICT. https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-transmission/fact-check-scientists-do-not-yet-know-whether-the-covid-19-vaccine-reduces-transmission-of-the-virus-idUSKBN29N1UH https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-transmission/fa...
    - jjulius 5y ago
      >Scientists are not yet sure of how the vaccine affects transmission – and this is currently undergoing research. I don't know how much clearer they can get with that next sentence.
      - vidoc 5y ago
        Do you not understand where the problem is here? If the scientists were, at the time, not yet sure how the vaccine affected transmission. The correct 'fact check' should have been: "There is no conclusive evidence to claim COVID-19 vaccines prevent people from spreading the disease." instead of "There is no conclusive evidence to claim COVID-19 vaccines do not prevent people spreading the disease."
        jjulius 5y ago
        In an article that says all of the following very clearly... >Meanwhile, there is currently no conclusive evidence to claim the COVID-19 vaccine stops people spreading the virus that causes the disease – nor is there for the opposite. >Scientists do not yet know whether COVID-19 vaccinations will reduce transmission because this was not tested in the trials. >With the latter, this could mean the virus continues to replicate in the nose and throat, and is still able to spread. >Scientists are not yet sure of how the vaccine affects transmission – and this is currently undergoing research. ... you are seizing on a single double-negative to claim you've been misled? A double-negative which is equally as accurate as what you would like it corrected to, because in the body of the article it says there's no evidence one way or the other? This is really the hill you're choosing to die on?
- kadoban 5y ago
  That sounds low. Where did you get your numbers?
  - jmarbach 5y ago
    - zackbloom 5y ago
      There is very good data on this. Infection rates are roughly 5x higher, and death rates 13x higher, among the unvaccinated.
      - ZephyrBlu 5y ago
        Infection rate is orthogonal to preventing people from being infected. If you're not exposed, you can never be infected. It also depends how you define efficacy/effectiveness. Does it mean for each exposure, over a period of time, etc.
        mlyle 5y ago
        > Infection rate is orthogonal to preventing people from being infected. If you're not exposed, you can never be infected. Sure, there are confounds: people who choose to be vaccinated don't behave exactly the same way that people who don't choose to be vaccinated do. Therefore, the observational data is somewhat confounded. Two directions for the confound: people who are vaccinated may choose to take more risk after vaccination. People who are vaccinated may be those who take COVID seriously to begin with and be biased to take less risk in general. Probably the latter "wins", though I certainly do a lot more than I would do if I wasn't vaccinated. However, IMO this is all moot: we have vaccines that showed massive efficacy in randomized, controlled trials (over a period of time), and case control studies that show ongoing high efficacy against Delta... and the confounded observational data shows a truly massive effect.
    - MatthewMob 5y ago
      So you are lying then. What do you gain out of misleading people with your rhetoric here?
- stavros 5y ago
  English isn't my native language, but I thought "proven" wasn't a synonym for "I asked my friends".
  - jmarbach 5y ago
    It's a fair critique. But when the Captain of an airplane I'm flying on tells me there's an emergency problem with the flaps, I don't ask him for text book evidence, I just look out at the wings and verify the problem. Check this data in a few weeks. https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#rates-by-vaccine-status https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#rates-by-vaccine-s...
    - mlyle 5y ago
      So, you cite data showing very high efficacy of the vaccine, and are like -- look at it in a few weeks! Omicron is going to make it worse, but even unboosted folks in South Africa seem to enjoy about 30% efficacy against infection and much higher efficacy against hospitalization and death. But your gossip trumps the data, I guess...
      - jmarbach 5y ago
        "Omicron is making it worse" is gossip to you and a fact for me. That's where we disagree.
        mlyle 5y ago
        No, Omicron making it worse is a fact that I already ceded.. but we have data that shows low (but still around 30%, not 10%) efficacy against infection with Omicron.. and still high efficacy (70%) against hospitalization and death. But you say "has proven less than 10% effective" ... because you are making stuff up. Further, it may be a mistake to assume South Africa predicts exactly what will happen here (30% fully vaccinated, nearly 0 boosted, 20% HIV incidence, vs. 60% fully vaccinated, 25% boosted, 0.3% HIV incidence).
    - lkbm 5y ago
- throwaway2016a 5y ago
  The efficacy is pretty well proven to be > 90% at this point. Per your comment where you admit the number was pulled out of thin air: > Anecdotal. You do not need to be a meteorologist to know when it's raining. Look outside. I'll raise you this... where I am 100% of ICU cases are unvaccinated. Read that again 100%. And over 85% of hospitalizations. And before you say "see, 15% of them were breakthrough cases," please learn about base rates. 65% of the people here are vaccinated so to have only 15% of the hospital cases be vaccinated is even more conclusive. Please, get out of your bubble. If you think it is 10%... or even 50%... or even 70% you need to do some serious introspection. Please, actually "look outside"! Because if you spent more than 10 seconds actually looking outside, the efficacy is obvious.
  - jmarbach 5y ago
    I am vaccinated - I believe in the early vaccine's efficacy for stopping serious illness. They have saved many lives. What I am saying here is that the vaccines were marketed as 90% effective for preventing infection. Was I misunderstanding what was being marketed to me all along?
    - jjulius 5y ago
      Yes, you have misunderstood this all along, and that misunderstanding has already been pointed out to you in this thread[1]. It is effective at preventing COVID-19 infections, which you get after being infected with SARA-CoV-2. It never claimed to prevent infection of the latter. [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29619347 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29619347
      - mlyle 5y ago
        > It never claimed to prevent infection of the latter. We had some early data that looked like they were probably about ~70% effective for preventing infection, ~90% effective at preventing symptoms, and >95% effective at preventing severe illness. These numbers are interesting, because they mean you have less of a chance of becoming infected, but a larger chance, if infected, of being an asymptomatic carrier. So it's difficult to predict the net effect on transmission (probably a benefit, but..) Now for 2 doses of mRNA vaccine, our best guesses for omicron are more like ~??%, ~30%, and ~70% respectively. Offsetting it slightly is that it looks like omicron may be a bit less likely to cause severe illness at baseline. But, no matter what, this is a big setback.
6nf 5y ago
There's a well known tweet of Fauci saying 'all three vaccines are 100% effective'
- junon 5y ago
  Link please.
  - 6nf 5y ago
    https://twitter.com/albertbourla/status/1377618480527257606?s=21 https://twitter.com/albertbourla/status/1377618480527257606?...
  - rglover 5y ago
    Not the exact one referenced, but incriminating enough: https://twitter.com/jamesmelville/status/1461750873445568515 https://twitter.com/jamesmelville/status/1461750873445568515 Edit: another https://twitter.com/ElnordicoBk/status/1471158531394998273 https://twitter.com/ElnordicoBk/status/1471158531394998273
    - javagram 5y ago
      Clicked through and found quotes of Fauci saying “highly effective” and “extraordinarily effective”. Not 100% Note that these quotes are in context of the US and Fauci’s publicly announced plan to approve, as part of Operation Warp Speed, vaccines that were at least 50% effective.[1] The vaccines proving to be 80-90% effective in that context certainly makes it reasonable to call them highly effective. [1] https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/09/12/911987987/a-covid-19-vaccine-may-be-only-50-effective-is-that-good-enough https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/09/12/9119879...
    - schleck8 5y ago
      "94 to 95 percent"
    - varelse 5y ago
      Now do Joe Rogan and Alex Jones...
vidoc 5y ago
At some point there was some PR about 100% effectiveness of the product on kids, according to, the guys who actually manufacture the product :) https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-detail/follow-data-phase-3-trial-pfizer-biontech-covid-19-vaccine https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-deta...
- javagram 5y ago
  Note however that if you read farther down it does say “vaccine efficacy of 100% (95% confidence interval [CI, 87.5, 100.0]).” Also that press release is not by any possible definition from “early days” nor is it issued by Dr Fauci.
  - vidoc 5y ago
    To be clear, I was just merely trying to track back where this '100%' claim was coming from as I also didn't remember such a bold claim being ever made, let alone by Fauci. Now, I invite you to make google searches with a date range and you will see that such studies claiming 100% efficacy on the product on kids started to appear in the early days actually: https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-detail/pfizer-biontech-announce-positive-topline-results-pivotal https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-deta... Since 100% is a pretty awesome figure, my theory is that there must have been quite a bit of press coverage at the time and I have no doubt a lot of people got confused.
    - javagram 5y ago
      Makes sense and good point of that original press release from March 31.
BbzzbB 5y ago
Can't see GP's comment (flagged, like 7/11 OP ITT) so I don't know if I'm on-topic or not. After Bourla's appearance on Lex's podcast and the latter's mention of a 100% claim on the blue bird app which the former denied (w.r.t. infection I believe), searching his account I came up with these. They're from March 31st (1) and April 1st (2 & 3, quoting 4), third would be most eye-brow lifting today. It is arguably misleading, or odd, to just mention 100% in a tweet on 95% CI with 53.5-100.0 brackets in the study. 1: 100% efficacy against COVID-19 disease for 12-15 year olds in phase 3 2: 100% efficacy against severe COVID-19 as defined by CDC 3: 100% efficacy in preventing COVID-19 cases in South Africa [1] https://twitter.com/AlbertBourla/status/1377227340011483136 https://twitter.com/AlbertBourla/status/1377227340011483136 [2] https://twitter.com/AlbertBourla/status/1377586182519947264 https://twitter.com/AlbertBourla/status/1377586182519947264 [3] https://twitter.com/AlbertBourla/status/1377618480527257606 https://twitter.com/AlbertBourla/status/1377618480527257606 [4] https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-detail/pfizer-and-biontech-confirm-high-efficacy-and-no-serious https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-deta...
beaned 5y ago
Here you go. I don't know anything about this website (found it from a google search) but the video montage has plenty of claims of 100%, and a "virtually 100% efficacious" quote from Fauci. The montage is in a meme format making fun of the situation, which is not my preference, and I don't intend to inflame by sharing such a take, it's just the most succinct thing I found. It highlights quite clearly what I'd mentioned in my first comment, that time and reproducibility matter. I genuinely don't know why it was flagged. https://news.grabien.com/story-twitter-user-video-showing-shifting-narrative-vaccine-effica https://news.grabien.com/story-twitter-user-video-showing-sh...
- xboxnolifes 5y ago
  I'm not a fan of the "virtually 100% efficacious" claim, but the "and others" part of your original comment, to me, meant "high ranking / respected health officials", not random internet articles and PR lines. Science article titles are rarely accurate to their content, for worse, so screenshots of said titles aren't really meaningful to me. I mean, just look at any hackernews post. Usually the first comment is complaining about the title's inaccuracy. Maybe there was a narrative shift, but I don't recall ever seeing those 100% claims back in February.
  - beaned 5y ago
    Ok, that seems then to be a matter of personal interpretation then and not completely what I meant. I don't know about "February" specifically but clearly 100% claims were being made at some point early on. People get their information from the newsmedia, and this is what it was reporting. So either our newsmedia isn't truthful or our scientists aren't, or - as my original (flagged) comment was saying - time and reproducibility matter, and may affect the efficacy ultimately reported.

junon 5y ago

Show me a single claim they'd be 100% effective by an epidemiologist, please.