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Do you know of any studies on the discrepancy? My understanding was that Omicron came out and basically gave the middle finger to everyone's precautions. With

by taeric 3y ago

Do you know of any studies on the discrepancy? My understanding was that Omicron came out and basically gave the middle finger to everyone's precautions. With what seemed like literally nothing working against it.

oldgradstudent 3y ago
> Do you know of any studies on the discrepancy? The discrepancy is so massive you don't need large studies. You can easily observe yourself. (a) Make a survey of the people you know and compare their vaccination status to getting symptomatic Covid. Apply a simple statistical test to test whether it is consistent with the trial results. [Spolier: it is not] (b) [advanced] what is your best estimate of the vaccine efficacy given your results of the survey in (a). The measles vaccine has 95% efficacy. You vaccinate and the disease effectively disappears. > My understanding was that Omicron came out and basically gave the middle finger to everyone's precautions. With what seemed like literally nothing working against it. That's an ad-hoc hypothesis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hoc_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hoc_hypothesis It was quite clear that the numbers are inconsistent with 95% efficacy way before Omicron.
- taeric 3y ago
  But this is exposing ignorance of a different kind? The hopes for a sterilizing vaccine were remote, at best. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9595357/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9595357/ is a good overview of that line. Folks don't like comparing to the flu, but in this there are obvious similarities. With obviously similar outcomes on the ability of a vaccine to give sterilizing immunity. Much to your chagrin, though, I actually can say that among my contacts, getting the vaccine basically led to people not getting symptomatic covid. Folks got what they thought of as a bad cold. Almost flu like, but I know very few, if any, folks that were so bad off that they were symptomatic covid. Most wouldn't have even qualified as having a bad flu. (It is frustrating how many folks underestimate how hard the flu hits.) Contrast with family members that did not get the vaccine in time, and were hospitalized. It was truly different.
  - oldgradstudent 3y ago
    > Folks got what they thought of as a bad cold. Symptomatic Covid is simply a positive Covid test + any flu-like symptoms. What you're describing is symptomatic Covid. This is what was measured and reported in the trial. You might say that's not very interesting because it doesn't measure anything of importance. You would be right. That is exactly what critics say before the trials. https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4037 https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4037 The trials were never meant to test whether there would be any mortality benefit, any reduction in serious disease, any reduction in hospitalization, or any effect on infection or transmission. What they did meausre, turned out to be inconsistent with reality, though.
    - taeric 3y ago
      Symptomatic covid for the first round was far worse than that. Hell, even for later rounds, symptomatic covid was pretty intense. Again, I had family that neglected getting the vaccine and almost died with that decision. We know of many people that neglected the vaccine and did die. So, if the concern is you are upset a miracle vaccine didn't get developed, you're losing my interest quick. Anyone that got upset that you had a few symptoms is overblowing concerns to a non-useful degree.
      - oldgradstudent 3y ago
        > So, if the concern is you are upset a miracle vaccine didn't get developed, you're losing my interest quick. No, the concern is not that a miracle vaccine didn't get developed. The trial measured and reported whether people who got vaccinated got those "few symptoms" vs people who got the placebo. It claimed 95% efficacy in preventing those "few sysmptoms", but it did not do so in reality. The concern is that the trial results do not agree with reality. That means that something is wrong in either the design or execution of the trial. It's a bug in the trial, and a bug should be debugged.
        taeric 3y ago
        But it is easy to see that the "few symptoms" in the trial patients easily proxied to "safer outcomes" in the wild? I seriously cannot underline hard enough that folks that didn't get the vaccine put their lives in extreme risk for basically no reason. Seriously, the numbers were drastic for vaccinated versus not in hospitalizations alone. To push the narrative that they were wrong to get vaccines out just feels misguided. If you are pushing that we should continue to get better at trials and reporting? I agree with that. Any harder push there, though, feels nitpicking at best, and I don't see the direction you are hoping to go.

by taeric 3y ago

oldgradstudent 3y ago

> Do you know of any studies on the discrepancy? The discrepancy is so massive you don't need large studies. You can easily observe yourself. (a) Make a survey of the people you know and compare their vaccination status to getting symptomatic Covid. Apply a simple statistical test to test whether it is consistent with the trial results. [Spolier: it is not] (b) [advanced] what is your best estimate of the vaccine efficacy given your results of the survey in (a). The measles vaccine has 95% efficacy. You vaccinate and the disease effectively disappears. > My understanding was that Omicron came out and basically gave the middle finger to everyone's precautions. With what seemed like literally nothing working against it. That's an ad-hoc hypothesis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hoc_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hoc_hypothesis It was quite clear that the numbers are inconsistent with 95% efficacy way before Omicron.

taeric 3y ago
But this is exposing ignorance of a different kind? The hopes for a sterilizing vaccine were remote, at best. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9595357/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9595357/ is a good overview of that line. Folks don't like comparing to the flu, but in this there are obvious similarities. With obviously similar outcomes on the ability of a vaccine to give sterilizing immunity. Much to your chagrin, though, I actually can say that among my contacts, getting the vaccine basically led to people not getting symptomatic covid. Folks got what they thought of as a bad cold. Almost flu like, but I know very few, if any, folks that were so bad off that they were symptomatic covid. Most wouldn't have even qualified as having a bad flu. (It is frustrating how many folks underestimate how hard the flu hits.) Contrast with family members that did not get the vaccine in time, and were hospitalized. It was truly different.
- oldgradstudent 3y ago
  > Folks got what they thought of as a bad cold. Symptomatic Covid is simply a positive Covid test + any flu-like symptoms. What you're describing is symptomatic Covid. This is what was measured and reported in the trial. You might say that's not very interesting because it doesn't measure anything of importance. You would be right. That is exactly what critics say before the trials. https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4037 https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4037 The trials were never meant to test whether there would be any mortality benefit, any reduction in serious disease, any reduction in hospitalization, or any effect on infection or transmission. What they did meausre, turned out to be inconsistent with reality, though.
  - taeric 3y ago
    Symptomatic covid for the first round was far worse than that. Hell, even for later rounds, symptomatic covid was pretty intense. Again, I had family that neglected getting the vaccine and almost died with that decision. We know of many people that neglected the vaccine and did die. So, if the concern is you are upset a miracle vaccine didn't get developed, you're losing my interest quick. Anyone that got upset that you had a few symptoms is overblowing concerns to a non-useful degree.
    - oldgradstudent 3y ago
      > So, if the concern is you are upset a miracle vaccine didn't get developed, you're losing my interest quick. No, the concern is not that a miracle vaccine didn't get developed. The trial measured and reported whether people who got vaccinated got those "few symptoms" vs people who got the placebo. It claimed 95% efficacy in preventing those "few sysmptoms", but it did not do so in reality. The concern is that the trial results do not agree with reality. That means that something is wrong in either the design or execution of the trial. It's a bug in the trial, and a bug should be debugged.
      - taeric 3y ago
        But it is easy to see that the "few symptoms" in the trial patients easily proxied to "safer outcomes" in the wild? I seriously cannot underline hard enough that folks that didn't get the vaccine put their lives in extreme risk for basically no reason. Seriously, the numbers were drastic for vaccinated versus not in hospitalizations alone. To push the narrative that they were wrong to get vaccines out just feels misguided. If you are pushing that we should continue to get better at trials and reporting? I agree with that. Any harder push there, though, feels nitpicking at best, and I don't see the direction you are hoping to go.