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> 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 symptomati

> 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.
  - LorenPechtel 3y ago
    I don't think it's a bug in the trial, but rather evolution at work. The vaccine worked pretty well against the Wuhan strain, but Covid breeds variants like it was a rabbit. The farther from the strain coded into the vaccine the less effective the vaccine is. It still seems to be pretty good at reducing the severity, though--the unvaccinated are dying at a far higher rate than the vaccinated.
    - oldgradstudent 3y ago
      > I don't think it's a bug in the trial, but rather evolution at work. That's called an ad-hoc hypothesis. In science and philosophy, an ad hoc hypothesis is a hypothesis added to a theory in order to save it from being falsified. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hoc_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hoc_hypothesis It could be true, but it is not enough to assert it, it has to be proven.
      - linuxftw 3y ago
        Even in the initial data released by the FDA, Pfizer didn't test all patients for COVID during the trial. In fact, they didn't even test all 'suspected' cases during the trial. In fact, there were more 'suspected but not verified' cases among the test group than the control. It was junk science from top to bottom, and this assumes any science was conducted at all. According to a whistle blower, the science was fraudulent.

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.
- LorenPechtel 3y ago
  I don't think it's a bug in the trial, but rather evolution at work. The vaccine worked pretty well against the Wuhan strain, but Covid breeds variants like it was a rabbit. The farther from the strain coded into the vaccine the less effective the vaccine is. It still seems to be pretty good at reducing the severity, though--the unvaccinated are dying at a far higher rate than the vaccinated.
  - oldgradstudent 3y ago
    > I don't think it's a bug in the trial, but rather evolution at work. That's called an ad-hoc hypothesis. In science and philosophy, an ad hoc hypothesis is a hypothesis added to a theory in order to save it from being falsified. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hoc_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hoc_hypothesis It could be true, but it is not enough to assert it, it has to be proven.
    - linuxftw 3y ago
      Even in the initial data released by the FDA, Pfizer didn't test all patients for COVID during the trial. In fact, they didn't even test all 'suspected' cases during the trial. In fact, there were more 'suspected but not verified' cases among the test group than the control. It was junk science from top to bottom, and this assumes any science was conducted at all. According to a whistle blower, the science was fraudulent.