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One way to describe Africa's development in this era is that they're economically 100 years behind the rich world, but catching up 3 years per year. In that en
by BurningFrog 3y ago
One way to describe Africa's development in this era is that they're economically 100 years behind the rich world, but catching up 3 years per year.
In that environment, you'd expect child mortality to go down year by year, regardless of this vaccine.
Maybe the study corrects for that, but the complete absence of details in this report isn't promising.
- regularfry 3y agoIt's not regardless of the vaccine, though. You'd expect child mortality to go down year by year because of things like that. There used to be malaria in the UK, I'm sure child mortality dropped when it died off here too.
- BurningFrog 3y agoMy point is that you need to compare how much the death rates went down in comparable regions, before attributing this 13% decrease to the vaccine.
- benchaney 3y agoThat’s not how these kinds of trials work. The 13% figure comes from comparing the control and intervention groups, which were observed over the same period of time. The change in baseline mortality over time of the entire population isn’t relevant.
- ipqk 3y agoIt is compared to non-vaccinated regions, if you had bothered to read the article. > To calculate mortality in the three countries, where death registry statistics are unreliable, the researchers employed tens of thousands of community reporters—more than 14,000 of them in Kenya alone—to conduct household surveys of childhood deaths in 79 areas where the RTS,S vaccine was administered and 79 comparator areas where it was not available.
- mattmaroon 3y agoYou really don’t if it’s controlled. The control group would have any other factors baked in. If the group that got the vaccine has a 13% lower all cause mortality than the group that didn’t, and it was your standard randomized controlled double blind study, that’s a huge win.
- mlyle 3y ago> but the complete absence of details in this report isn't promising. We don't have the actual report yet: just reporting on it being presented at a conference. I have not found it in indexes yet, but hopefully soon. > Maybe the study corrects for that Yes: the article we're reading makes it clear that it's comparing like-communities where there was and was not vaccine rollout, not looking at time series data.
- Fomite 3y agoI'm actually surprised we don't have the actual report yet - for large medical conferences and big results like this, there's often a joint Press Release - Conference Presentation - Journal Publication release.
- grecy 3y agoIt is a fact that poor/undeveloped countries are currently developing faster than any country ever has at any point in history. If you have not read it, Factfullness by Hans Rosling is incredible.
- p_j_w 3y agoDo you not understand how control groups work?
- thinkcontext 3y agoYes, it is clear that they do not.
- BurningFrog 3y agoI do, just wasn't thinking of it when posting :(
- p_j_w 3y agoFair enough! Good on you for realizing your error.
- BurningFrog 3y agoOK, I've been convinced that I'm wrong, because the number is of course compared to the control group. I apologize for any inconvenience!
- TimPC 3y agoThey look at differences across comparable regions that got the vaccine and regions that didn't with time period controlled for so I'd say they account for that.
- eru 3y agoOf course, the catching up of '3 years per year' is partially thanks to roll-outs of vaccination.