MillionMilesAway
Well-Known Member
That's a good post.
Up till last week I thought the efficacy rate was the be all and end all.
Hence Pfizer 'better' than AZ.
But as you state this is not necessarily the case , the best vaccine is probably the one that reduces serious illness and (obviously) death and they are all stated by the experts to do that, although we don't know which are the best.
However does better efficacy in reducing the number of cases cut down the risk of variants ( don't know)?
A couple of other things I'm not clear on. We are often told that in the trials no deaths or serious illness resulted in the vaccination sample. But what about the placebo group - if there were similarly no deaths or serious illness in that group? How does that enable conclusions to be drawn about the effectiveness of the vaccine?
Final point - still not entirely happy about the AZ trials being restricted to younger people, although we are told not to be concerned.
As far as I know:
Q: However does better efficacy in reducing the number of cases cut down the risk of variants ( don't know)?
A: Less cases = less transmission = less occasions which can cause mutation; it therefore probably comes down to whether "better efficacy" is judged on serious illness, or not catching it at all. Efficacy itself will not affect the chance of mutations, but should reduce the number of occasions that chance can occur.
While memory may be iffy, I think placebo groups had a small number of serious illnesses, and not much more than 1-2 deaths; the difference is therefore between "none" and "some" - obviously the AZ trials (as an obvious example) had relatively few elderly triallists, so they wouldn't have been expecting many "serious" cases.
AZ trials: this is partly a matter of standard protocol being to minimise risk of exposing elderly triallists to a relatively early trial; IMO, this is a matter of a shortcut process being used, where phase 3 trials led to an emergency use order about a month later. Usual process would be multiple trials over a much longer time, trying with different age groups as they go.
I don't think there is a cause for concern - data said it worked for younger ages, and there is no actual pathogen present in it (it's the attachment part, not the active part), so there is no reason that it wouldn't work. @roubaixtuesday gave some stronger reasoning to me here:
Coronavirus (2021) thread
Scotland data: 1 death - was 3 last week 273 cases - was 278 last week 1.3% positivity - was 1.3% last week 107 patients - UP 1 on day - was 119 last week 14 Ventilated - UP 1 on day - was 20 last week Scotland - and other countries - starting to show a clear bottoming out and even slight...