Covid-19 Vaccines Are Still Effective
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Covid-19 Vaccines Are Still Effective: Recently, the Internet has been flooded with new and shocking claims. Apparently the Pfizer vaccine wasn’t as effective as the 95% we were selling-in fact, people claim it was almost ineffective. Dozens of tweets and articles have been talked about around the world due to this massive claim.
It makes sense because we are all investing deeply in the efficacy of the Covid19 vaccine. If this claim is true, it will have a serious impact on our confidence in vaccines and, in fact, governments around the world.
Fortunately, it’s completely wrong. This claim is based on a very simple misunderstanding of the document and some really pathetic science.
Let’s Have a Look at the Data
It is very difficult to get the claim itself. Despite dozens (if not hundreds) of viral tweets referencing recently released information from Pfizer’s data repositories, it’s surprisingly difficult to understand where the idea actually came from. People have certainly recently uploaded a number of documents related to Pfizer’s vaccine clinical trials (which is great, but rarely transparent from pharmaceutical companies), but after examining the files, they find claims everywhere. I couldn’t. Many of these were just huge PDFs that simply documented the reasons for excluding patients from the study, nd despite searching, I couldn’t find the source of the complaint.
However, looking at a sufficient number of tweets will give you a clear source of information that is common to all of them. They often refer to posts in the same substack published about a month ago, which seems to be the first place where this extraordinary claim was made.
It’s not really based on recently released documentation, but on the FDA’s briefing paper posted online over a year ago. Still, it seems that everyone gets this wrong idea. To avoid misrepresenting the claim, I repeat it completely here:
” A key section buried within this document, which alludes to possibly the real VE at that time, is the following damning data below (found on page 42).”
“These were people showing actual symptoms. If you calculate the VE from these numbers, it’s a staggeringly low 12%!
VE is calculated by dividing the difference between the case numbers in the placebo and vaccine groups, by the case number in the placebo group x 100 = VE of 12 %”
It’s not really based on recently released documentation, but on the FDA’s briefing paper posted online over a year ago. Still, it seems that everyone gets this wrong idea. I’ll repeat it completely here to avoid misrepresenting my claim. This sounds like a very bad thing. Vaccine efficacy based on Pfizer’s own records is only 12%!
Fortunately, this is based on a complete misunderstanding of Pfizer’s documentation. As you can see, the author calculated this power based on the so-called “suspicious but unconfirmed” case of Covid 19. But these people, by definition, didn’t have Covid 19 at all.
The Science
Careful reading of Pfizer’s online clinical trial protocol and FDA documentation over a year ago reveals why the 12% figure is completely wrong. As explained in Section 8.13 of the Protocol, the people who were considered “suspicious” Covid19 cases were those who showed Covid19 symptoms, including:
“A diagnosis of COVID-19; Fever; New or increased cough; New or increased shortness of breath; Chills; New or increased muscle pain; New loss of taste/smell; Sore throat; Diarrhea; Vomiting.”
These people were urged to take a test to determine if they were actually infected with Covid19. Of these people, a small percentage were positive and the majority were negative. A positive test gave 8 positive and 162 negative results based on 95% true vaccine efficacy, and 3,410 were PCR negative and were considered “estimated but unconfirmed”. rice field. What that really means is that these people did not have a Covid19 infection.
In fact, Pfizer’s documentation very strongly confirms that the vaccine is 95% effective at the primary endpoint of preventing Covid19 infection in immunoimmunization clinical trials.
The author of the substack post does not agree. They found that the reliability of the test was very low, as PCR tests do not always culture live viruses at high cycle thresholds, and depending on how Pfizer performed the analysis, “up to 97% of positive results It can be a false positive. “
However, this is a very basic misconception about how these tests work. The problem is that the PCR test is not accurate enough and tends to be too accurate. PCR is so sensitive to ingested viral RNA that it can identify people even if they have already overcome the Covid19 infection. In fact, the paper cited by the author of the Substack submission states exactly: Performing PCR with a high cycle threshold can catch people who are free of live viruses in their bodies.
However, this is not a false warning by medical definition. Those with high cycle threshold counts but no live virus culture are most likely recently infected with Covid 19 or have recovered from the infection. This means that they are currently infected with Covid19 or have recently had the disease. PCR can give false positive results, but in most places the specificity of the test is well above 99.9%. That is, less than 1 in 1,000 people who do not have Covid19 will be tested positive for the PCR disease being tested.
Bottom Line
I’m not a big fan of pharmaceutical companies. They were shy about the data, tampering with the results to make them look good, and doing terribly immoral things in the past to promote their financial interests.
Personally, I strongly believe in the openness of science, and a big step in the right direction is to force pharmaceutical companies to make general clinical trial data more open.
However, accuracy is also important. The facts simply do not support the claim that Pfizer’s vaccine had 12 efficacy in its primary analysis-the evidence is that vaccination prevented 95% of infections in the vaccinated group. is showing.
Fortunately, many viruses claim that the Pfizer vaccine is only 12 times more effective is completely and completely false.
Vaccines are highly effective in preventing serious diseases and hospitalization.
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