> There are still questions - how long does immunity last, does the vaccine work as well in high-risk elderly people, does it stop you spreading the virus or just from developing symptoms?
I'd rate the news as "vibing" on a scale of clickbait to party for the world
The trial will be complete from an effectiveness perspective once there are ~150-200 cases.
Safety is a different story and may take more time to wait for side effects.
Thanks! Misread the 94, but the n=43.5k is also misleading since they have not analyzed all of the results and duration of the study vs exposure risk is still tbd. If the 94 participants that got COVID also abided by all the other precautions, such as masks, etc, then it stands to reason that the actual infection rate in the population approximating pre-covid behaviors may also be higher.
I'm not suggesting Pfizer is up to something nefarious, just that the biomedical literature is littered with studies with N < 100 for the outcomes of interest and they don't replicate. The N > 40k in some ways is irrelevant if none of those participants have the processes in play. It's more like recruiting N >40k to get N=94 to study.
I'm also not suggesting with 90% effectiveness that there's probably no effect, just that my guess is a true value of 60% isn't outside the realm of possibility once you consider all the factors that could be in play besides the random sampling variation that's assumed by their tests.
What you're saying is the 9 is pretty close to 34 (60% effectiveness). No, it isn't. You'd need to quadruple the number of vaccinated cases to get there. Even if you double them, you're still at 80% so I'd take that as the realistic worst case.
Edit: Also, this is BioNTech's vaccine, not Pfizer's. They partnered with Pfizer as they have the facilities and scale for a massive rollout, but it was developed by BioNTech. I wish they were getting more credit in the US & UK coverage.