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Comment by LatteLazy | Hacker News Reader

Tiny study, just like chloroquine that is somehow still being talked about...

>Findings In this randomized trial that included 152 adult outpatients with confirmed COVID-19 and symptom onset within 7 days, clinical deterioration occurred in 0 patients treated with fluvoxamine vs 6 (8.3%) patients treated with placebo over 15 days, a difference that was statistically significant.

It honestly worries me how quick people are to jump on these band wagons. Call me when you've at least got 100 cases to review.

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As unfortunate as this is, 152 isn't such a small study compared to what's common.

Not saying this is a result that should be taken as definite, but it's strong enough to warrant further looking into this (which was never really true for hydroxychloroquine).

You're correct, only 24 (no placebo group so I guess that's the equivalent of 48?). I thought it was bigger...

https://www.connexionfrance.com/French-news/French-researche...

It also wasn't a randomized trial and had numerous methodological errors.

For all relevant studies with 10,000 or more patients and the correct treatment protocols. See: http://www.hcqlost.com

Respectfully, that's just a counter. It links to another hcq*.com site. That seems to cherry pick results.

Don't get me wrong, this whole thing is a fucking mess.

I haven't seen a reliable study that shows HCQ is effective. I'd be happy to see one of you have one? Given the attention paid to this molecule, there should be some nice, randomised control trials with large n numbers.

Is there something specific that's wrong with their math?

They're lacking sufficient data to draw any real conclusions. Trend spotting like this requires very large data sets.

It would be more interesting to look at (say) NHS data. That's the quick way to avoid this sort of guessing...

They describe their significance calculation.

The efficacy of the vaccines currently being administered to millions were based on decisions made with data from ~200 confirmed cases.

Pfizers stage 3 vaccine trial have 41,000 participants. I'm not sure how you got 200, have I misunderstood you?

https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-deta....

Yes, you have. The efficacy estimate was based on roughly ~200 confirmed cases, which your link confirms for the Pfizer vaccine.

The problem is the confirmed cases are the primary part of determining efficacy. The people who do not get the virus have a smaller impact on that statistic at higher numbers. EDIT: User runamok explains it well.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/chickenpox/outbreaks/downloads/appx-f-in...

The relevant passage is below. Basically it's a funnel, so It takes testing a large amount of people to tease out just a handful of infections. 162 cases for placebo vs. 8 in the vaccine group.

Analysis of the data indicates a vaccine efficacy rate of 95% (p<0.0001) in participants without prior SARS-CoV-2 infection (first primary objective) and also in participants with and without prior SARS-CoV-2 infection (second primary objective), in each case measured from 7 days after the second dose. The first primary objective analysis is based on 170 cases of COVID-19, as specified in the study protocol, of which 162 cases of COVID-19 were observed in the placebo group versus 8 cases in the BNT162b2 group. Efficacy was consistent across age, gender, race and ethnicity demographics. The observed efficacy in adults over 65 years of age was over 94%.

To be clear, I am using the example of the current vaccines to prove the point that N=200 allows statistical inferences to be drawn.

The 200 you mention are comparable to the 6 in the comment above, not the 152.

That would make sense because how many of these 41000 people would have been infected without the vaccine? 200 sounds quite reasonable.

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