Pfizer Covid Shot Bolsters Antibodies in Younger Kids | Hacker News Reader

Pfizer Covid Shot Bolsters Antibodies in Younger Kids

bloomberg.com

From a different article that describes the same press release:

> Pfizer’s press release did not include any data on the extent to which the vaccine reduced the chances that children would become sick. Gruber [senior vice president of vaccine clinical research and development at Pfizer] said that there were not enough cases of illness to tell. But outside experts said it was reasonable to assume that similar levels of antibodies would mean similar protection from disease.

This is amazing. We have no data to prove that our magic juice does anything clinically useful to children because there simply aren't enough children getting sick. But children need MagicProtection(TM), so let's file for authorization to deliver the magic juice to children anyways.

(Of course, the vaccines have been proven effective for adults. It just happens that covid is orders of magnitude more dangerous for adults compared to children.)

https://www.statnews.com/2021/09/20/pfizer-covid-19-vaccine-...

No, there were plenty of cases in the control group, it's just that there were zero cases in the experimental group. So they know it's very effective, but they were unable to measure the breakthrough infection rate.

How many cases in the control group are we talking about when there were only about 1,100 kids in it?

Also, why is it believed that the vaccine is "very effective" against breakthrough infection in children when that is not the case for other age groups, where the story is "doesn't prevent infection but it works against severe illness"?

18 cases. I'm not sure I understand your point about breakthrough infections in other groups; do you mean that a significant percentage of vaccinated individuals are getting infected, compared to unvaccinated individuals?

Nit: Neither the OA, nor the link I provided contain the string '18'. Would you please be so kind and post the link where you get the data from?

Enough vaccinated individuals are being infected for the CDC to conclude in the Provincetown study that "the vaccinated may spread the Delta variant as easily as the unvaccinated." Any time a breakthrough case is reported now you can consistently find statements from public health officials saying "the vaccines don't necessarily keep you from getting sick but they are still effective against hospitalization and death." Given that they don't do routine testing of trial subjects, we can't really even conclude anything from "18 cases in the control group and none in the experimental" except that the vaccines are suppressing symptoms of illness.

Second the other child comment's request for a source on "18 cases," the only thing I can find in the Pfizer press release and major media sources on this is statements about antibody levels.

Where do you get this data from? It's not in the press release.

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

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