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Comment by xboxnolifes | Hacker News Reader

I don't recall a single instance of 100% efficacy claim. It was around 92-97%.

At some point there was some PR about 100% effectiveness of the product on kids, according to, the guys who actually manufacture the product :)

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

Note however that if you read farther down it does say “vaccine efficacy of 100% (95% confidence interval [CI, 87.5, 100.0]).”

Also that press release is not by any possible definition from “early days” nor is it issued by Dr Fauci.

To be clear, I was just merely trying to track back where this '100%' claim was coming from as I also didn't remember such a bold claim being ever made, let alone by Fauci.

Now, I invite you to make google searches with a date range and you will see that such studies claiming 100% efficacy on the product on kids started to appear in the early days actually:

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

Since 100% is a pretty awesome figure, my theory is that there must have been quite a bit of press coverage at the time and I have no doubt a lot of people got confused.

Makes sense and good point of that original press release from March 31.

Can't see GP's comment (flagged, like 7/11 OP ITT) so I don't know if I'm on-topic or not. After Bourla's appearance on Lex's podcast and the latter's mention of a 100% claim on the blue bird app which the former denied (w.r.t. infection I believe), searching his account I came up with these. They're from March 31st (1) and April 1st (2 & 3, quoting 4), third would be most eye-brow lifting today. It is arguably misleading, or odd, to just mention 100% in a tweet on 95% CI with 53.5-100.0 brackets in the study.

1: 100% efficacy against COVID-19 disease for 12-15 year olds in phase 3

2: 100% efficacy against severe COVID-19 as defined by CDC

3: 100% efficacy in preventing COVID-19 cases in South Africa

[1] https://twitter.com/AlbertBourla/status/1377227340011483136

[2] https://twitter.com/AlbertBourla/status/1377586182519947264

[3] https://twitter.com/AlbertBourla/status/1377618480527257606

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

Here you go. I don't know anything about this website (found it from a google search) but the video montage has plenty of claims of 100%, and a "virtually 100% efficacious" quote from Fauci. The montage is in a meme format making fun of the situation, which is not my preference, and I don't intend to inflame by sharing such a take, it's just the most succinct thing I found.

It highlights quite clearly what I'd mentioned in my first comment, that time and reproducibility matter. I genuinely don't know why it was flagged.

https://news.grabien.com/story-twitter-user-video-showing-sh...

I'm not a fan of the "virtually 100% efficacious" claim, but the "and others" part of your original comment, to me, meant "high ranking / respected health officials", not random internet articles and PR lines. Science article titles are rarely accurate to their content, for worse, so screenshots of said titles aren't really meaningful to me. I mean, just look at any hackernews post. Usually the first comment is complaining about the title's inaccuracy.

Maybe there was a narrative shift, but I don't recall ever seeing those 100% claims back in February.

Ok, that seems then to be a matter of personal interpretation then and not completely what I meant. I don't know about "February" specifically but clearly 100% claims were being made at some point early on.

People get their information from the newsmedia, and this is what it was reporting. So either our newsmedia isn't truthful or our scientists aren't, or - as my original (flagged) comment was saying - time and reproducibility matter, and may affect the efficacy ultimately reported.

There's a well known tweet of Fauci saying 'all three vaccines are 100% effective'

Link please.

Not the exact one referenced, but incriminating enough: https://twitter.com/jamesmelville/status/1461750873445568515

Edit: another https://twitter.com/ElnordicoBk/status/1471158531394998273

Clicked through and found quotes of Fauci saying “highly effective” and “extraordinarily effective”. Not 100%

Note that these quotes are in context of the US and Fauci’s publicly announced plan to approve, as part of Operation Warp Speed, vaccines that were at least 50% effective.[1]

The vaccines proving to be 80-90% effective in that context certainly makes it reasonable to call them highly effective.

[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/09/12/9119879...

"94 to 95 percent"

Now do Joe Rogan and Alex Jones...

https://twitter.com/albertbourla/status/1377618480527257606?...

You are arguing over semantics. In reality, the Pfizer vax has proven to be less than 10% effective at stopping a future infection.

That sounds low. Where did you get your numbers?

English isn't my native language, but I thought "proven" wasn't a synonym for "I asked my friends".

It's a fair critique. But when the Captain of an airplane I'm flying on tells me there's an emergency problem with the flaps, I don't ask him for text book evidence, I just look out at the wings and verify the problem.

Check this data in a few weeks. https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#rates-by-vaccine-s...

So, you cite data showing very high efficacy of the vaccine, and are like -- look at it in a few weeks!

Omicron is going to make it worse, but even unboosted folks in South Africa seem to enjoy about 30% efficacy against infection and much higher efficacy against hospitalization and death. But your gossip trumps the data, I guess...

"Omicron is making it worse" is gossip to you and a fact for me. That's where we disagree.

No, Omicron making it worse is a fact that I already ceded.. but we have data that shows low (but still around 30%, not 10%) efficacy against infection with Omicron.. and still high efficacy (70%) against hospitalization and death.

But you say "has proven less than 10% effective" ... because you are making stuff up.

Further, it may be a mistake to assume South Africa predicts exactly what will happen here (30% fully vaccinated, nearly 0 boosted, 20% HIV incidence, vs. 60% fully vaccinated, 25% boosted, 0.3% HIV incidence).

The data you link says that unvaccinated people have 5x the risk of testing positive as vaccinated (no booster) as of October (Slightly higher for Pfizer, lower for J&J). I believe that's 80% efficacy. How do you get 10%?

Note also that this data is as of October 2021, so it's primarily looking at the efficacy against the Delta, whereas the original 90-whatever % claims were obviously the original virus.

Pfizer et al certainly weren't saying in March 2021 that "Pfizer provide 90-100% protection against COVID and all future variants" and I've never heard anyone suggest they thought that's what the claim was.

The efficacy is pretty well proven to be > 90% at this point. Per your comment where you admit the number was pulled out of thin air:

> Anecdotal. You do not need to be a meteorologist to know when it's raining. Look outside.

I'll raise you this... where I am 100% of ICU cases are unvaccinated. Read that again 100%. And over 85% of hospitalizations. And before you say "see, 15% of them were breakthrough cases," please learn about base rates. 65% of the people here are vaccinated so to have only 15% of the hospital cases be vaccinated is even more conclusive.

Please, get out of your bubble. If you think it is 10%... or even 50%... or even 70% you need to do some serious introspection.

Please, actually "look outside"! Because if you spent more than 10 seconds actually looking outside, the efficacy is obvious.

I am vaccinated - I believe in the early vaccine's efficacy for stopping serious illness. They have saved many lives.

What I am saying here is that the vaccines were marketed as 90% effective for preventing infection. Was I misunderstanding what was being marketed to me all along?

Yes, you have misunderstood this all along, and that misunderstanding has already been pointed out to you in this thread[1]. It is effective at preventing COVID-19 infections, which you get after being infected with SARA-CoV-2. It never claimed to prevent infection of the latter.

[1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29619347

> It never claimed to prevent infection of the latter.

We had some early data that looked like they were probably about ~70% effective for preventing infection, ~90% effective at preventing symptoms, and >95% effective at preventing severe illness.

These numbers are interesting, because they mean you have less of a chance of becoming infected, but a larger chance, if infected, of being an asymptomatic carrier. So it's difficult to predict the net effect on transmission (probably a benefit, but..)

Now for 2 doses of mRNA vaccine, our best guesses for omicron are more like ~??%, ~30%, and ~70% respectively. Offsetting it slightly is that it looks like omicron may be a bit less likely to cause severe illness at baseline. But, no matter what, this is a big setback.

Please do not cross into personal attack. That's against the site guidelines and just makes everything worse, regardless of how right you are or feel you are.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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