It was a bit expensive, and it took some time to ramp up production. Still impressive, though.
The problem was that almost everyone who got the vaccine also caught the disease.
The problem was that almost everyone who got the vaccine also caught the disease.
Unfortunately, it turned out to mutate quite rapidly (like the flu) and soon the battles weren't always a rout. It still reduces severity, though, and thus is still used.
That's called preventing Covid. Covid is the disease, not simply an infection.
The problem is that the vast majority of people who got the vaccine did in fact notice very well they've had Covid.
> That's what they got against Covid/Wuhan and the world actually did achieve herd immunity--against Covid/Wuhan. (The Wuhan strain has been extinct for some time.)
The Wuhan strain wasn't that relevant even before the vaccines were widely available.
> Unfortunately, it turned out to mutate quite rapidly (like the flu) and soon the battles weren't always a rout.
Which was predicted and expected all along.
> It still reduces severity, though, and thus is still used.
Only if you take really awful studies seriously.
Nobody bothered to test this hypothesis in a proper trial.
And, yes, nobody has tested the severity reduction in a proper trial. It would be expensive, difficult and serve little purpose. What we can observe is that given matched populations the unvaccinated die at a considerably higher rate than the vaccinated. Beware of some bogus "studies" to the opposite--which didn't use matched populations. Those at higher risk are more likely to be vaccinated and a vaccinated high risk individual can easily still be more likely to die than an unvaccinated low risk individual.
No purpose except for actually knowing whether it actually reduces severity.
> What we can observe is that given matched populations the unvaccinated die at a considerably higher rate than the vaccinated. Beware of some bogus "studies" to the opposite--which didn't use matched populations. Those at higher risk are more likely to be vaccinated and a vaccinated high risk individual can easily still be more likely to die than an unvaccinated low risk individual.
The sad reality is that you can't do matched population without a randomized controlled trial. You can't control for confounders you don't understand.
A recent hillarious example is the well-publicized paper that showed a drop of over 90% in Covid-related mortality after the first booster. Other researchers managed to obtain the data and it turned out there was also a similar drop in non Covid related morality. This resulted in the following correspondece, which is well worth reading:
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2306683
A choice quote from the authors of the original paper:
> During the B.1.617.2 (delta) wave in the United States, similar associations were observed between the use of mRNA vaccines and lower mortality not related to Covid-191 and mortality from any cause.
They mean that many of the studies showing a drop in Covid mortality after the mRNA vaccines, also showed a similar drops in non-Covid related mortality. In other words, the vaccinated population were healthier at the outset and the drop was bogus.
You need a proper clinical trial here to make this claim, as the observational data is ridiculously confounded.