It's black on white: real Covid vaccines efficacy only around 1%

yerrag

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It's "absolute" risk reduction of 1%.
But relative of 95%.

Absolute so low because not many people are infected with corona among the population, what makes sense is the relative not absolute
Nope.

It has nothing to do with the population having low infection rates.

It has everything to do with absolutes.

A drug that works for 9 out of 10 people has 90% absolute efficacy.

A drug that works only for only 1 out of 100 people has 1% absolute efficacy.

As compared to taking nothing, the lousy drug has an infinite relative efficacy, even at 1% absolute efficacy.

Infinite. Whowee!
 

tankasnowgod

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It's "absolute" risk reduction of 1%.
But relative of 95%.

Absolute so low because not many people are infected with corona among the population, what makes sense is the relative not absolute

Also, it was based on trial data only collected over 2 months, and summer months at that.
 

hierundjetzt

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“Approximately 96 COVID-19 vaccines are at various stages of clinical development.1 At present, we have the interim results of four studies published in scientific journals.....”

Vaccine efficacy is generally reported as a relative risk reduction (RRR). It uses the relative risk (RR)—ie, the ratio of attack rates with and without a vaccine—which is expressed as 1–RR. Ranking by reported efficacy gives relative risk reductions of 95% for the Pfizer–BioNTech, 94% for the Moderna–NIH, 90% for the Gamaleya, 67% for the J&J, and 67% for the AstraZeneca–Oxford vaccines. However, RRR should be seen against the background risk of being infected and becoming ill with COVID-19, which varies between populations and over time. Although the RRR considers only participants who could benefit from the vaccine, the absolute risk reduction (ARR), which is the difference between attack rates with and without a vaccine, considers the whole population. ARRs tend to be ignored because they give a much less impressive effect size than RRRs: 1·3% for the AstraZeneca–Oxford, 1·2% for the Moderna–NIH, 1·2% for the J&J, 0·93% for the Gamaleya, and 0·84% for the Pfizer–BioNTech vaccines.”

Ergo only the vulnerable population at risk such as the elderly and health-compromised persons should be taking the vaccine if the RRR is very high, but the rest of the population should not because the ARR is low? Is that correct?

However, another interesting point in the Lancet article is:
"These considerations on efficacy and effectiveness are based on studies measuring prevention of mild to moderate COVID-19 infection; they were not designed to conclude on prevention of hospitalisation, severe disease, or death, or on prevention of infection and transmission potential."
Therefore, I guess this reinforces the fact that non-health compromised persons don't need the vaccine since they will not die from mild to moderate symptoms. If that makes sense at all.
 

JohnHafterson

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The RRR is meaningless. If you keep the number of infections the same in each arm and multiply both arms by 1000, the RRR remains the same, but the ARR becomes a thousand times less. RRR tells you nothing about actual risk reduction. For all practical purposes it's just a meaningless ratio.
Study author says the RRR is good for researchers to quickly compare effectiveness from different research but not much else:


View: https://youtu.be/Jkwn5I8tLmE


The same study author above Ron Brown PhD has a few papers on phosphate. I sent him Peats newsletter on phosphate last week.
 

yerrag

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Ergo only the vulnerable population at risk such as the elderly and health-compromised persons should be taking the vaccine if the RRR is very high, but the rest of the population should not because the ARR is low? Is that correct?
I don't believe the Pfizer trial included even the elderly and the health-compromised persons. But leaving that aside and assuming it didn't exclude them, the RRR doesn't really give us any idea of how effective really the vaccine is. But now that we know that Pfizer's 95% RRR just maps to its 0.84% ARR, how can it be useful at all for vulnerable populations at all? In effect, the RRR is meaningless as it has no numerical indication as to how the vaccine helps minimize symptoms of infections. With an RRR value, you have nothing to work on. With just the ARR, you have something to use to determine if the vaccine will be of real help as far as risk reduction goes.

As the post after you says: "Study author says the RRR is good for researchers to quickly compare effectiveness from different research but not much else."

If you're not a researcher and you're a person who wants to know whether a vaccine will minimize your risk of having symptoms from COVID, the only number you should be concerned with really is the ARR and its corresponding NNV, which is derived from the ARR. The RRR is puffery.
 

Giraffe

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Ergo only the vulnerable population at risk such as the elderly and health-compromised persons should be taking the vaccine if the RRR is very high, but the rest of the population should not because the ARR is low? Is that correct?

The most vulnerable will not tolerate a vaccine.

How Worried Should We Be About the Variants?

Dr. Michael Yeadon said:
Vaccines rely entirely on a functional immune system. However, those suffering from severe forms of COVID-19 have predominantly been shown to be either very old and/or very sick with a weakened immune system.34 A recent survey from Yale University highlighted that blood samples taken from severe COVID-19 patients were lacking dendritic cells – a fundamental trigger of immune response – by a factor of between two and four.35 A deficiency in these signalling cells would thus significantly delay the immune response, giving the virus the opportunity to replicate exponentially, and present the immune system with a radically different context: a propagated virus and inflammation disseminated throughout the body. A vaccine’s mode of action would be subject to the same delay. Although vaccines could be helpful for patients with mildly deficient immune systems, they would most likely not save very old patients with advanced immune senescence.

Those with a functioning immune system shouldn't take it because there is no benefit for them, only risks. The RRR from those trials is meaningless. The absolute numbers are too small, and the data from the trials look suspicious at the very best.

Peter Doshi: Pfizer and Moderna’s “95% effective” vaccines—we need more details and the raw data

Peter Doshi said:
“Suspected covid-19”

All attention has focused on the dramatic efficacy results: Pfizer reported 170 PCR confirmed covid-19 cases, split 8 to 162 between vaccine and placebo groups. But these numbers were dwarfed by a category of disease called “suspected covid-19”—those with symptomatic covid-19 that were not PCR confirmed. According to FDA’s report on Pfizer’s vaccine, there were “3410 total cases of suspected, but unconfirmed covid-19 in the overall study population, 1594 occurred in the vaccine group vs. 1816 in the placebo group.”

With 20 times more suspected than confirmed cases, this category of disease cannot be ignored simply because there was no positive PCR test result. Indeed this makes it all the more urgent to understand. A rough estimate of vaccine efficacy against developing covid-19 symptoms, with or without a positive PCR test result, would be a relative risk reduction of 19% (see footnote)—far below the 50% effectiveness threshold for authorization set by regulators.

Peter Doshi said:
The 371 individuals excluded from Pfizer vaccine efficacy analysis

Another reason we need more data is to analyse an unexplained detail found in a table of FDA’s review of Pfizer’s vaccine: 371 individuals excluded from the efficacy analysis for “important protocol deviations on or prior to 7 days after Dose 2.” What is concerning is the imbalance between randomized groups in the number of these excluded individuals: 311 from the vaccine group vs 60 on placebo. (In contrast, in Moderna’s trial, there were just 36 participants excluded from the efficacy analysis for “major protocol deviation”—12 vaccine group vs 24 placebo group.)

There were no double-blind trials (single exception for AstraZeneca in South Africa). In the Pfizer trials discussed by Peter Doshi more than twice as many participants were excluded for protocol deviations than they had confirmed covid-19 cases. This is more than enough wiggle room to massage the data. 20 times as many suspected cases than confirmed ones? What's the goal of vaccination? Is it to prevent a positive PCR-test or is it to prevent serious disease? Two thirds of those getting the second shot develop flu-like symptoms (high fever, chills, head-aches, fatique, muscle pains ...). Serious? With a natural infection I would have to expect to get the sniffles. and there is a high probability that I had it already.

Regarding the trial in South Africa:

Latest Clinical Trial Data Shows AstraZeneca COVID-19 Vaccine is Useless
 

Rick K

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Thank you!

I've been looking for these absolute numbers. Thanks for sharing!
Somebody please help my calcified noodle understand this. Don't absolute and relative reduction rates apply to a vaccine? And, since this isn't a vaccine but designed to make you sick how are there ANY risk reductions? In fact, are there not risks? Aren't we seeing reports of otherwise healthy people becoming sick after their "injection"? Isn't this a negative correlation as opposed to the numbers everyone is spinning? If this injection cannot prevent infection then how does anyone compile a table of risk reductions? This is idiot logic, is it not?
 

Bogdar

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Nope.

It has nothing to do with the population having low infection rates.

It has everything to do with absolutes.

A drug that works for 9 out of 10 people has 90% absolute efficacy.

A drug that works only for only 1 out of 100 people has 1% absolute efficacy.

As compared to taking nothing, the lousy drug has an infinite relative efficacy, even at 1% absolute efficacy.

Infinite. Whowee!
Nope*

If it works for 1 out of 100 people but only one of these 100 people have corona, did it work 100% (100% RRR) or 1% (ARR) ?

It can't have a 90% ARR because not 90% of people get infected... It can't be MORE than the % of people infected...
 

yerrag

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Nope*

If it works for 1 out of 100 people but only one of these 100 people have corona, did it work 100% (100% RRR) or 1% (ARR) ?

It can't have a 90% ARR because not 90% of people get infected... It can't be MORE than the % of people infected...
This is about people WITH infection. Capisce?
 

Bogdar

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This is about people WITH infection. Capisce?
Well, where is it written?
Does it make sense to talk about and differentiate "relative" and "absolute" when we are talking only about ppl with infection? As far as I know it doesn't and they should be the same?
This is the picture which is below the study..
1619291863941.png
 

Missenger

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The image you posted from the article literally says you have a 2% chance of "risk" with placebo while the vaccine lowers it by 1%.
 

Perry Staltic

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The image you posted from the article literally says you have a 2% chance of "risk" with placebo while the vaccine lowers it by 1%.

Lowers it by 50% to 1%. That pretty much sums up RRR and ARR in one short sentence. If the infections in each arm remained the same and both arms were each a thousandfold larger, the risk would be lowered by 50% to 0.001%.
 
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yerrag

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Well, where is it written?
That is true. It's not written at all.

But where is it written that it's not about people with no infection either?

The test populations are two similar populations, one given the vaccine, and the other not given a vaccine.

Nothing can be said about whether the populations in question are infected or not as a whole. But it is safe to say the populations are not all uninfected, and also safe to say the they are not all infected.

But it is also probable that all of them are infected, and improbable that all of them are uninfected.

I take the position that the two populations are all infected. The subjects are merely in varying degrees of expressing the symptoms of infections, ranging from asymptomatic to mild expressions, of which only those showing mild symptoms are picked out in the study.
 

yerrag

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Somebody please help my calcified noodle understand this. Don't absolute and relative reduction rates apply to a vaccine? And, since this isn't a vaccine but designed to make you sick how are there ANY risk reductions? In fact, are there not risks? Aren't we seeing reports of otherwise healthy people becoming sick after their "injection"? Isn't this a negative correlation as opposed to the numbers everyone is spinning? If this injection cannot prevent infection then how does anyone compile a table of risk reductions? This is idiot logic, is it not?
The detrimental and as of now not fully understood effects of the vaccines are a big concern and not a trivial matter. So I agree with you. But that discussion is a subject on its own. That is the risk side of the vaccine discussion. Here, we are discussing the benefit side of the vaccines.
 

haidut

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...and now the massive PR fraud of Big Pharma is on full display. Forget about COVID-19 - the NNT/NNV for most drugs/vaccines/interventions is over 1,000 for a person selected at random from the population. In fact, multiple studies have shown that most drugs do NOT work for most people. Not even (elective) surgeries. The NNT/ARR are almost never used in marketing materials for a drug, it is always the RRR and most doctors do not even remember/know the difference between these metrics so they keep parroting "take this drug, it will lower your risk of getting X by Y percent", where Y is usually 50%+ and always refers to the RRR. So, aside from a profitable political/PR theater it is safe to say Big Pharma and most of the medical profession (sans ER and infectious medicine) are nothing but a giant scam/fraud fleecing the taxpayers...and probably making most of them sicker. Even staunch defenders of mainstream medicine now openly admit that most of medicine does not work...but whine about how "...one day when we decode every gene and can personalize the treatments we will get better results." Yeah, right
.
"...Some people are reluctant to take statins because they don’t benefit the majority of patients who take them. Actually, most drugs don’t benefit most of the patients who take them. Since we have no way of identifying those who will benefit, we are stuck treating the many to benefit the few."

@tankasnowgod @yerrag @Giraffe @Rick K
 

Rick K

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The detrimental and as of now not fully understood effects of the vaccines are a big concern and not a trivial matter. So I agree with you. But that discussion is a subject on its own. That is the risk side of the vaccine discussion. Here, we are discussing the benefit side of the vaccines.
Which are?
 

Rick K

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The detrimental and as of now not fully understood effects of the vaccines are a big concern and not a trivial matter. So I agree with you. But that discussion is a subject on its own. That is the risk side of the vaccine discussion. Here, we are discussing the benefit side of the vaccines.
I thought the discussion was ARR/RRR. As there is no risk reduction ;meaning this will not prevent infection as stated by the manufacturers, then these values are moot. I'm not referring to risk of catastrophe down the road but the risk of infection after having said injection. The risk is not reduced.
 

Rick K

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...and now the massive PR fraud of Big Pharma is on full display. Forget about COVID-19 - the NNT/NNV for most drugs/vaccines/interventions is over 1,000 for a person selected at random from the population. In fact, multiple studies have shown that most drugs do NOT work for most people. Not even (elective) surgeries. The NNT/ARR are almost never used in marketing materials for a drug, it is always the RRR and most doctors do not even remember/know the difference between these metrics so they keep parroting "take this drug, it will lower your risk of getting X by Y percent", where Y is usually 50%+ and always refers to the RRR. So, aside from a profitable political/PR theater it is safe to say Big Pharma and most of the medical profession (sans ER and infectious medicine) are nothing but a giant scam/fraud fleecing the taxpayers...and probably making most of them sicker. Even staunch defenders of mainstream medicine now openly admit that most of medicine does not work...but whine about how "...one day when we decode every gene and can personalize the treatments we will get better results." Yeah, right
.
"...Some people are reluctant to take statins because they don’t benefit the majority of patients who take them. Actually, most drugs don’t benefit most of the patients who take them. Since we have no way of identifying those who will benefit, we are stuck treating the many to benefit the few."

@tankasnowgod @yerrag @Giraffe @Rick K
This highlights the power of the placebo effect; the power of belief in something; both from the prescriber and from the duped who submit to it.
 

Perry Staltic

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So, aside from a profitable political/PR theater it is safe to say Big Pharma and most of the medical profession (sans ER and infectious medicine) are nothing but a giant scam/fraud fleecing the taxpayers...and probably making most of them sicker.

Help me get a handle on what you mean by the bolded above.
 

Giraffe

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...and now the massive PR fraud of Big Pharma is on full display. Forget about COVID-19 - the NNT/NNV for most drugs/vaccines/interventions is over 1,000 for a person selected at random from the population. In fact, multiple studies have shown that most drugs do NOT work for most people. Not even (elective) surgeries. The NNT/ARR are almost never used in marketing materials for a drug, it is always the RRR and most doctors do not even remember/know the difference between these metrics so they keep parroting "take this drug, it will lower your risk of getting X by Y percent", where Y is usually 50%+ and always refers to the RRR. So, aside from a profitable political/PR theater it is safe to say Big Pharma and most of the medical profession (sans ER and infectious medicine) are nothing but a giant scam/fraud fleecing the taxpayers...and probably making most of them sicker. Even staunch defenders of mainstream medicine now openly admit that most of medicine does not work...but whine about how "...one day when we decode every gene and can personalize the treatments we will get better results." Yeah, right
.
"...Some people are reluctant to take statins because they don’t benefit the majority of patients who take them. Actually, most drugs don’t benefit most of the patients who take them. Since we have no way of identifying those who will benefit, we are stuck treating the many to benefit the few."

@tankasnowgod @yerrag @Giraffe @Rick K
There is a German MD who has worked as radiologist in hospital for years. He says that the body heals itself. In his opinion it's not even a question of placebo (as in the patients believe that the treatment is working), it's just takes a little time to heal, that's all.

And I don't remember where I first heard that story. There was a surgeon who just did kind of sham operations. The patients had a little scar, but nothing has been done to treat their spine problem. The health insurance was not very amused when they found out about the fraud.
 

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