Pfizer and BioNTech Conclude Phase 3 Study of Covid-19 Vaccine Candidate

Re:Pfizer and BioNTech Conclude Phase 3 Study of Covid-19 Va... by Izkata on Wednesday November 18, 2020 @01:19PM (#25140291)

With absolute numbers of 162 and 8, 94.9% would have an error range of somewhere around 10%, right? So the actual percent would be somewhere in the range of 85-97%?

(No actual math done here, I'm ballparking it based on looking at error ranges with sample size 100 at work; my main point is that I don't think the ~20k enrolled in each group affects this particular error range, so even though "94.9%" is stated precisely the actual data isn't nearly so precise)

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Re:Pfizer and BioNTech Conclude Phase 3 Study of Covid-19 Va... by asthma on Wednesday November 18, 2020 @02:13PM (#25141058)

Sure, but we also have to consider the r0. For both the placebo and the non-placebo patients, they were generally operating in an environment where essentially ~90% of others effectively had the placebo (no immunity). As the number of people with the vaccine goes up, the number of transmission vectors goes down, further decreasing the spread. So even on the low end of the error bar, the impact here would be huge.

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