They had a placebo arm and a vaccine arm. Look at figure 2 on page 30. You can see that new COVID cases in the vaccine group virtually stop on day 12 while the placebo arm continues to grow.
You are obliged to conduct a natural experiment. We do this thing (vaccination) we expect will work, on some fraction of a test population, and then we wait. Some other tricks could work, in theory but they're often unethical and unlike this experiment they aren't a direct model of the real world. "Does it actually work?" is an incontrovertible test.
But it should take years to do this, because obviously hardly anybody is going to get some horrible deadly infectious disease right?
Unless, as happened in most of the world, you have exponential pandemic case growth as measures to prevent spread are half-arsed or just not implemented at all.
Then it turns out - good news - that's a great environment for proving your vaccine works quickly. Shame about all the dead people though.
I recommend https://www.deepl.com/translator for english translation, as I don't have the time right now unfortunately.
I don't have any background in this, so if anybody can chime in with more knowledge than me it would be appreciated.
But to me the point she is making sounds reasonable.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/in-the-bubble-with-and...
(1) A video about how the immune system works: https://youtu.be/fSEFXl2XQpc
(2) An infographic from FDA explaining the EUA process: https://www.fda.gov/media/143890/download
(3) Reports from the Advisory Committee on Immunization describing evidence of effectiveness for the various vaccines. For example, Moderna’s: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm695152e1.htm
(Important caveats: I have family and friends who work in healthcare and drug discovery, so I’ve got a tiny bit of layperson background on this, but this is far from my field and I’m far from an expert)
Again, totally not an expert at all, but from what I’ve gleaned this whole novel mRNA thing is key to understanding why this was so fast and why other vaccines in the future could come really fast as well.
So yeah, basically, COVID came along and suddenly there was money and impetus to push the thing over the finish line, and so here we are. That's my lay-person's understanding anyway.
https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/reverse-engineering-source...
And before I get lynched: I am all for the vaccine since that has been tested to work and I still wear a silly mask even as it does nothing since I'm tired of people complaining.
No idea where you are buying your masks though.
Even my local national health institute says that masks only protect against droplets from coughing, sneezing, or talking when in close proximity. Which I can grant you, but normal people shouldn't be coughing or sneezing into other peoples faces anyway. Which only leaves talking, but I don't see why grocery store is a place to socialize anyway.
IMO masks are only a thing because helpless people had the need to "do something" and masks are visible way of showing you are doing your part. Plus it didn't help that right wing nut jobs started a war against masks.
(I know how this sounds, but it's not like that. It's more like, it's a modern miracle that we have any vaccine at all within a year of an outbreak, and I am extremely keen to understand how this is possible rather than just accepting it as a thing that exists now, like airplanes.)
EDIT: No complaints, but it's fascinating how polarizing this topic is. One wouldn't expect a straightforward request for information to generate such feelings. Thank you to everyone who provided resources!