This is an illustration of why lay people applying "common sense" to data sets and statistics can be a problem.
The efficacy stats are based on small numbers, but with sound stats behind them. For example, from https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/03/03/science/vacci...:
> What’s more, all the vaccines look as if they have a high efficacy against more serious outcomes like hospitalization and death. For example, no one who got Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine had to go to the hospital for a Covid-19 infection 28 days or more after getting an injection. Sixteen people who got the placebo did. That translates to 100 percent efficacy, with a confidence interval of 74.3 percent to 100 percent.
Expanding from the trials (with tens of thousands of people) to billions of people will mean that number can't stay at 100% forever in real-world use. It's still a great number to see.
IMO the 100% effective xxx was absolutely unnecessary. It becomes easy for anyone to tear down this report. AZ aren't helping themselves with such claims.
Also prefer they round off nothing. Report your data as-is. Majority of the people aren't stupid. They don't need your loose interpretations nor any nudges. Certainly not from the vax manufacturer.
And if am not wrong, they should be publishing the final report based on this research.
> There were no hospitalisations in the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 group after the initial 21 day exclusion period, and 15 in the control group.
You can disbelieve it, if you like, but you can hardly accuse them of not publishing it.
Am no super smart virologist but my brain immediately pinged when I started hearing the news from AZ quoting ... 100% effective against Xxxxx...
Only thing that came to me was the good ol' adverts from bug sprays and disinfectants claiming to be 99.9% effective against bugs/bacteria