I think at this point all the 'efficacy' numbers given by drug companies for the various vaccines on the market are: relative risk reduction of hospitalization or death.
Not uninteresting per se, but would be even more interesting if paired with the absolute risk number [1].
* positive PCR tests
* showing symptoms
* hospitalization
* death
I share kube-system's frustration with the media glossing over those details quite often.
Here in Germany, there were numbers thrown around such as the mRNA vaccines being 90%+ effective, and the AstraZeneca being only in 60ies or 70ies (which was likely based on PCR tests). Which made many Germans hesitant to get that vaccine.
Turns out, AstraZeneca prevents hospitalization at a roughly 90% effectiveness rate (recent numbers from England, don#t have link ready right now), which sound much better than 65% number.
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2021/05/real-wor...
[1] Quoting the article's explanation of AAR vs RRR: "The vaccine and placebo groups in Figure 1 each have 100 randomly assigned individuals with no history of infection, and an event is defined as the incidence of infection among all individuals during the course of the trial. The percentage of events in the vaccine group is the experimental event rate (EER) or the risk of infection in the vaccine group (1/100 = 1%), and the percentage of events in the placebo group is the control event rate (CER) or the risk of infection in the placebo group (2/100 = 2%). Absolute risk reduction (ARR) is the disease risk difference between the placebo and vaccine groups, i.e., the CER minus the EER (2% − 1% = 1%). The ARR is also known as the vaccine disease preventable incidence (VDPI). Relative risk reduction (RRR) or vaccine efficacy (VE) is the reduced risk from vaccination, the ARR or VDPI, relative to or divided by the risk in unvaccinated individuals, the CER (1%/2% = 50%)".
Sure, ARR is more interesting for risk/cost benefits analysis. So much so that it is part of the official FDA guidelines expressed in this document ("Communicating risks and benefits: An evidence based user guide" [1]).
"Another statistical choice is between reporting relative or absolute risks. Because there is no way to infer the latter from the former, absolute risks are always more informative. Doubling a risk means very different things if that entails going from 10% to 20% or from 0.001% to 0.002%.Even when they contain the same information, different summaries can highlight different perspectives, hence bias choices."
Besides, if you compare the ranks of the main vaccines in each stat, you can see that it is not the same information expressed differently:
ARR: AZ 1.3%, Moderna 1.2%, J&J 1.2%, 0.84% Pfizer RRR: 95% Pfizer, 94% Moderna, 67% J&J, 67% AZ
That could still mean several different things.
I'm not questioning whether or not any of them are effective enough to be useful. I got the first one I could. I'm questioning whether or not the comparisons that others are making are meaningful.
For instance, when the J&J clot "issue" hit the news cycle, vaccinations across the board went down, even for vaccines other than J&J. These people aren't looking at any kind of details or data and getting confused by them, they're just making a decision based on word-of-mouth sentiment from their social/media circles. They would have never been confused by details in the article, because they never read it.
The data should be publicly available, but that doesn’t mean it belongs in an article for general consumption.
If a more specialized publication wants to offer a more explanatory story, fine.
But I don’t think that’s what people are looking for from a regular newspapers.
Knowing a vaccine is considered by experts to be effective is sufficient. The exact rates of reinfection aren’t important and can be confusing.
Sufficient to whom? Experts often disagree and if they disagree, I want to know where and why and what the data is. Just because I am not expert on the topic does not mean I can't make judgements on incomplete information.
You are seriously underestimating people that may want to read mainstream sources, as if they need to be told what to think.
True, MSM unfortunately regularly does that instead of impartial reporting, but how could anyone be a proponent that all MSM articles being like this is desirable for informed society. The increased focus on narrative pushing from MSM is the source of distrust in MSM and the reason why people turn to alternative sources.
That’s not always a good thing. Simply because something is factually true and increases audience engagement doesn’t mean it’s relevant or responsible to include.
For example, COVID had a fatality rate of 2%. That’s a fact. It also will increase engagement amount certain media markets.
But that’s also very misleading. 2% of the world is 140 million people.
The fact that it’s piece of “true data” that increases audience engagement doesn’t mean it belongs in mainstream articles.
Most editors want to maintain high standards, and that means excluding irrelevant data.
This position is absolutist and a mark of a totalitarian thinking and a large portion of population does not share it.
For most people, individual people freedoms matter too and in democracy, these freedoms are stronger than the institutional desideratum to vaccinate as many people as technically possible. What is best for the whole country isn't always best for the individual living there.
https://www.history.com/.amp/news/smallpox-george-washington...
Comparisons between different vaccines aren't at all meaningful without this context, and I hope the authors realize this, despite not mentioning it.