Public Health England issued data to support the move. As Politico notes Politico notes on the findings;
The Pfizer jab is 96 percent effective against hospitalization after two doses; AstraZeneca is 92 percent effective against hospitalization after two doses.
The same source also notes straightforwardly contradictory findings from Scotland:
The Delta variant carries about double the risk of hospitalization compared with the Alpha variant first identified in the U.K., according to research from Scotland released Monday
Only one of the findings of these two pieces of research is going to be close to the truth, so different are they. And we do not know as yet, although I have remarkably little confidence in the objectivity of Public Health England at present, so skewed has their data reporting been.
Well, no actually, from his own source:
Unlike the Scottish data, the PHE data was focused on preventing serious illness needing hospital admission. The Scottish analysis of vaccine efficacy was based on preventing all infections in the community, including mild cases.
There is no contradiction between those two studies nor pieces of information.
I have remarkably little confidence in the objectivity of Public Health England at present, so skewed has their data reporting been.
For once I agree with the potato. Stopped clocks I guess.
Will we know it’s working when the survival rate rises from 99.97% to 99.98%? Or are they aiming for immortality?
One can understand why Spud’s so concerned. He’s narrowly evaded dying of Covid twice. Twice! Considering he only narrowly evaded Auschwitz by being born in the wrong country, a member of the wrong religion 15 years too late. Close squeeze that one.
Going from “98 percent effective” to “96 percent effective” would “double the risk of hospitalisation”. Four percent is twice two percent.
This is why relative risk is often not particularly useful. If you go swimming in the ocean you MASSIVELY increase your risk of shark attack. You don’t just double it, you increase it by many orders of magnitude compared to if you’d stayed on dry land. But, like with our 4-percent-of-people-who-already-have-a-COVID-infection, the absolute risk is nowhere near as sensational.
How do you get to be a professor without basic primary school arithmetic?
+1 BiS
BiS, not too keen on the phrase “close squeeze” in a comment on the lardy potato.
Hardly deserved, Diogenes. Solely telling it like it is. If I’d referenced his suffering in the Great Irish Potato Famine, I’d only be making stuff up. Probably
“analysis of vaccine efficacy was based on preventing all infections in the community”
Obvs the vaccine doesn’t work on you unless you get infected. The whole point is that it has primed your immune system to fight off the infection. So what can the quoted excerpt mean? Does it refer to your reduced capacity to infect someone else because you’ve been vaccinated?
Or is it a simple case of a journalist write pish?
@ Dearieme
Logically it should mean the efficacy in preventing all infections including those of non-vaccinated people by non-vaccinated people.
Is it reasonable to assume that politico has simply not understood what it was saying [I did check: I had expected it would be the Grauniad]
Off-topic – today “The Spectator” has published a statement a new AstraZeneca treatment has no advantage over a placebo, linking to a report that it is 33% more effective!
@lgh
I often see this stat quoted that survival rates are 99.7 or 99.8 but cannot find anything to back it up. At ourworldindata, the global CFR has never dipped below 2%. Their cumulative cases is 176.27 million vs 3.8 million deaths ~ 2.1% CFR
gunker
Case Fatality Rate versus Infection Fatality Rate
Didn’t the Spud once say words to the effect that he knew relatives who had suffered in that legendary famine?
The longevity of the Murphy family is the talk of geneticists world wide. It may harbour the long sought immortality gene so far only seen in certain tapeworms.