The claims of efficacy for the covid19 vaccine are deceptive. Everywhere in the media, the narrative affirming experts and politicians reclaiming a 95% efficacy. But what does that even mean?
They didn't say what was effective at. Effective at preventing you from getting sick? Effective at preventing you from catching the virus? Effective at preventing you from transmitting the virus? Effective at preventing you from being hospitalized? Effective at preventing you from dying? None of this was specified.
Instead, the general interpretation by the public is that it's all of the above. It's 95% effective at preventing anything about Covid from happening to you. None of this makes sense, but they all just let people take up their own interpretation by simply repeating "95% effective".
It turns out that the 95% effective is only the percentage difference between those in trial who received the injection those who didn't in terms of having Covid 19 realted-symptoms. In the trial, people who got the injection had like under 1% infection rate, while those who didn't receive the injection had a little above 1% and the difference between the two can lead to a percentage of 95%. That's all it was.
This is known as a relative risk reduction. This is not how you are supposed to portray the efficacy of something. This has been known for decades, you're supposed to use absolute risk reduction in talking about preventing an outcome of something, such as Covid 19 in this case.
In the publication Outcome Reporting Bias in COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine Clinical Trials, Ronald B Brown explains how this relative risk reduction is poorly understood by health professionals and the public and how this outcome reporting bias worked the perception of how effective the injection actually is.
Abstract
Relative risk reduction and absolute risk reduction measures in the evaluation of clinical trial data are poorly understood by health professionals and the public. The absence of reported absolute risk reduction in COVID-19 vaccine clinical trials can lead to outcome reporting bias that affects the interpretation of vaccine efficacy. The present article uses clinical epidemiologic tools to critically appraise reports of efficacy in Pfzier/BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 mRNA vaccine clinical trials. Based on data reported by the manufacturer for Pfzier/BioNTech vaccine BNT162b2, this critical appraisal shows: relative risk reduction, 95.1%; 95% CI, 90.0% to 97.6%; p = 0.016; absolute risk reduction, 0.7%; 95% CI, 0.59% to 0.83%; p < 0.000. For the Moderna vaccine mRNA-1273, the appraisal shows: relative risk reduction, 94.1%; 95% CI, 89.1% to 96.8%; p = 0.004; absolute risk reduction, 1.1%; 95% CI, 0.97% to 1.32%; p < 0.000. Unreported absolute risk reduction measures of 0.7% and 1.1% for the Pfzier/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, respectively, are very much lower than the reported relative risk reduction measures. Reporting absolute risk reduction measures is essential to prevent outcome reporting bias in evaluation of COVID-19 vaccine efficacy.
I'd say this was not simply a misunderstanding, but an intention deception to sell a pretty useless and harmful product that made big pharma billions.
