There's been a lot of talk about COVID-19 vaccines, and whether they really save lives So I wrote about how we know that they definitely dohttps://gidmk.medium.com/covid-19-vaccines-save-lives-44fb3908ba82 …
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Replying to @GidMK
What about the relative and absolute risk with these vaccines. As usual only the relative risk has been marketed to people.
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Replying to @CJforeveryoung
It's an interesting question! In this case, absolute risk from short studies is actually somewhat misleading - as time tends to infinity, the risk of being infected (without vaccination) by COVID-19 tends towards 1, which means that absolute risk->relative risk
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Replying to @GidMK
Thanks I'll trot off and get my head around that

is it fair to say with such short study and a novel virus, there a lot of unknowns in general. An evolving situation?1 reply 0 retweets 1 like -
Replying to @CJforeveryoung
At this point, the studies aren't short! We've now got 10-12 months of data on side-effects from the large RCTs and safety information from 100s of millions of doses. While there are unknowns, they are fast shrinking
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Replying to @GidMK
But with no controls groups left and weak passive reporting systems, I'm not sure this can be relied up as robust science. Can we compare a normal/standard vaccine trial to it in all honesty? Sorry, I've always questioned everything. Drove my mother crazy!
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Replying to @CJforeveryoung
Not sure what you mean by no control groups - still plenty of people unvaccinated and trials are ongoing! And we definitely can compare, in most respects the Covid-19 vaccine trials were far better than your average trial
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Replying to @GidMK
From what I've read the Oxford vaccine has unblinded for ethical reasons. But the adverse events part of the trial is being undertaken with no controls? Reliant on an antiquated reporting system that pre 2021 was largely ignored by the medical profession. Surely not reliable?
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Replying to @CJforeveryoung
I'm not sure who told you that the reporting systems are antiquated or ignored but that is definitely untrue. Depends on where you live ofc, but in general they're extremely good at catching even very rare events that only happen once per 100k/million shots
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Replying to @GidMK
Can you prove that every doctor who is presented with a patient with issues after a vaccination reports it! From what I understand it's a lengthy process, often in a middle of a busy shift. I have two gp friends and neither knew about the yellow card system till last year.
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That's part of the beauty of the system - they're designed to detect event the potential hint of an effect, so even if only a fraction of events are reported they are usually picked up. Very sensitive to any potential harm
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