There's so much consternation over vaccines losing efficacy or, worse, becoming useless against the variants. I'm not against worrying, and of course we should study this but keep in mind most of those results are lab studies that look at only a small part of the immune system.
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I've realized many have the incorrect mental model of the immune system: we conceive of it as a protective wall with a fixed height, and assume that vaccine efficacy represents that height. Wrong. I wrote a post explaining what trials do and don't measure. https://zeynep.substack.com/p/vaccine-efficacy-statistical-power …pic.twitter.com/zXKrWKUSLA
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Do I want high efficacy numbers? Of course. But efficacy in trials only pertains to symptomatic COVID. Vaccines also work on other parts of the immune system that kick in only after infection takes hold (disease) but can prevent progression to severe disease and hospitalizations.
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Why do trials measure symptomatic COVID and report that as efficacy? Faster, easier. Why do many studies measure parts of the immune system that prevent symptoms but not the rest? Same. That's why real life trial data > lab studies freaking everyone out. https://zeynep.substack.com/p/vaccine-efficacy-statistical-power …pic.twitter.com/WhTKkw6vsO
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I'm grateful to the scientists doing their job and worrying about, studying and developing boosters against variants. The rest of us should focus on vaccinating the world as fast as possible, and especially what more transmissible/severe variants mean for the *unvaccinated.*
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Let me add: as vaccination scales to millions there will be some "breakthrough" cases—even few severe ones, especially among the elderly. Even common colds can cause deadly outbreaks in nursing homes. But every piece of real life data so far looks great. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/03/fourth-surge-variant-vaccine/618463/ …pic.twitter.com/k6L9BH4ulC
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Folks asking: We already know the two mRNA vaccines also overwhelmingly cut down any infection, including silent asymptomatic ones, *and* studies indicate even breakthrough disease after vaccination has lower viral load (hence likely less infectious). https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/03/fourth-surge-variant-vaccine/618463/ …pic.twitter.com/EdWaVcmkxp
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Yeah. I constantly hear people invoke "immune evasion" (almost always a partial indication from studies that do not pertain to the whole immune system) as if it means vaccines becoming useless against variants. No! Anyway, let's vaccinate the world, ASAP.https://twitter.com/ricksterps/status/1379078510350860289 …
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Let's put this here, but keep in mind: tens of millions in the US remain unvaccinated and are *just as much at risk* if infected (if not more, as some variants may also be more deadly). Vaccines are amazing, but the work is to vaccinate everyone, globally.https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1379090275969216519 …
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Flabbergasted at how much speculative worrying there is out there against current/future variants making our vaccines completely “ineffective” (I’ll easily take a bet against that) when the real issue is we have AMAZING vaccines that DO work, but not enough of them for the world!
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Common misleading headline/frame. Denominator is 1,800,000. That's ~1 in 10,000 breakthrough cases. Two, such cases are milder. Three, rare deaths, among the elderly happen at that scale. *Common colds* cause deadly outbreaks in nursing homes. And, only two were fully-vaccinated.pic.twitter.com/sCaNxh32xH
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Michigan has worst surge in the US, with rising hospitalizations & deaths. African-Americans, especially in Detroit, remain dramatically undervaccinated. Officials are begging for more vaccines. Meanwhile,
@freep framing of ~1 in 10,000 breakthrough cases:https://twitter.com/freep/status/1379458652323639300 …Show this thread
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