We shared a news article yesterday written by reporter Faith Miller, wherein she quotes Colorado Governor Jared Polis claiming that “defeating the virus will require people to take personal responsibility.”
A few minutes after posting that story, I started to see news reports coming in to my email, talking about New-York-based pharmaceutical company, Pfizer.
From the Washington Post:
A front-runner coronavirus vaccine developed by drug giant Pfizer and German biotechnology firm BioNTech was more than 90 percent effective at protecting people compared with a placebo saline shot, according to an interim analysis by an independent data monitoring committee that met Sunday…
From The New York Times:
The news — the first results from any late-stage vaccine trial — buoyed stock markets and spirits as the public saw a glimmer of hope. But it’s worth noting that the news is still preliminary, and there is much that is still not known about how well the vaccine works.
And one thing remained clear: The vaccine will not come in time to rescue the world from the next several months, when the virus will take many more lives unless the public takes more stringent public health measures…
From Fox News:
But what good will a vaccine be if Americans are hesitant to receive it? A survey of 100,000 people conducted by the Pew Research Center from September, for instance, found that only about half (51%) of those questioned would receive the COVID-19 vaccine if one were available today, a 21 percentage point drop from May when a similar survey was conducted…
Several of the news stories I reviewed — all apparently based on Pfizer’s November 9 press release — included a statement similar to this one shared by the Washington Post… which I found a bit curious:
In Pfizer’s 44,000-person trial, there have so far been 94 cases of covid-19, the disease caused by the virus, in people who were not previously infected. Fewer than nine of those cases were among people who received two shots of the vaccine, a strong indication of efficacy. (From the Washington Post.)
The Pfizer press release actually mentions an exact number of people enrolled in the trial. “43,538 participants, with 42% having diverse backgrounds, and no serious safety concerns have been observed…”
Maybe it’s just me, but I find it odd to see an exact number of participants — 43,538 — and a rather vague number of COVID cases — “fewer than nine.” Pfizer’s press release does not state include the “fewer than nine…” statement, nor does it give a number of COVID cases that occurred among vaccinated individuals following the second dose of vaccine. That “fewer than nine” calculation was apparently made by Washington Post reporter Carolyn Johnson.
The Pfizer study defined a “case” as someone with a positive test result and at least one symptom, which appears to leave out the 20%-80% of people who are asymptomatic. (There’s still considerable disagreement, it seems, about the percentage of COVID cases that are asymptomatic.)
This was Pfizer’s first shot at estimating the vaccine’s effectiveness, but the final determination will require at least 164 COVID cases among the 43,538 volunteer participants. Because the vaccine requires the body to build up its own immunity, the cases were reckoned to be ‘immune” 28 days after the first of two injections. (The second injection was administered 21 days after the first injection.)
Pfizer also reports that they will be monitoring the folks who received the actual vaccine, for two years, to see if they develop medical issues (“Adverse Events” and “Serious Adverse Events”) resulting from the vaccine. That would indicate that we won’t know the full results of the Pfizer tests until late 2022.
But even if the vaccine does indeed confer at least short term immunity, how long does the immunity last? A month? A year? Five years?
David Benkeser, a biostatistician at Emory University Rollins School of Public Health, said in an email to the Washington Post that he was still digesting the news. “It looks to be an incredibly promising result,” Benkeser wrote, noting that the two biggest questions are how long the effect lasts, and how well the vaccine works to prevent severe cases of COVID-19. “Both will still require more data to get a definitive answer…”
And of course, the biggest question, in a country like the US where so many people distrust the government and the pharmaceutical companies, might be, “Who’s actually willing to be vaccinated?”
Final FDA approval of any US vaccine is still weeks away… perhaps months away.
Meanwhile, the Russian government approved its Sputnik V vaccine in August for broad public use, apparently after being tested on just 80 people. From a November 9 story by reporters Polina Nikolskaya and Polina Ivanova on Yahoo.com:
Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine against COVID-19 is more than 90% effective, a representative of the health ministry said on Monday, citing data collated from vaccinations of the public rather than from an ongoing trial.
The comments followed a statement earlier on Monday by vaccine developers Pfizer Inc and BioNTech , who also claimed their experimental COVID-19 vaccine was more than 90% effective.
“We are responsible for monitoring the effectiveness of the Sputnik V vaccine among citizens who have received it as part of the mass vaccination programme,” Oksana Drapkina, director of a research institute under the health ministry, said in a statement. “Based on our observations, its effectiveness is also more than 90%. The appearance of another effective vaccine — this is good news for everyone,” Drapkina said.
“I agree that such a vaccine should belong to all mankind. We are ready to cooperate with all countries…” said President Putin.
According to the internet, the word “Sputnik” means “fellow traveler”.
Bill Hudson began sharing his opinions in the Pagosa Daily Post in 2004 and can’t seem to break the habit. He claims that, in Pagosa Springs, opinions are like pickup trucks: everybody has one.