In 2021 I was joyous that Pharma had vaccines that were on the order ot 95% effective. Now we know what that means. [1]
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How Pfizer duped billions via statistical manipulation:
Pfizer reported that its vaccine shows a 95% efficacy. That sounds like it protects you 95% of the time, right? But that’s not actually what that number means. That 95% refers to the relative risk reduction, but it doesn’t tell you how much your overall risk is reduced by vaccination.For that, we need absolute risk reduction. In the Pfizer trial, 8 out of 18,198 people who were given the vaccine developed COVID-19. In the unvaccinated placebo group, 162 people got it, which means that even without the vaccine, the risk of contracting COVID-19 was extremely low at 0.88%, which the vaccine then reduced to 0.04%.
So the net benefit or the absolute risk reduction that you’re being offered with a Pfizer vaccine is 0.84%. That 95% number, that refers to the relative difference between 0.88 and 0.04%. That’s what they call 95% relative risk reduction.And relative risk reduction is well known to be a misleading number, which is why the FDA recommends using absolute risk reduction instead, which begs the question, how many people would have chosen to take the COVID-19 vaccines had they understood that they offered less than 1% benefit?
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