Thank you Eric. On Wed, 15 Sep 2021, 9:00 am David Eric Smith, <desm...@santafe.edu> wrote:
> Pieter, > > On its own, I don’t think the statement means anything. You have to know > what the cohort was and what the null model was. I think that in all these > trials, to be seeking approval for multiple age groups, they must have > tested in multiple age groups as well. Sometimes old people die, no matter > what you are doing. (Sometimes people who are not old die too, but to have > significant numbers of people who just happen to die in a trial is not in > itself surprising if the trial has an old or fragile cohort.) Numbers like > 14 and 15 are very small in any clinical trial, which should have been run > with some thousands to tens of thousands of participants. Even if the > numbers of vaccine and placebo in the whole sample were quite different, > those numbers are so small that they might be in the sampling noise for any > conclusion. > > Apologies that I don’t have time to read the report, and thank you for > circulating. This is the sort of question for which it would be good to > have one of these public-health professors who write community-information > articles, to go back and round up all the other data that are needed to > determine what the null model is, whether there is any excess in either > number you post, and then what the sample noise is for this statistic. In > principle, any of us could do it. But people who do this for a living know > rapidly where to find the relevant statistics, what data sources are > properly curated, how to weight background statistics to match the tested > cohort, what other systematic sample biases to look for, etc., which is > important in interpreting any of these statistics as evidence for a > causation question. > > I will hope that nothing I have said above is wildly wrong, but of course > we should look for a better source than me, > > Eric > > > On Sep 15, 2021, at 3:24 PM, Pieter Steenekamp <piet...@randcontrols.co.za> > wrote: > > In the Phizer report "Six Month Safety and Efficacy of the BNT162b2 mRNA > COVID-19 Vaccine" ( > https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.28.21261159v1.full.pdf > <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwww.medrxiv.org%2fcontent%2f10.1101%2f2021.07.28.21261159v1.full.pdf&c=E,1,l1mASX-DLApZIhUOYFgy-r7F74HlDesTNgutDt0LykvRihqhyjrzAGpEqJwx8jOzFnbbUQdx3BQTfd8osCdHSXyPMjhkpPHcBs-mpPzlecdaEIt50MlLoyIK8g,,&typo=1>) > , I picked up the following: > > "During the blinded, controlled period, 15 BNT162b2 and 14 placebo > recipients died" > > Does this mean the Phizer vaccine did not result in fewer total deaths in > the vaccinated group compared to the placebo unvaccinated group? > > I sort of can't believe this, I obviously miss something. > > But of course, there are clear benefits in that the reported vaccine > efficacy was 91.3% > - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam > un/subscribe > https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=http%3a%2f%2fredfish.com%2fmailman%2flistinfo%2ffriam_redfish.com&c=E,1,qQ04t1PHqQRf_fqBmHRi_i-kfHlaWEsv2Yj00qkraJ0IgNm6KCq9ULhRTeivYn0mJkQj79E4m3_xuRgshJg2rVL9Qz70NCuGD2Urbejfq3OLmkREP4VP1w,,&typo=1 > FRIAM-COMIC > https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=http%3a%2f%2ffriam-comic.blogspot.com%2f&c=E,1,F173hux88fHVUEQ2YfndUC0DQHdTqOgrbQn28kuC-wTCeCrekHPRcaCfITyfd5YWuzIYFiWicr3ecQYBT-yaQdfJskTKZOTbRgqjAFzVJq5OYw,,&typo=1 > archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ > > > - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam > un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ > archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ >
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