Replying to your post, @Iggy, as I was searching to see if anyone had posted the link to the NY Times opinion piece from September on the Covid-19 vaccine. It looks like nobody did, which is surprising as it was a hugely important article and the impact it should have had has been lost due to lack of coverage or follow up.
Here’s a direct quote from the article:
If you were to approve a coronavirus vaccine, would you approve one that you only knew protected people only from the most mild form of Covid-19, or one that would prevent its serious complications?
The answer is obvious. You would want to protect against the worst cases.
But that’s not how the companies testing three of the leading coronavirus vaccine candidates, Moderna, Pfizer and AstraZeneca, whose U.S. trial is on hold, are approaching the problem.
According to the protocols for their studies, which they released late last week, a vaccine could meet the companies’ benchmark for success if it lowered the risk of mild Covid-19, but was never shown to reduce moderate or severe forms of the disease, or the risk of hospitalization, admissions to the intensive care unit or death.
To say a vaccine works should mean that most people no longer run the risk of getting seriously sick. That’s not what these trials will determine.
So, in a nutshell, the all-important trials for the vaccine that will save humanity is being designed to show effectiveness in preventing mild cases of Covid-19. To be clear, nobody should really be too worried about mild cases of Covid-19 because they will naturally “run their course” with minimal impact to the patient. There is no need to develop a vaccine to protect against mild cases of a coronavirus.
A quick show of hands…
- Yes
- No