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Pfizer Study

Safety and Efficacy of the BNT162b2 mRNA Covid-19 Vaccine has come out in the New England Journal of Medicine. I was wrong again. I thought the 95% was a consequence of confusion between oncology and epidemiology. The study was conducted by Pfizer. I had thought it was fortuitous that an mRNA vaccine that avoids the issue of white blood cell response was easier to develop. The study:  “ RESULTS A total of 43,548 participants underwent randomization, of whom 43,448 received injections: 21,720 with BNT162b2 and 21,728 with placebo. There were 8 cases of Covid-19 with onset at least 7 days after the second dose among participants assigned to receive BNT162b2 and 162 cases among those assigned to placebo; BNT162b2 was 95% effective in preventing Covid-19 (95% credible interval, 90.3 to 97.6). Similar vaccine efficacy (generally 90 to 100%) was observed across subgroups defined by age, sex, race, ethnicity, baseline body-mass index, and the presence of coexisting conditions. Among...