Will you take an approved COVID-19 vaccine?

2021.08.06.21261707v1.full.pdf

Wow, Moderna, much vaccine

floorpie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117761008#Comment_117761008

1) It's commonly understood that you never "accept" the null hypothesis and rather just fail to reject it with the evidence available. With sufficient power you can informally say that such and such "does not" reduce/prevent/improve xyz, but it is still understood that there's a vanishingly small chance that more evidence would allow you to reject the null hypothesis. Such an incorrect finding in a seatbelt study would only occur in the case of a test with low power, and as such, you would remain open to the possibility that seatbelts are effective. In this case, the protocol lists the power of the tests performed.

2) As you know, PhD theses aren't published in a peer reviewed venue, so, that your thesis abstract highlighted negative findings is both anecdotal and irrelevant. The non-reporting of negative findings is a common phenomenon in science that I'm surprised you aren't familiar with (e.g. see Negative results are disappearing from most disciplines and countries | SpringerLink).

3) "however, the number of asymptomatic cases after the first injection was higher, with a vaccine efficacy of 59.5% (95% CI, 28.4 to 77.3)."

Right. Now please go to the protocol and check what results would allow them to reject the null hypothesis, and then re-read that paragraph, and then come back and tell us that they failed to show the vaccine prevents infection.

floorpie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117760990#Comment_117760990

I'm choosing to read the trial data issued by the manufacturers, rather than your garbage Twitter posts that you yourself did not inspect.

Do the COVID vaccines work?

I keep saying the same thing, according to the trials:

1) There is strong evidence to say that vaccines prevent symptoms in a person who is infected by sars-cov-2

2) There is insufficient evidence to say that they prevent infection of sars-cov-2

3) The methodologies for Pfizer and Moderna trial do not assess acute infection adequately, AstraZeneca's does.

4) There is insufficient evidence to say that they prevent death in symptomatic vaccinated people

astrofool

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117761382#Comment_117761382

So you are saying:

"The COVID vaccines don't prevent infection and don't prevent death in symptomatic vaccinated people."

Is that a statement that you are standing by?

My garbage twitter post contained links to 10 peer reviewed studies that you ran away and hid from because it doesn't support your outright lies.

You are a charlatan. Prove me wrong.

floorpie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117761409#Comment_117761409

Nobody can ever prove you wrong. If you worked in science this demeanour would quickly be taught out of you.

astrofool

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117761423#Comment_117761423

More running away I see.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117761346#Comment_117761346

1) See 3)

2) My thesis was peer reviewed in my viva. It also lead to me writing many peer-reviewed papers which all also had similar tones in the abstract and conclusion. And all of the papers that I read during my PhD about previous theories attempting to explain the phenomenon also had no issues highlighting their failures.

3) Where in the protocol does it say that the null hypothesis for the secondary objective is the same as the primary objective?

floorpie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117761504#Comment_117761504

2) A viva is not a peer review under the common understanding. That's a review by an examination panel. Peer reviews for publication are typically double blinded, or are at least anonymous. Your papers, if published, are peer reviewed. Your anecdotal experience in this regard is still irrelevant. For example, I also have many publications with negative findings but I also recognise that negative findings are far more difficult to publish, and as such are becoming less common as researchers strategise to avoid negative findings, or avoid discussion of negative findings

3) It doesn't say this, and I also never said it

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117761527#Comment_117761527

2) Researchers do not strategize to avoid negative findings, that is a conspiracy. If anything, researchers try to publish as many papers as possible, regardless of the quality of the paper, and the easiest way to do that is to rule out wrong theories rather than coming up with the correct theory.

3) So why are you referencing the null hypothesis when we are discussing a secondary objective of the paper?

floorpie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117761547#Comment_117761547

Researchers do not strategize to avoid negative findings, that is a conspiracy.

You guys sound insane throwing this word "conspiracy" around. Researchers of course prefer to not have negative findings as it dramatically reduces the chances of publication, and tend to conduct research in a way that reduces the likelihood of negative findings. Their careers essentially depend on this.

easiest way to do that is to rule out wrong theories rather than coming up with the correct theory.

I wish this was the easiest way. It'd be best scenario for scientific progression.

3) It uses the exact same hypotheses, to my reading of the protocol. If I'm wrong let me know how they determine the outcomes for secondary endpoints. It isn't just by eyeballing figures...

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117761615#Comment_117761615

Researchers of course prefer to not have negative findings as it dramatically reduces the chances of publication

It most certainly does not. Any academic journal that bases what papers to publish on whether the findings are positive or negative should not be considered an accredited journal.

If the reason why you had false findings was because your theory was dumb on the other hand, then it would and should affect your chances of publication in the future. However, if your theory was logical but turned out to be wrong, it would not and should not affect your chances of publication in the future.

It uses the exact same hypotheses

Didn't you just say the exact opposite thing in your last post?

It doesn't say this

Are you disagreeing with yourself within 2 posts?

Dav010

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117761615#Comment_117761615

This post alone casts doubt on the meaningfulness of anything you have posted before.

floorpie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117761652#Comment_117761652

Didn't you just say the exact opposite thing in your last post?

Apologies, I misread/misspoke. The primary and secondary endpoints are different (this is how I understood your question) but I believe the rejection region for the stat to reject the null hypotheses for both are the same. The protocol isn't clear on it, maybe you have a better read of it. How do they determine the outcome for secondary endpoints?

It most certainly does not. Any academic journal that bases what papers to publish on whether the findings are positive or negative should not be considered an accredited journal.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117761667#Comment_117761667

Both of you please look through this paper, and citing literature: Negative results are disappearing from most disciplines and countries | SpringerLink

It is EXTREMELY common to publish only positive findings. Have you never heard of the reproducibility/replication crisis?

This is off topic now and I wont talk about it further, but this is an indisputable and unfortunate facet of science now.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117761693#Comment_117761693

My reading is that they have not bothered to state a null hypothesis for what we are discussing due to the limited sample size . If that is not the case, I would again expect them to highlight what you believe is true and for it to have become news in the medical community. Alas, I cannot find any articles etc. discussing what would be a big deal if true.

Both of you please look through this paper, and citing literature: Negative results are disappearing from most disciplines and countries | SpringerLink

I have read the abstract and they concluded that the frequency of positive results increased significantly between 1990 and 2007. This also happened to be time of the technological boom, when it was much more likely that a conclusion could be "yes the hypothesis is right" than "we're still not sure, more tests are needed". If they did not suggest this is a possible explanation in their conclusion, then I would question the validity of the authors.

Have you never heard of the reproducibility crisis?

Yes, and it does not naturally lead to what you are suggesting.

schmoo2k

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117760610#Comment_117760610

Folks are "coerced" all the time by peer pressure, but ultimately, we are responsible for our own decisions - I know I have made poor decisions in the past in such scenarios, but to not take responsibility for those actions would be beyond snowflake mentality.

I would like to see those studies WRT to hygiene and mask wearing not being any help at all in reducing the spread of Covid (or any other virus for that matter). If your argument is that it that it doesn't prevent it 100% then you are correct (but that is not an argument for not wearing a mask).

You seemed to have missed my point WRT to Flu and Surgeons - Surgeons wear masks, clean hands and wear sterile gloves to help prevent infecting the patient while operating on them (including, but not limited to viruses). The point of mentioning the Flu is to give another examples of how these measures have prevented viral transmissions.

Your hypothesis that supressing viral spread, will in fact make it worse in the future is very flawed. Viral mutation is directly proportion to the viral population - the less there is the less mutations happen and less chance that a viable mutation will happen.

Again if your argument is that its doesn't prevent spread then I am in complete agreement with you.

astrofool

So floorpie's essentially saying "here's some things the initial trials didn't say, thus the vaccines don't cover A, B or C, and also please ignore all subsequent studies both in trials and based on real world data because it contradicts my bad way of reading trial results".

In addition to saying that peer reviewed studies are also invalidated if the link to that study is provided by twitter.

And ultimately, the goal here is to spread FUD about the vaccines not working.

Have I missed anything?

floorpie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117761802#Comment_117761802

My reading is that they have not bothered to state a null hypothesis for what we are discussing due to the limited sample size . If that is not the case, I would again expect them to highlight what you believe is true and for it to have become news in the medical community.

Yes one would expect it them to highlight it properly. They instead (in a typical manner for some sciences) highlight it by obfuscation and omission. This is all a secondary issue to the main one, which is that they fundamentally never assess the vaccine's ability to prevent acute infection. Unlike the AZ trial that performs weekly PCRs, Moderna and Pfizer only perform PCR for people who report symptoms.

Alas, I cannot find any articles etc. discussing what would be a big deal if true.

Remember this as you see more and more articles coming out about climbing rates of symptomatic infection for vaccinated people. The failing I'm talking about is already a big deal, I believe.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117761918#Comment_117761918

Ongoing trials, by each manufacturer of each vaccine.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117762156#Comment_117762156

They have not highlighted it as there is nothing to highlight. You are free to go on to e.g. a medical or statistics forum and ask for a secondary opinion to my own and let us know if they agree with me that the conclusion you have drawn is incorrect.

floorpie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117762190#Comment_117762190

You think that lower bounds on efficacy to prevent infection after 2 doses of 16%, and -24% is nothing to highlight? In case anybody wonders, the negative % is due to the fact that more people in the vaccinated group were infected by sars-cov-2 after 2 doses, versus those in the placebo group, out of 3700 participants (albeit approx the same proportion).

Again, from ongoing trial here: Evaluation of mRNA-1273 SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine in Adolescents | NEJM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117762277#Comment_117762277

You think that lower bounds on efficacy to prevent infection of 16%, 50%, -24%, 28% (in the order listed on the table), is nothing to highlight?

No, because lower bounds don't mean anything out of context. For the same reason that upper bounds of 100% would not mean anything out of context.

If you're asking me if I find anything surprising about Figure 3 in general, then no I don't, especially as this paper is just looking at adolescents.

floorpie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117762379#Comment_117762379

I mean this is the result of the experiment and the analysis that was set out and approved ahead of time, not sure why you think these particular statistics can be waved away and the rest should be accepted. But ok let's say I grant you that a small number of people were infected by sars-cov-2 in the trial (3700 participants, 232 infections, approx 6% incident rate).

1 person died in the Moderna adult trial due to COVID-19 out of 30k participants (0.003% of participants). Do you agree that the Moderna trial can not determine that vaccination prevents death of symptomatic people?

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117762420#Comment_117762420

Which trial are you referring to?

I am not saying that they can be waved away, I am saying that looking at lower bounds only does not show the bigger picture.

astrofool

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117762156#Comment_117762156

OK, so you're now saying "Ignore all real world data being gathered", while trying to spread lies.

What is your objective or point that you're trying to make?

"The vaccines significantly reduce transmission, significantly reduce the death rate for those who contracted SARS-COV2 and significantly reduce symptoms if infected with SARS-COV2."

Do you agree with that statement?

floorpie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117762511#Comment_117762511

Primary Moderna trial, here: Efficacy and Safety of the mRNA-1273 SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine | NEJM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117762536#Comment_117762536

Just to save me some time reading it, what did this paper conclude is the answer to your question?

floorpie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117762516#Comment_117762516

1) It is currently unknown that they reduce transmission

2) The trials did not determine that they prevent death and ongoing data is mixed in this regard. E.g. UK's latest data (here: SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern and variants under investigation (publishing.service.gov.uk)) shows a higher case fatality rate for over 50s that are unvaccinated, but shows double the rate of fatalities for fully vaccinated under 50s, compared to <50s unvaccinated.

3) The last part of your statement is true, symptomatic infection is lower for vaccinated people. Symptoms are very broadly defined, e.g. a headache and fatigue is considered symptomatic infection.

floorpie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117762568#Comment_117762568

It was really just a hypothetical question to highlight that you're picking and choosing which stats to ignore, you don't need to look through it! You can ctrl+F "death" if you're interested in whether they can determine vaccination prevents deaths in symptomatic infections, as everybody says it does

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117762582#Comment_117762582

What stats have I ignored? I have just told you that you should not just look at the lower bounds alone to come to any conclusion.

astrofool

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117762572#Comment_117762572

Vaccines are proven to reduce transmission by up to 94%, I have linked you to 10 peer reviewed studies that show this.

The vaccines showed ~94% efficacy (mRNA) in the trials vs. the control group, this included almost complete prevention of death and severe symptoms in the vaccinated group, this is unequivocal and cannot be argued with.

floorpie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117762655#Comment_117762655

I believe you're talking about studies whose data comes from self-reported symptomatic patients, i.e. people who elect to get PCR tested. This doesn't indicate a reduction in transmission of the virus.