Are Experts Underselling the Effectiveness of Covid-19 Vaccines?

David Leonhardt won a Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 2011. This week in a New York Times newsletter, he argues that early in the pandemic experts around the world mistakenly discouraged mask use because of 'a concern that people would rush to buy high-grade medical masks, leaving too few for doctors and nurses. The experts were also [at the time] unsure how much ordinary masks would help.'

But are they now spreading a similarly misguided pessimism about vaccines?

Right now, public discussion of the vaccines is full of warnings about their limitations: They're not 100 percent effective. Even vaccinated people may be able to spread the virus. And people shouldn't change their behavior once they get their shots...

'It's going to save your life — that's where the emphasis has to be right now,' Dr. Peter Hotez of the Baylor College of Medicine said. The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines are 'essentially 100 percent effective against serious disease,' Dr. Paul Offit, the director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, said. 'It's ridiculously encouraging.'

Here's my best attempt at summarizing what we know:

- The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines — the only two approved in the U.S. — are among the best vaccines ever created, with effectiveness rates of about 95 percent after two doses. That's on par with the vaccines for chickenpox and measles. And a vaccine doesn't even need to be so effective to reduce cases sharply and crush a pandemic.
- If anything, the 95 percent number understates the effectiveness, because it counts anyone who came down with a mild case of Covid-19 as a failure. But turning Covid into a typical flu — as the vaccines evidently did for most of the remaining 5 percent — is actually a success. Of the 32,000 people who received the Moderna or Pfizer vaccine in a research trial, do you want to guess how many contracted a severe Covid case? One.

Although no rigorous study has yet analyzed whether vaccinated people can spread the virus, it would be surprising if they did.

The article suggests less-positive messages are being conveyed in part because 'As academic researchers, they are instinctively cautious, prone to emphasizing any uncertainty.'

But the article ultimately concludes that in fact, 'the evidence so far suggests that the vaccines are akin to a cure.'

Read more of this story at Slashdot.