Am I right to be sceptical about the extravagant claims for this new vaccine?

An earlier version of this article (that became the podcast) was published at https://chintan.indiafoundation.in/articles/the-god-vaccine-is-it-the-second-coming/

Excerpts:

The God Vaccine? Is it the second coming?

Let us temper expectations about the immediate end of Covid.

The announcement by US giant Pfizer and startup BioNTech about their candidate vaccine for Covid-19 has been greeted with understandable euphoria, as people are chafing under the ‘new normal’ of lockdowns and restrictions. Indeed, markets cheered: stock market indices hit new highs; airline stocks soared; Zoom’s (an online video conferencing system) took a hit.

This reminds me of the fuss in certain circles about the Higgs Boson, the so-called ‘God Particle’, which, when found, confirmed certain theories about fundamental particles. Now people are acting as though we have found the ‘God Vaccine’. 

But it is too soon to celebrate, as there are many concerns and considerations. 

Most intriguingly, there is no clarity about efficacy, though the phrase “90% effective” has been bandied about. Exactly what does this mean? 90% of those who were vaccinated remained immune when exposed to the virus? What about the ethics of the trial? How can you deliberately expose people to possible harm: what about the other 10% of the test subjects who actually caught the disease when exposed? Did they die? What if it had been 50%?

What was the composition of the alleged 43,000 test subjects in the, let us emphasize, incomplete and ongoing Phase 3 trial? How many were aged, how many had co-morbidities? What was the breakdown by gender, race, age, body mass index, blood sugar level, cholesterol, cardiac calcium score, blood pressure, etc, etc? In other words, how random a sample was it?

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