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by spuz 2011 days ago
> It has been around since September - if vaccines were voided it would have shown up in trials.

The variant didn't reach a significant proportion of infections until November. Evaluation of the efficacy of the Pfizer vaccine was done in July and August. We don't have data to understand how effective the Pfizer vaccine is against this variant yet.
1 comments
DoingIsLearning 2011 days ago
This should be the official position when communicating this information. There simply is not enough data at this point.

I was really shocked to read German Minister statements saying the vacine is still effective for this variant. Sure theoretical the spike is majority unchanged but there is no evidence or data for a government official to make such an absolute statement.

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spuz 2011 days ago
The official message from the UK government when they announced concern about this new strain was "we have no evidence to suggest that the Pfizer vaccine is not just as effective against this new strain". Somehow that gets twisted by some people into "we believe the vaccine is just as effective against this new strain". I think it's party due to not wanting to appear to be doomsaying but also very misleading in terms of communicating the facts.
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sjg007 2010 days ago
Notice the word choice: “we have no evidence...” the answer is actually “we don’t know” because we haven’t studied it. There’s a term for this type of communication as it’s quite common but the name escapes me..
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DoingIsLearning 2010 days ago
My criticism was of Jens Spahn, Germany's Health minister. Claiming there was no evidence that the vacine would not be effective. [0] Which although true sounds incredibly misleading taking into the account the data we currently don't have.

[0] https://metro.co.uk/2020/12/20/covid-vaccines-still-effectiv...

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detaro 2010 days ago
I thought Spahns full statement was reasonable. Deferring to what the health organizations report to him, saying that that "would be very good news" (would be, not is), emphasizing multiple times that this is "as of now, sunday evening". If you hear that and take away "we're definitively safe" ...

(Of course I can't judge the biology and if that actually accurately represented the expert opinion behind it, but to me it communicated clearly enough that this isn't a certain claim, but reflecting a current snapshot of something that's actively looked at)

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