[mwint]

I think someone needs to point out that 20% is a very different number than many people were sold a vaccine under.

How did we drop so far from the 90+% “effectiveness” claims at the beginning? Feels like there needs to be a massive postmortem on the approval process here.

[edmundsauto]

Can you find any authoritative sources that claimed 90+% effectiveness? I'm not doubting you at all, but I don't trust my own memory of events and constructive conversations depend on concrete examples. Also, initial claims would have been on short-term evidence (long term didn't exist back then) and was before Delta/Omicron - the initial virus prevention rate may have been way higher.

My ask is for a scientific source that made that claim, not a politician promoting them. I totally agree the messaging was confusing, but public health is really really hard to do and it's not possible to message things perfectly, especially given the general environment in the US with 40% of the country unwilling to accept that a dangerous pandemic needed a response.

[lps41]

“Effectiveness” was a measurement of reduction in severe infection, not reduction of transmissibility. Nobody ever claimed there was a 90% reduction in transmission.