A study by Public Health England finds that the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine is 72% effective at preventing ALL coronavirus infection (including asymptomatic) 21 days after first dose, and 86% effective 7 days after second dose.
Also some evidence that people who've recovered from Covid-19 are as protected, or more protected, against coronavirus infection as vaccinated people. All really good news for the vaccines' ability to slash transmission and end the pandemic.
There are lots of people out there who just aren't very scared of Covid, and they aren't going to suddenly become scared of it now. Presenting vaccines (accurately) as the path to reopening is probably better.
Yet more good news on the Pfizer vaccine, showing even higher effectiveness 14 days after 2nd dose. Effectiveness:
95.8% at preventing infection
98% at preventing symptoms
98.9% at preventing hospitalisations
99.2% at stopping serious disease
98.9% at preventing death
This new data from Israel's Health Ministry, published a few minutes ago, is SO good that I'm actually a little suspicious of it. Could be a function of the short dosing interval giving a few weeks of very high antibodies?
Alternatively, there could be some herd effects starting to happen in mostly-vaccinated populations compared to towns with low numbers of vaccinated people.
Pfizer vaccine estimated 89.5% effective at preventing coronavirus INFECTIONS, whether symptomatic or not, according to new pre-print study conducted by Pfizer and Israel's Health Ministry. This would point to a huge cut in transmission.
Other real-world outcomes: the study shows:
94% effectiveness against symptomatic Covid-19
93.5% effectiveness against hospitalisation
94% effectiveness against severe and critical hospitalisation
93% against death
The full paper is in this thread by @Nadav_Eyal. You can just look at the attachments to his tweets, no need to read Hebrew.
This is worth a read and a lot of it rings true. It's more visible in Hebrew, where written language is starkly different to spoken and, yes, radio and TV newscasters speak like written letters, not like oral talkers @zeynepzeynep.substack.com/p/the-clubhous…
@zeynep I came to Twitter with most of a lifetime of chatroom and IM culture, which are absolutely oral psychodynamics, but unlike actual speaking you have time to think, consider, self-edit too.
@zeynep So yeah, Twitter fits into the oral culture. But, at least for me, removing ephemerality is a big part of the point too. If Tweets disappeared after a week or even a year, I don't think I'd be here.
CISA, the FBI and the Treasury Dept are warning about North Korean Bitcoin-stealing malware known as AppleJeus, which has been posing as cryptocurrency trading platforms since 2018. Culprit is DPRK's Lazarus Group APT us-cert.cisa.gov/ncas/alerts/aa…
Ah, so I was wrong. This IS what the big announcement is about today. DoJ indicted North Koerean hackers who stole $1.3 BILLION in cash and cryptocurrency over recent years. That's an enormous amount.
The details here are mind-blowing. Cyber-heists from banks by hacking into the SWIFT system, ATM hacks, ransomware, crypto theft, and running their own dodgy ICO to help North Korea take over shipping companies.