So, the Pfizer news from yesterday sounded really great. But, I was confused why they reported effectiveness vs. the South African variant but not for the Brazil variants. wsj.com/articles/pfize…
Recall, the South American sample in the Pfizer study was much larger than the South African sample. How is it their data says nothing about the Brazilian variants, w/ 10 times the sample size in South America (counting Argentina)?
Thus, I'm really looking forward to the full data release. That said, this data looks amazing. At a glance it suggests the mRNA vaccines work against all variants (will want to see all the data). And still works fine after six months.
I heard repeatedly from vaccine skeptics that "we don't know the vaccines work for more than a couple of months". This shows that they do.
Given that they are still at the study, it's clear Pfizer is also sitting on data that could answer the #FirstDosesFirst debate definitively. It's not really in the company's interests to look at this question though. Unfortunately the CDC is orders of magnitude too incompetent.
It's probably true that given the doses coming the US's way the next two months, reducing dosage doesn't seem like a priority. However, in order to vaccinate the world, it is critical to figure out if we can cut the dosage and not compromise much on effectiveness.
^but, unfortunately, that appears like research that isn't going to be done.
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