It’s also worth looking at the next table for Moderna one-dose severe-COVID-prevention efficacy: Vaccine group: 2 / 996 Control group: 4 / 1079 Efficacy: 42.6% (-300.8, 94.8) [95% CI]
Huge error bars and little data, but certainly doesn’t support a guess of ~80% efficacy at preventing severe cases. In the end it’s the transmission that matters, but I suppose there’s a danger based on public perception: if one dose turns out to have under 50% efficacy for severe cases it’s not going to make anyone feel safe. If the sub 50% applies to deaths too, then you’ll have many reports of “X took the vaccine, caught Covid and then died”. I assume Moderna wouldn’t be crazy about this either. Not great PR if everyone broadly remembers that vaccines stopped Covid, but specifically remembers that Moderna’s failed to save their friend’s granny.
While there’s short supply, it doesn’t particularly matter if a load of people don’t want to take it. Once there’s a large supply, that changes—and if there’s a largely baked-in misperception that the vaccine(s) suck(s), it’s likely to be unhelpful.
In some sense it’s analogous to the mask situation: [Take action likely to reduce confidence in X] ---> [Free up supply of X to allow efficient targeting] ---> [Suffer consequences of longer-term low confidence in X]
Here the confidence-reducing action wouldn’t be a lie, but that’s not the only consideration.
It’s also worth looking at the next table for Moderna one-dose severe-COVID-prevention efficacy:
Vaccine group: 2 / 996
Control group: 4 / 1079
Efficacy: 42.6% (-300.8, 94.8) [95% CI]
Huge error bars and little data, but certainly doesn’t support a guess of ~80% efficacy at preventing severe cases. In the end it’s the transmission that matters, but I suppose there’s a danger based on public perception: if one dose turns out to have under 50% efficacy for severe cases it’s not going to make anyone feel safe. If the sub 50% applies to deaths too, then you’ll have many reports of “X took the vaccine, caught Covid and then died”.
I assume Moderna wouldn’t be crazy about this either. Not great PR if everyone broadly remembers that vaccines stopped Covid, but specifically remembers that Moderna’s failed to save their friend’s granny.
While there’s short supply, it doesn’t particularly matter if a load of people don’t want to take it. Once there’s a large supply, that changes—and if there’s a largely baked-in misperception that the vaccine(s) suck(s), it’s likely to be unhelpful.
In some sense it’s analogous to the mask situation:
[Take action likely to reduce confidence in X] ---> [Free up supply of X to allow efficient targeting] ---> [Suffer consequences of longer-term low confidence in X]
Here the confidence-reducing action wouldn’t be a lie, but that’s not the only consideration.