SBGold said:
Even 50% effectiveness is a dang powerful tool.
During the initial rollouts and throughout the Delta variant waves (2021), Bovard's 50% figure was demonstrably false regarding the primary goal of the immunization campaign.
The Data: Extensive, peer-reviewed global data and real-world meta-analyses showed that the primary mRNA vaccine series was 89% to 97% effective at preventing COVID-19-related hospitalizations and intensive care admissions.The Reality: The vaccines were vastly superior to a 50/50 coin flip at keeping people alive and out of the hospital during the deadliest waves of the pandemic.
So much puddle deep knowledge and assumptions are being thrown here, it's dangerous misinformation and it's horrible it's being peddled as truth. BG specifically stated in the new rules to not post this type of misinformation. ENOUGH
VOTE BLUE and Free Wags
You use AI and criticize others for having "puddle deep" knowledge. AI for your AI.
This argument relies on several misleading substitutions.
First, the claim that mRNA vaccines were uniformly "89% to 97% effective" throughout the Delta waves is false. That range cherry-picks the strongest estimates from selected populations and presents them as a universal result. A CDC study of U.S. veterans found overall effectiveness against hospitalization of 86.8%, not 89%97%. Effectiveness was only 79.8% among adults 65 and older, compared with 95.1% among adults ages 1864. Another CDC study estimated effectiveness against hospitalization at 84% after 1324 weeks. The evidence therefore showed substantial protection, but not a uniform 89%97% across all people, vaccines, locations, and stages of the Delta wave. (CDC)
Second, it rewrites the original purpose of the vaccination campaign. The pivotal Pfizer and Moderna trials were designed primarily to measure prevention of symptomatic COVID-19, not hospitalization, intensive-care admission, or death. Pfizer's FDA submission identified confirmed COVID-19 as the primary efficacy endpoint, while Moderna's primary endpoint was reduction in the incidence of COVID-19. Severe disease was an important secondary outcome, but it is revisionist to claim that keeping people out of hospitals was always the campaign's sole or clearly defined "primary goal." (U.S. Food and Drug Administration)
Third, the argument improperly compares vaccine effectiveness with the odds of a coin toss. Vaccine effectiveness is a relative reduction in risk between vaccinated and comparable unvaccinated groups. It does not mean that an individual vaccine recipient had an 89%97% probability of avoiding hospitalization, nor does 50% effectiveness mean that vaccination works for exactly half of recipients and fails completely for the other half. Calling it a "50/50 coin flip" is statistically illiterate rhetoric, regardless of which effectiveness estimate is being discussed.
Fourth, effectiveness depended on the outcome being measured. Protection against severe illness generally remained high during Delta, but protection against infection was lower and declined over time. New York data showed effectiveness against infection falling to approximately 74% by late August 2021, with substantial variation among age groups. Thus, a figure near 50% might have been inaccurate if presented as universal protection against hospitalization, but it was not necessarily absurd when discussing infection, transmission, particular populations, or protection many months after vaccination. (New England Journal of Medicine)
Fifth, observational effectiveness studies were not interchangeable with randomized-trial results. Their estimates depended on age adjustment, previous infection, testing behavior, time since vaccination, underlying illness, vaccine brand, and definitions of a COVID-associated hospitalization. The wide confidence intervals and differences among studies are exactly why no single high-end percentage can describe "the Delta waves" worldwide.
The defensible conclusion is narrower: two-dose mRNA vaccination substantially reduced the average risk of COVID-19 hospitalization and death during Delta, particularly soon after vaccination. That does not establish that every relevant effectiveness estimate was between 89% and 97%, that hospitalization was the original primary trial endpoint, or that any lower estimate amounted to calling vaccination a literal coin flip.
Therefore, Bovard's exact claim must be quoted and defined before it can be declared "demonstrably false." Without knowing whether his 50% figure referred to infection, symptomatic disease, hospitalization, a specific age group, or waning protection, this rebuttal attacks an interpretation rather than proving that his actual statement was wrong.
