"should not be used to estimate vaccine effectiveness"
Exactly. Neither should aggregate numbers that various US states and Prof. Spector use to spread fear, acrimony and stigma should be used to estimate VE, or mislead the audiences to estimate VE by themselves. Notice how the ZOE video you linked lacks the intellectual honesty to display the same disclaimer. His own website says "Incidence estimates were updated on 21 July 2021.". He's basically fabricating numbers, for all we know just as accurate as Prof. Ferguson. This is no better than the "antivax garbage" some people are so keen on summarily calling out.
Here are some longish term studies and preprints for Pfizer's VE against infection.
* VE against infection drops over time. Sadly, I am not aware of any reliable literature for VE after 9 or 12 months. Unfortunately Pfizer killed their own critical trials, which had a solid headstart, by vaccinating the control arm after 6 months. But the trend is clear, and worrisome.
* 80% VE => 1:5 infection odds. 75% VE => 1:4 infection odds. 50% VE => 1:2 infection odds. 12% VE, it's a wash. Numbers like 1:6.8 infection odds this long after the vaccination campaign are fantasy.
> Prof. Spector use to spread fear, acrimony and stigma should be used to estimate VE, or mislead the audiences ... lacks the intellectual honesty
This is a very bold partisan claim, in fact it is insult. It comes across as another Paranoid fantasy out of US politics, irrelevant to the UK. I'm no longer interested in anything that you have to say. Good day.
This ZOE business is something else. Their website is 75% building up their credentials, 25% promoting their app and 0% substance, e.g. what the actual formulas are or a link to code and data dumps. Or at least a research publication with some details. Perhaps there is a link hidden somewhere, but neither their Home, About or FAQ point to it.
They literally changed their formula because the trends in the unvaccinated population didn't to conform to their prior biases. Though the formula details are still a mystery.
"Last week, we reported a plateau in new COVID cases based on our methods at the time, which relied on a small number of unvaccinated people in our dataset compared with the wider UK population. The number of daily new cases in the unvaccinated group appeared to be dropping which in turn resulted in our overall numbers trending down. This meant the figures were accurate to our dataset but didn’t represent the full picture in the UK."
Exactly. Neither should aggregate numbers that various US states and Prof. Spector use to spread fear, acrimony and stigma should be used to estimate VE, or mislead the audiences to estimate VE by themselves. Notice how the ZOE video you linked lacks the intellectual honesty to display the same disclaimer. His own website says "Incidence estimates were updated on 21 July 2021.". He's basically fabricating numbers, for all we know just as accurate as Prof. Ferguson. This is no better than the "antivax garbage" some people are so keen on summarily calling out.
Here are some longish term studies and preprints for Pfizer's VE against infection.
UK, 3 months VEaI = 75%. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01548-7
Qatar, 3 months VEaI = 70%, 6 months VEaI = 12.8%, https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2114114
Sweden, <50yo, 2-4 months VEaI = 83%, 4-6 months VEaI = 50%, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3949410
US, veterans, 3 months VEaI = 78%, 6 months VEaI = 50%, https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.20.21254636v...
Two notes:
* VE against infection drops over time. Sadly, I am not aware of any reliable literature for VE after 9 or 12 months. Unfortunately Pfizer killed their own critical trials, which had a solid headstart, by vaccinating the control arm after 6 months. But the trend is clear, and worrisome.
* 80% VE => 1:5 infection odds. 75% VE => 1:4 infection odds. 50% VE => 1:2 infection odds. 12% VE, it's a wash. Numbers like 1:6.8 infection odds this long after the vaccination campaign are fantasy.