It is wrong both clinically – on what the purpose of Phase 3 trials is and in terms of the information it presents about Russia. One can only assume that it passed editorial because it meets the Guardian’s key criteria of being anti-Russia.
This article is astonishingly badly informed. The author claims that only Phase 3 trials check efficacy of a vaccine:
Phase two trials go bigger, with a few hundred people, and usually compare the vaccine against a control to a) make sure that it is triggering an immune response and b) see if there are serious side-effects that the phase one trial missed. Phase three trials are the biggest pre-licensure studies, and they test whether the vaccine actually works – they randomly allocate people into two groups, vaccine versus control, and follow them over months to see if the people who received the vaccine get infected less than people who get the control
This is not true. Phase 2 trials do indeed confirm that a vaccine works. Listen to all the comments from the Jenner Institute in Oxford about their Phase 2 trials to confirm this. The point of Phase 3 trials is in the words of one US government source I checked are to “confirm and expand” on the results of Phase 2). (e.g. check for edge case adverse events). So yes – Phase 2 trials do establish efficacy (it ‘works’). Phase 3 trials are indeed necessary but not for the reasons given by the author i.e that the vaccine “actually works” (a attempt to use an unscientific term to generate smoke). Continue reading “More mad propaganda in the Guardian about the Russian vaccine”
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