True or false? Reuters "fact check" of the Denmark study showing negative VE
Reuters did a "fact check" of the negative Vaccine Efficacy in the Denmark study and the study author used a hand waving argument to conclude the negative VE is due to a bias. What do you think?
I wrote earlier about the Denmark study showing that vaccine efficacy against Omicron goes negative after 90 days:
I think it’s credible because a paper by nine CDC authors published in JAMA in January 2022 (Association Between 3 Doses of mRNA COVID-19 Vaccine and Symptomatic Infection Caused by the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron and Delta Variants) shows in Fig. 3 that the vaccines create negative efficacy for Omicron at month 7, just like the Denmark study showed too (in Denmark it was after 3 months).
So it wasn’t a mistake or an artifact.
But that isn’t going to deter the Reuters fact-checker from their mission to support the false narrative (and not the truth).
Oh really???
Here’s why I think the Reuters “fact check” is garbage
First of all, a hand waving argument supported by no data whatsoever claiming bias is not convincing to me.
Furthermore, I think the Denmark paper was accurate for these 3 reasons:
VE continues to go negative in that study consistent over time… how can they explain that?
if it was behavior differences between vaxed and unvaxed that accounts for the bias, then how come people who got Moderna behave DIFFERENTLY than people who got Pfizer?!?
I am not alone in suggesting the authors claim “there must be a bias” as needed to fit the narrative
One of the commenters on the original paper wrote something very similar to what I wrote:
So assume the results you like (high VE for recent vaccination) are causal, but hand wave confounders at results you don't like (negative VE for distant vaccination)? Science?
I couldn’t have said it any better myself. This was my reaction too when I read the paper.
What do you think?
So who got it right? Me or Reuters?
What's confusing here is that the Denmark study uses vaccine effectiveness (VE) as the metric vs. the CDC study which uses odds ratio (OR) as the metric. VE is just 1 minus OR, so as soon as the OR goes over 1, you have negative VE. Like Steve says, the OR in the CDC study goes over 1 at 7 months for Omicron, which means negative effectivity (i.e., negative VE). The frustrating thing is the 2 studies don't agree totally. The Denmark study finds the effectivity goes negative at 3 months, and goes even more negative at time goes on. Whereas, the CDC study finds 1) the effectivity takes longer to go negative (7 ms.) and 2) doesn't get more negative as time goes on. It hovers around 0 (OR=1).
I don't think that's true, Rose. I think relative effectivity is 1 minus the risk ratio. The risk ratio is your chances of getting it if you are vaxxed, divided by your chances if you are unvaxxed. So, if 50 out of 100 unvaxed get it vs. 50 out of 100 vaxxed get it, then you have 1 minus 0.5/0.5, which equals zero relative efficacy.