Antivirals EUA
October 13, 2021
In recent news, Merck and Ridgeback has been hailing an oral anti-viral drug against Sars-CoV-2 that can cut the hospitalization and death rates in half according to their news posted on Oct 1, 2021 on their website. Apparently, the drug was doing so well in…
Booster shots for all vaccines
September 30, 2021
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been promoting booster shots most recently for all vaccines for COVID-19: Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson. However, the Food & Druge Administration (FDA) has only reviewed the data on the Pfizer vaccine…
J&J Booster shots
A more recent controversy has come up with the Johnson & Johnson (J&J) vaccine perhaps needing a booster shot sooner than the mRNA based vaccines for COVID-19. A current problem is there is no verifiable data or rather limited data to support this reasoning and especially giving…
Waning of efficacy and interpretation
A lot of controversy has come up with the boosters for the COVID-19 vaccines and efficacy. The Israeli study on efficacy comparing people vaccinated last year to people vaccinated this year seemed to indicate the efficacy was waning over time. The clarity around the issue…
Understanding percentages and efficacy
August 18, 2021
Recently, there has been a lot of news about COVID-19 research tied to the studies conducted in Israel since they have such a high rate of vaccination and since they themselves have conducted several analyses which are very timely for understanding the changes…
As we have heard or know, COVID-19 research, especially in early 2020, was filled with observational studies, many of which were potentially underpowered, but it turns out, even randomized controlled trials. Sample size estimation went out the window. Even Lee (2020) published two articles about this situation. He reviewed articles…
With all the news about vaccine efficacy and how long the effects of the vaccine will last, it is interesting to wonder how the statistical models to detect such effects are designed for such research . In the Khoury et al paper (2020), they do consider the decay of antibody…
Re-analyses on vaccine efficacy in COVID-19 research
Much of the news these days focuses on vaccine efficacy rates being re-updated due to various new COVID-19 variants coming out often, originating in different countries, like delta (B.1.167.2) from India and lambda (C.37) from Peru. These vaccine rates are being re-updated and…
Bayesian methods used in COVID-19 research
During the times of uncertainty in statistical methods used in COVID-19 research. Were Bayesian methods employed much in these contexts? Yes they were here and there but probably once again, just like in regular research, the methods were not used very often or were…
by Usha Govindarajulu | Jun 9, 2021 | Biostatistics, Blog, Healthcare, Professor, Usha Govindarajulu
P-values and vaccine efficacy
As the companies continue to re-evaluate vaccine efficacy against new variants, have they discussed p-values? Are they analyzing re-updated data again and again and correcting for inflation of the Type I error…
