Why you shouldn't worry about which COVID-19 vaccine you'll receive

Gina DiPietro:

As COVID-19 vaccine distribution continues, the idea around ‘efficacy’ and which vaccine is most effective has been top of mind. But what does this number actually mean? And how much does it matter?

Hi, I’m Gina DiPietro with Novant Health Healthy Headlines. In this episode, we hear the answer to those questions from Dr. David Priest, Novant Health senior vice president and chief safety and quality officer. He explains why it’s natural for folks to compare the vaccines to each other, and why that shouldn’t be the focus. Here’s more from Priest, along with ending remarks from Dr. Jerome Williams Jr. – Novant Health senior vice president of consumer engagement.

Dr. David Priest:

When say Pfizer or Moderna came out with efficacy data 94 95%, what they really did was they said, Look, we had two groups of people, a group that got a placebo group that got the real thing. And this is how many cases of COVID we had in each group. And one of we compare those numbers and one was, you know, point 5%, compared to the other group, basically. So that's kind of where they came up those efficacy numbers. You can look at it several different ways - are you trying to prevent the most serious complications and COVID, hospitalization, death, serious illness, routine COVID cases that don't require hospitalization, and certainly aren't fatal. All of the vaccines are highly effective in preventing hospitalization and death. If you're talking about preventing just routine COVID, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine had a slightly lower number. But remember, it was tested and came out later. Tthere were variants around the world that weren't necessarily there when Pfizer and Moderna were being tested. So the actual difference in the vaccines may be less than those numbers suggest. That's something important to remember. The other thing is, I love the fact that we are arguing about vaccines that have 70 80, 90 95% efficacy, when in a typical flu season, the flu shot, which is very important thing to do for our communities might have an efficacy of 40% or 45%. Our standard and expectation as a society has really changed. And, and that's great. And remember that there's a couple of things that are important. One is it's really important how efficacious vaccine is, but equally important, and in a lot of cases, even more important is how many people get it, right? If you have a very a very effective vaccine, but a very small number of people get it, it's not going to make a dent in the disease progression in your community. Conversely, if you have a vaccine that really isn't that effective, but every single person got it, it would make a huge difference in disease burden. So it's not just the Hey, I want the 95%, one versus the 85%, where the 75%. One, it's enough of us need to get it. So I would not split hairs about each of these products, if you have an opportunity to - get one, given the current limitations and suppliers.

Dr. Jerome Williams Jr.:

The only other thing I would add, David is that when you talk about clinical trials, you have to understand that the vaccines that are out there, they were not compared against each other. They were not compared against each other. Okay. And so you can't really extrapolate one data point as it relates to efficacy to another trial, because it's not comparing apples to apples as you look at the data. But as we're talking, Dr. Priest really outlined the bottom line is we all need to get vaccinated no matter which vaccine. That's really to take them without getting too deep into biostatistics or anything like that. That's really the take home point.

Gina DiPietro:

Gina DiPietro again. So, the bottom line is – the numbers aren’t apples to apples. We should all focus instead on getting vaccinated in the first place. If you have an opportunity to receive a COVID-19 vaccine, take it. In the meantime, please continue to wear a mask, be socially distant and wash your hands. Thanks for listening to this episode of Healthy Headlines. If you enjoyed this podcast, please take a moment to rate and review us, and subscribe to this and all the Novant Health podcasts. We post new episodes all the time. Most are less than 15 minutes.