The Spectator

Which Covid vaccine is really the most effective?

[Getty Images] 
issue 27 February 2021

State of the art

Graffiti on Edvard Munch’s first version of ‘The Scream’ was revealed to be the work of the artist himself. There is a tradition of artists damaging their own work:

— In 2018, a Banksy, ‘Girl With Balloon’, was partially shredded moments after being sold for $1.4 million at Sotheby’s by a device fixed inside the frame.

— In 1920, Dadaist Francis Picabia arranged for his friend André Breton to rub out his chalk drawing, ‘Riz au Nez’, shortly after it went on display in Paris.

— In 1960, ‘Homage to New York’, a sculpture by Jean Tinguely, auto-combusted after going on display in the city’s Museum of Modern Art.

Calling the shots

A guide to those confusing efficacy rates for Covid vaccines:

PFIZER

95% effectiveness of two doses at reducing symptomatic infections in trials, from data analysed by US Food and Drug Administration, December.

90% effectiveness of two doses at reducing symptomatic infections, from Pfizer press release, 9 November.

85% rate by which hospitalisations were reduced 28-34 days after a single dose, from Scottish population-wide study, 22 February.

85% rate by which symptomatic infections reduced 15-28 days after single dose, from population-wide Israeli study.

ASTRAZENECA

94% reduction in hospitalisations 28-34 days after single dose, from population-wide Scottish study, 22 February.

90% fall in symptomatic infections after a half dose followed by a full dose, from Lancet paper, December.

70% fall in symptomatic infections after two doses (combined results from people given two full doses and people given a half dose followed by full dose), from trial results published in Lancet.

62.5% reduction in symptomatic infections after two full doses, from December’s Lancet paper.

Age gaps

Schools are to return on 8 March. Which age group had the most Covid-19 infections (symptomatic or asymptomatic) on 12 February?

Age two to school year 6 (nursery and primary) | 0.

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