Understanding the difference between relative risk reduction and absolute risk reduction.

Chris Wark does a good job in a recent article in describing why the covid vaccine being 95% effective is a bogus claim. There are other reasons, one being that it is a drug that was designed to minimize covid19 symptoms, not immunize against SARS-Cov-2 virus, but that’s another story we can save for later.

This quote from the article describes the difference between relative risk reduction and absolute risk reduction and what the marketers (drug companies) did with the covid vaccine magic trick.

We were told these drugs are “effective” because  they “reduce risk of symptomatic infection from COVID-19 by 95%.”

But that 95% figure is only a measure of Relative Risk Reduction.

There’s a more important statistic that the drug companies failed to disclose in their press releases. And that is Absolute Risk Reduction.

Relative Risk Reduction statistics are a half-truths. And a half-truth is a lie.

Here’s an example. If you have cancer and a doctor tells you that a combination of drugs will reduce your relative risk of dying by 50%, that sounds impressive and you would probably say yes to that treatment. However, your doctor could also explain it like this, “Your absolute risk of dying is only 2% and these drugs will drop it to 1%.” And you would be much less likely to say yes to treatment.

Absolute Risk Reduction is honest, transparent, fully-disclosed science.

Relative Risk Reduction is statistical sleight-of-hand. It’s marketing.

Analysis of the data published by the drug companies shows that the spike-protein-producing shots only reduce your Absolute Risk of symptomatic infection by 1%.

If you want to weed through the paper that clarifies this it’s here: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanmic/article/PIIS2666-5247(21)00069-0/fulltext