Noah Weiland and Carl Zimmer for The New York Times:
The coronavirus vaccine made by Pfizer and BioNTech provides strong protection against Covid-19 within about 10 days of the first dose, according to documents published on Tuesday by the Food and Drug Administration before a meeting of its vaccine advisory group.
The finding is one of several significant new results featured in the briefing materials, which include more than 100 pages of data analyses from the agency and from Pfizer. Last month, Pfizer and BioNTech announced that their two-dose vaccine had an efficacy rate of 95 percent after two doses administered three weeks apart. The new analyses show that the protection starts kicking in far earlier.
What’s more, the vaccine worked well regardless of a volunteer’s race, weight or age. While the trial did not find any serious adverse events caused by the vaccine, many participants did experience aches, fevers and other side effects.
“This is what an A+ report card looks like for a vaccine,” said Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist at Yale University
Science is amazing. In this case, it’s given us a 95-percent effective vaccine that seems to work equally well across demographic groups in record time. It’s also given us tons of knowledge about how SARS-CoV-2 transmits and simple ways we can protect ourselves.
There’s an alternate reality where there’s a large mass of people who don’t see their religious beliefs in conflict with science. Instead, they hold up science and the knowledge it gives us as an amazing expression of their god, as a confirmation of the brilliant order of the universe, and our inability to fully understand creation.