Here; an excerpt:
A new study suggests the messenger RNA vaccines produced by Moderna and the Pfizer-BioNTech partnership appeared to be 90% effective in preventing Covid-19 infection in a real-world setting....
The study followed nearly 4,000 health care workers, first responders, and other essential workers in eight U.S. locations as the first Covid vaccines were rolled out starting in December. Participants were tested weekly to look for all cases of Covid infection, even asymptomatic ones.
In the period from Dec. 14, 2020, to March 13, 2021, nearly 75% of the workers in the cohort received at least one dose of one of the mRNA vaccines...
There were 161 Covid infections in the unvaccinated workers, compared with 16 in workers who had received only one dose by the time of their infection and only three infections in people who had received both doses and were two weeks out from their second dose....
The study suggested that even the first dose of vaccine was 80% effective at preventing infection, starting from two weeks after receipt of that dose. That estimate, however, only applies to the brief period until the second dose was administered....
Most of the people who tested positive in the study had some Covid-related symptoms, though 10.7% had none. Only 23% of the people who became infected needed medical care and only two were hospitalized. There were no Covid deaths in the study....
Judging from this account, the scientist responsible for the development of mRNA vaccine technology is Katalin Karikó at the University of Pennsylvania. She should get a Nobel Prize for this work. The efficacy level of these vaccines really is extraordinary.
