Importance of understanding relative vs. absolute risk reduction regarding COVID-19 vaccines

--------

About:

The Peter Attia Drive is a weekly, ultra-deep-dive podcast focusing on maximizing health, longevity, critical thinking…and a few other things. With over 30 million episodes downloaded, it features topics including fasting, ketosis, Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, mental health, and much more.

Peter is a physician focusing on the applied science of longevity. His practice deals extensively with nutritional interventions, exercise physiology, sleep physiology, emotional and mental health, and pharmacology to increase lifespan (delay the onset of chronic disease), while simultaneously improving healthspan (quality of life).

Connect with Peter on:

Subscribe to The Drive:

[darlafitzpatrick]

Here's Peter Attia in one interview, explaining for viewers the importance of understanding relative vs. absolute risk, yet in a December interview, he gets practically orgasmic claiming that statin drugs have been the world's greatest advance in the prevention or treatment of heart disease. Seriously? Guess he hasn't looked at the NNT data for statins or questioned drugmakers' own bias in portraying relative risk as absolute risk

[crossfitmastersgymtainment]

the eg of crossing the street is framed to indicate avoiding harm. Similar example should be framed to highlight almost no benefit either from having a drug or vaccine with tiny absolute risk reduction. The relative risk reduction makes it sound WONDERFUL. Its a marketing campaign tool. The real risks of experimental drugs (phase 3 trials are incomplete and no animal studies) have not been elucidated.

[sanderossi]

The problem is not that the general public doesn’t understand. The problem is that they don’t WANT us to understand.

[misterscruffle]

From what I understand, which could be wrong, absolute risk is not a good measure for Covid vaccines since it measures the amount of disease in the population. When the trials were done Covid wasn’t as widespread as it is now. Absolute would be the wrong way to look at data that is widely changing as we have surges.

less prevalence at the time for phizer

[mballer]

0:02 Mistake.... Oh you funny naive child.

[Marx]

Just took J and J - no side effects at all ! One and done !

[trozzonick]

I m very confused. Is it this the normal way how vaccine are effect are calculated or is just for this kind ? Would have been the same for a flue one for example ?

[Spiun]

Peter, this is completely wrong. The absolute risk reduction of 1% is calculated with population prevalence during the trial being something like 1.5%. If the prevalence goes up, which would happen if we unlocked fully, the absolute risk reduction would go sky-high.

This is not a background disease that has a constant prevalence, like diabetes. This is an exponential growth disease, and relative risk reduction is the ONLY metric we have that doesn't depend on the prevalence. Please rethink this bit, it makes absolutely no sense.