Originally Posted by
Lead Balloon
But let's assume the UNSW School of Population Health used "the wrong measure of efficacy" ...
Why assume? just read pretty much any paper dealing with vaccine efficacy. Try
this one -
What defines an efficacious COVID-19 vaccine? A review of the challenges assessing the clinical efficacy of vaccines against SARS-CoV-2
A candidate vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 might act against infection, disease, or transmission, and a vaccine capable of reducing any of these elements could contribute to disease control. However, the most important efficacy endpoint, protection against severe disease and death, is difficult to assess in phase 3 clinical trials.
... the most important efficacy endpoint, protection against severe disease and death, ...
From a public health perspective hospitalisations, ICU admissions and deaths are what you want a vaccine to prevent or minimise because those are the factors that burden the health system. That is why those efficacy measures are far more important and why simply focussing on efficacy with regards to symptomatic transmission (which is subject to variation depending on when and where the Stage III trial was conducted) is the wrong measure.