Hacker News Reader

No. It is not meaningless. Had the vaccine had the same efficacy on the various variants, the ratio between them would have been the same. However it is not, indicating that the vaccine is vastly (factor of 8) more effective on the main variant compared to the SA / Brazil variants. Hence the conclusion.

It could do with more data but that has also been the case for similar studies of the AstraZenaca vaccine.

View on HN

Wouldn’t you need more than 800 people to get a statistically significant result?

They check for significance in the paper. There is no magical sample size number. It depends on the size of the effect which here appears to be quite strong so a smaller sample would actually do.

There's a factor of 8 because there are 8 variant cases. This is meaningless.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com