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Comment by Fomite | Hacker News Reader

The answer is a Phase IV clinical trial, which a number of vaccines have undergone post-approval and I suspect the COVID-19 vaccines will as well.

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Does the fact that the major vaccine vendors are encouraging placebo recipients to be notified about their receipt of a placebo, plus encouragement that they go get the vaccine affect your confidence in the trial process for this vaccine?

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/02/19/9691430...

“According to Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, interim analyses after approximately 2 months of follow-up suggest their vaccines are 90% to 95% effective at preventing SARS-CoV-2 infection, although no peer review of the data has been conducted to date. Both companies now claim they have an “ethical obligation” to offer vaccine as soon as possible to all participants who received placebo, considering the strong results and participants’ contribution to the research.“

Honestly? No. In the face of a major pandemic, and with the size of the clinical trials and the effectiveness of the vaccines, the ethical obligations to the patients in the trial to unblind the results to get the participants vaccinated is pretty paramount.

There are somewhat more exotic studies designs that can be used for post-unblinding monitoring work that meet the ethical obligations to the participants.

But it's a good question.

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