Even in April 2020 we had rough but useful numbers on the hospitalization rate. Just some quick Googling turns up e.g. [1] which says that around 20% of those who test positive end up hospitalized. Now the Pfizer vaccine by itself had like 40k participants, with 9 severe (out of 162 confirmed cases) of COVID-19 in the placebo group, and 1 severe case (out of 8 confirmed cases) in the vaccine group. [2] [3] So right off the bat it looked pretty promising, and IMHO they could've just cited these numbers and let people judge for themselves... it's not like people don't have the intuition to realize that 1 patient couldn't have been 2-3 instead. But even if you think that wasn't enough data to be convincing, at least now we have mass vaccination rates they could be citing. Like literally ~40k people have been hospitalized with COVID-19 in just the last week and nearly all COVID deaths are among the unvaccinated now, and it's not like the vaccine just came out last week.
An Associated Press analysis of available government data from May shows that “breakthrough” infections in fully vaccinated people accounted for fewer than 1,200 of more than 853,000 COVID-19 hospitalizations. That’s about 0.1%. [4]
How is that still not enough data to switch metrics at this point? Why do they still think efficacy rates are more relevant for people instead?
[1] https://www.tfah.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/COVIDunderly...
[2] https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-deta...
[3] I don't know why this reporting differs from the 100% I see claimed elsewhere; 1 severe case doesn't sound like 100% effective at preventing severe cases? I don't know if they're discussing different trial phases or have different thresholds for "severe" or something else... but regardless, it's irrelevant to my point.
[4] https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-health-941fc...