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In fact, as I'd not seen the initial paperwork submitted to FDA, I was skeptical of the mRNA vaccines, and the speed with which they raced through Phase 1 and 2/3 trials. But, when I actually got the data and read it, it took me no time to recognize the trials had sufficient size to be scientifically valid and that their design incorporated standard and traditional end-points. The rapidity of conclusion was determined by the number of cases in the control arm that contracted the disease in the face of a respiratory-spread virus with an R(t) much greater than 1... in fact, through 2020, R(t) was well above 4, making it a very contagious disease. Add to the fact that exposed, asymptomatic people could spread the ancestral strain (not so much the more contemporary strains, it seems) and the control arm participants had no idea if, in public, they had been potentially exposed until they were either symptomatic and tested, or routinely tested in the course of the study.

I became accepting of the vaccine based on the reports of study design and their outcomes and the reports of the independent review committees. Or, in other words, the SCIENCE.

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