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By Lars P. SyllCauses deduced in an experimental setting still have to show that they come with an export-warrant to the target population/system. The causal background assumptions made have to be justified, and without licenses to export, the value of ‘rigorous’ and ‘precise’ methods - and ‘on-average-knowledge’ - is despairingly small.
Absolutely Maybe As results for the big phase 3 trials for the BNT-Pfizer and Moderna were looming, a debate ramped up: when would the thousands of people in their placebo groups get vaccinated? That debate got really intense when we saw how effective those vaccines looked, and how bad the Covid pandemic was getting. How do you weigh up the value of the critical information you would get from continuing the blinded trials – we only had very short-term efficacy and safety data when they delivered first results – versus not penalizing the group of people who had volunteered? If you didn’...