December 19, 2021

Briefly

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  • Pfizer’s vaccine trial in kids 2-5 years old wasn’t successful: the dose (1/10th adult dose, 30% of 5-12yr dose) seems to be too low. They will try a three-dose series.  It did work in 6-24 months kidlets.  Pfizer is also testing third-dose boosters for all child age ranges
  • “Why trust and transparency are vital in a pandemic” from the UK Office of Statistics Regulation. They note “It will not always be possible to publish information before it is used publicly. In these cases, it is important that data are published in an accessible form as soon as possible after they have been used, with the context provided and strengths and limitations made clear. “
  • Lee Wilkinson, a pioneer in statistical computing and graphics, passed away on December 10.  Among other influential contributions, he developed the statistical package ‘Systat’ and wrote ‘The Grammar of Graphics’
  • Florida is a counterexample to correlations between Covid vaccination and politics in the US. That seems to be partly because their data are wrong. “People age 18 and over in the 33122 area code had more than a 2,700% vaccination rate, according to the data….’That’s the airport,’ Gelber said.”
  • Via Jenny Nicholls on Twitter, a Washington Post story on injuries from bouncy castles. The story quotes the number of injuries as 82,203 from 2008 to 2013 and as one every 46 minutes in 2013.  You might think about whether these are compatible and which sounds bigger.  It also works out as about 0.2% of the roughly 8 million unintentional injuries in kids leading to emergency department visits. Which I think is more than I’d expect
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Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »