The press release is interesting. Not the best way to present their data. Immediate conclusion of many newspapers is "oxford vaccine is less effective then...".
Better that than to be seen to overstate its effectiveness. The worst case scenario is people refuse to take it because they think they're being lied too or manipulated in some way.
On the (BBC) radio news earlier only the 90% figure was mentioned, not the 70%. This differs from the BBC news website, which started with the 70% figure and mentioned the 90% afterwards.
Maybe. But it's also time to compete and current headlines are not working. If the public opinion is that it's far less effective then the other 2, what is happening now, you are putting the politicians in a difficult position that want to buy your vaccine. If you dig deeper you will find results for all vaccins are pretty similar. For instance even though one of the trials with Oxford vaccine had more people with Covid sypmtoms they had no severe cases, compared to one severe case with the Pfizer trial. And the total for both are too low to make definite conclusions.
Headlines shouldn't be manipulated to make life easier for politicians...
Also, the issue will not be which vaccine is chosen, but above a certain percentage of effectiveness who can even supply enough of their vaccine to meet demand?
