Assignment: Here is an email I’ve received from my mom, who is 73:
“Yesterday I got the first vaccination, the Moderna version. […] So, after I’ve had time to build antibodies and got the second dose, is it safe for me to gather with other people who have been vaccinated?”
How would you answer this question? Please write a response email, mentioning both (a) the risk of contributing to wider spread and (b) the personal risk. Base your answer on this CDC report: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/acip/recs/grade/covid-19-moderna-vaccine.html and whatever other sources you want (but please cite them if you use others). Your response can be short (mine was 2 short paragraphs), but should be informative, including quantitative estimates and assessments of uncertainty. You may write your response aimed at whoever you want, but please try to use plain language as well as providing numbers (e.g., my mom understands confidence intervals, but I also said what I thought the takeaways were from the confidence intervals).
In particular, for personal risk you should say something about these results (from the report linked to above):
The vaccine was also associated with a lower risk of hospitalization due to COVID-19 (RR 0.11; 95% CI: 0.01, 0.87; evidence type 2, serious concern for indirectness), corresponding to a vaccine efficacy of 89% (95% CI: 13%, 99%).
(Here, “RR” is “relative risk”, so that a RR of 11% means that the risk in ‘treatment’ group of hospitalization is estimated to be 11% of that in the ‘control’ group.)