... “What I should have said better is that the data show a relative risk reduction not an absolute risk reduction,” he said.
...Imagine a clinical trial to test an experimental drug, with 2,000 patients split into two groups. The first 1,000 patients don’t get the drug, and in that group 10 people die. The other group of 1,000 patients gets the drug, and five people in that group die.
Using relative risk, that’s a 50% improvement -- a tremendous number. But using absolute risk, the imaginary drug only decreases the likelihood of death by 0.5%. That means 5 more of those 1,000 people treated with the drug would live, not the 500 implied if you mistakenly use the 50% relative risk number.
The claim of a 35% mortality benefit made by Trump, Azar and Hahn uses the first measure -- relative risk.
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