> I'm sure both have studies that were paid for by the state, analyzing data GIVEN TO THEM by the state.

How many times do I have to repeat that the Sinovac and Sinopharm phase-III trials were conducted outside of China, by institutions that are unrelated to the Chinese government? It's not even possible to conduct a phase-III SARS-CoV-2 vaccine trial in China, because there is basically zero community spread. If the virus isn't spreading naturally, the only way to conduct a trial is to do a challenge study, and that's widely considered unethical.

> Both the Chinese and Russian vaccines refuse to release raw patient data. They think this shell game with the Lancet and others will fool people...maybe they are right.

Are you accusing the various institutes around the world that conducted studies on the Sinovac and Sinopharm vaccines from withholding data? What are you basing these allegations on?

> But China's internal numbers were > 90%.

I don't know what you're trying to refer to here.

This is what the Chilean Health Ministry found for the Sinovac vaccine:[1]

> In the fully immunized group, the estimated adjusted vaccine effectiveness was 65.9% (95% CI, 65.2 to 66.6) for the prevention of Covid-19 and 87.5% (95% CI, 86.7 to 88.2) for the prevention of hospitalization, 90.3% (95% CI, 89.1 to 91.4) for the prevention of ICU admission, and 86.3% (95% CI, 84.5 to 87.9) for the prevention of Covid-19–related death

A vaccine that reduces chance of hospitalization or death by a factor of 10 is a Godsend. This is the vaccine that the NY Times was attacking in the article I linked earlier.

> Keep in mind we are left to speculate about this only because we don't actually have raw data to either prove or disprove efficacy.

We do. It's right there in the Chilean study, in addition to several other peer-reviewed studies published in prestigious medical journals. I don't know what more you want. Do you want to know the names of the patients who enrolled in the studies?

> So all the people in SE Asia, the Middle East, South America, etc. that are tracking down western shots as boosters, they are all misguided?

By "Western shots," you mean two specific vaccines using mRNA technology, which everyone acknowledges have the highest efficacy. You're not referring to the other widely used "Western vaccines," developed by AstraZeneca and J&J, which have similar efficacy to the Sinovac and Sinopharm vaccines. Yes, most people in the world, if they had a choice, would pick whichever vaccine had the highest efficacy. That's not the world we live in, unfortunately. The mRNA vaccines are currently almost impossible to obtain outside of the developed world. Sinovac and Sinopharm have already exported hundreds of millions of doses around the world.

> What we do have is example after example of countries that either have Chinese vaccine and don't use it, or are tracking down alternatives after getting destroyed by variants only 6 months later.

The US is battling a horrifying surge in cases and deaths. I don't expect to see a NY Times article titled, "They Relied on American Vaccines. Now They're Battling Outbreaks." Imagine an article with that title, which led with a bunch of anecdotes about breakthrough infections and deaths, and which only mentioned near the end that actual scientific studies show that the vaccines are highly effective. I think whatever editor approved such an article about the US would get fired within short order for pushing anti-vax propaganda.

> Your name is Greek, China invests a lot in Greece. Are you employed either directly or indirectly by the Chinese government?

I live in a barrel in the Athenian marketplace.

1. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2107715