Affiliate Professor of Biostatistics and Fred Hutch biostatistician Holly Janes participated in discussions about the design of HIV vaccine trails in the era of oral PrEP. “There are a lot of people who are interested in PrEP, but cannot sustain that over time,” she said. “One reason has to do with the usual challenges of getting people to change their behaviors when they are healthy. An analogy might be the difficulty in getting people to floss their teeth on a daily basis. It’s difficult for all of us,” said Janes.

Biostatistics faculty members Tom Fleming and Betz Halloran sit on the WHO Ad Hoc Expert Group on the Next Steps for COVID-19 Vaccine Evaluation. In a recent New England Journal of Medicine article, the group notes that even though the efficacy of some COVID-19 vaccines appears to be high, reliable information will still be needed on longer-term safety and duration of protection.

"This analysis seems to be subject to the Texas sharpshooter fallacy," where someone first fires a shot at a barn then paints a target around the bullet hole, said panelist and biostatistician Scott Emerson, MD, PhD, of the University of Washington in Seattle.