because the results are tabulated as 'patient years.
In the last coupla weeks, there's been a few posts where the essential "real world squishiness"of the study has been overlooked. Allocating subjects between V and P groups is probably the last time the study does anything precisely prior to the analysis and math. The groups diverge due to the random characteristics in subjects, differential effectiveness, time lapses in how clinics handle/report data, the unseen variability in scrubbing data based on site reporting, etc.
If you were to graph the two groups and expect identically shaped "normal curves" or outcome distributions with an offset off the center value due to the effectiveness of V, you'd be disappointed. You'd get lumpy looking "normal" curves that would not necessarily overlay neatly. The statistical analysis (mean and standard deviation) account for the shape and different sized groups, tables and scatter diagrams and as JL sez, you reduce it to "patient years" or another workable concept
Likewise 60% is a target number and if Amarin wants to stretch out the reporting to get more numbers, it just gets conservative. Ain't no thang. Sixty percent or 67%, whatever...
I'm less sanguine about how it'll work onna 80% look. Stretch that out some and what is the meaningfulness of the difference between an 88% and 100%? If it ain't shown effectiveness at 9 outa 10, that's a wake up call.
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