Fig. 1
The observed days of recovery and the transformed placebo group days of recovery in the Mossad [9] study. The first row shows the observed number of placebo patients who recovered on the day shown on the horizontal axis. The bottom row shows the observed number of zinc lozenge patients who recovered on the given day. The SDs of the placebo and zinc lozenge groups are significantly different with P = 2*10−5. The second row shows the transformation in which each placebo group common cold is assumed to become 4.0 days shorter because of the effect of the zinc lozenges. The third row shows the transformation in which each placebo group common cold is assumed to become 43% shorter because of the zinc lozenges. In the Mossad study, 2 patients were censored in the zinc group on days 9 and 11; and 6 patients were censored in the placebo group on days 7, 15, 16, and 19. The day of censoring was assumed to be the day of recovery in this figure