[HN Gopher] Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precau...
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Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'
Author : sirffuzzylogik
Score : 178 points
Date : 2021-03-15 15:20 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| giantandroids wrote:
| You do have to wonder if some of this is politically driven.
| Germany are losing hundreds of life's a day, while in the
| meantime the UK has administrated 23 million doses (not sure the
| ratio of those that were AstraZeneca) and not recorded a single
| fatality or adverse reaction and are seeing infection rates /
| deaths drop. I can understand caution under normal circumstances,
| but nothing is normal right now.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Well, there is also this:
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/7/22318113/russia-intelligen...
| fenk85 wrote:
| Perhaps you should consider the death rate per million between
| UK and Germany first?
|
| Or compare with Ireland next door to UK, if they had same death
| rate there be about 70K more people alive in UK today
|
| Yet all of that was forgotten in the manufactured in media
| vaccine nationalism wars
| Cu3PO42 wrote:
| It can definitely be interpreted as CYA. They are following the
| recommendation of the Paul-Ehrlich-Institute, a federal
| regulatory body.
|
| Imagine they went against this recommendation and it turns out
| there is indeed an issue with the vaccine. That would cause a
| shit storm of epic proportions. This way the "worst" that can
| happen is that there was a delay.
|
| Now people could die during that delay because they weren't
| vaccinated, but it's much easier to sweep that under the rug as
| a politician, in my opinion.
| high_derivative wrote:
| Same thought, I think this is part of political cover for the
| failing (in comparison) vaccination effort's in continental
| Europe.
|
| 'See, we were right not to vaccinate this fast'
|
| For the downvoters:
| https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/mar/15/eviden...
| mns wrote:
| If someone would say this about COVID, they would be
| downvoted into oblivion for spreading unfounded conspiracy
| theories. It's already 6 countries in the EU that reported
| issues until now.
| high_derivative wrote:
| The difference being that there is no evidence yet to point
| towards vaccinations causing these, while there is plenty
| evidence for covid. Further, there is plenty of evidence
| for the lost lives by NOT vaccinating faster.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Yeah, and I rightly so if you ask me. AZ seems so to get
| all the heat in the press. I really wonder why, but as soon
| as you start looking at the numbers, there never seems to
| be something to it.
|
| First it was efficiany with elderly in the study, were the
| numbers were totally misunderstood. Then it was overall
| effectiveness, then prevention of severe cases. The list
| goes on. In the meanwhile, the press is reporting every
| single rash people get with AZ.
|
| EDIT: Just checked, they found 7 cases of thrombosis in the
| brain, out of 1.6 million vaccinated people. Well, we'll
| see how that develops.
| danpalmer wrote:
| The AZ vaccine is also the only not-for-profit vaccine.
| mns wrote:
| So we've been in a 5 month lockdown already in Germany,
| all of it to stop the spread of the virus with huge costs
| to the country, and now the comment that I replied to is
| saying that "I think this is part of political cover for
| the failing". Meaning that Germany and the EU, which have
| been doing everything that they can to stop this, are now
| somehow involved in a political cover to get some sort of
| revenge on the UK/AstraZeneca at the cost of the people
| that would be affected by COVID?
| high_derivative wrote:
| But they did not do everything they can. They did not
| expedite AZ vaccine approval, they are messing up the
| rollout, they tried to negotiate prices instead of
| securing vaccines at all costs. They made a whole theatre
| about AZ deliveries and almost created an international
| crisis around Ireland..but no, no political aspect to it,
| none at all..
|
| I don't think they are trying to get revenge. They are
| trying to cover for their own failings. By any reasonable
| means, the vaccine rollout in continental Europe in
| relation to the wealth and logistics available compared
| to US/UK is a complete failure.
| detaro wrote:
| so how does further slowing vaccine progress, making it
| even less likely they'll meet the adjusted goals and
| anouncements, "cover for their failings", especially if
| there is a good chance it'll turn out it was unnecessary?
| At least right now people's reaction for sure isn't "oh
| too bad then, not your fault".
| finiteseries wrote:
| AZ vaccine is flawed => slow rollout isn't bad after all,
| maybe even a _good thing_ in the end.
|
| Goals and announcements have already been missed, and it
| turning out to be unnecessary can be muddied, or buried.
|
| Assuming this is indeed politics, there are a lot of
| positives to this type of move in an already shit
| situation.
| hef19898 wrote:
| As I said, no idea whether or not something is wrong with
| the AZ vaccine.
|
| And yes, governments are doing everything they can. And
| the screw up with vaccinations. No idea why, because I
| don't have all the details, but maybe AZ is just coming
| in time to have been 1) a good scape goat early on when
| one was needed during the frustration with vaccine
| deliveries 2) bad at PR 3) earned a bad rep and now
| everybody is over cautious. And public / media pressure
| isn't really helping.
| bobcostas55 wrote:
| >which have been doing everything that they can to stop
| this
|
| Except, you know, order enough vaccines for their
| population. Other than that though, everything that they
| can!
| hef19898 wrote:
| Well, as of early January the EU ordered almost twice as
| many doses as needed. They, and by that I mean the member
| states more than the EU, screwed up the distribution and
| vaccination campaigns.
| lm28469 wrote:
| > We're too slow so we're going to ban half of our vaccine
| supply
|
| Am I missing something, how's that supposed to help ?
| h3cate wrote:
| The UK has been in lockdown for the last 3 months. If cases are
| dropping the vaccine is not likely to be the main reason why.
| sjwest wrote:
| Its unfortunate they felt the need to stop the administration
| of this vaccine, as this will only further slow down vaccine
| distribution in Germany/Europe. I think you've got it spot on
| there - it stinks of politically motivated attack, but I'm not
| clear how this could benefit Germany's politicians slowing down
| the administration of the vaccine? Maybe they can use this as
| an excuse for the poor administration rates???
|
| BTW I literally just had the Astra Zenica vaccine here in UK -
| I have a sore arm, lets hope I don't get any of the reported
| side effects!
| DanBC wrote:
| There's a few things that might be happening.
|
| Germany has high rates of vaccine hesitancy. One way to
| tackle that is to be extra cautious. So, as soon as there's
| information about problems the vaccination programme is
| halted, an investigation is carried out, accurate and clear
| information is then presented showing rates of harm in
| unvaccinated and vaccinated people, and the programme is
| restarted.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Yes, in deed we have. As does France.
| neuronic wrote:
| Historically interesting: In the Soviet GDR there was a
| 95%+ vaccination rate and people trust Russian/Soviet
| vaccine science (I am from the region). Introducing
| Sputnik V to Germany may boost vaccine acceptance in the
| East.
|
| The majority of the vocal deniers is localized around
| Munich btw, same with homeopathy advocates. Not sure why
| that is but I suspect 1888's medicine book by Eduard
| Bilz, which was extremely popular in Germany, could play
| a role (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilz-Buch).
| hef19898 wrote:
| I never considered that angle. I wouldn't mind if Sputnik
| V would be certified in the EU as well. The more vaccines
| the better. And the faster we get out shit together here,
| the faster poorer countries can get their doses as well.
| Which was the EU plan anyway, at least initially.
| Nursie wrote:
| A bunch of friends of mine have spent a couple of days pretty
| whacked by it. Tiredness and a few headaches mostly.
|
| Make sure to get plenty of water and rest :)
| Zenst wrote:
| Get them to look at https://yellowcard.mhra.gov.uk/ and
| report their side effects. That's the UK system for
| reporting side effects in medications of any form.
|
| Also weekly report of the covid-19 vaccine side effects
| here:
| https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-
| covid...
|
| Had my jab 3 hours ago, and enjoying a nice honey dew
| pomelo as I type thinking, fruit just don't get any better
| than this.
| Nursie wrote:
| Interesting, will bring that up next time someone says
| something. Ta.
| wdb wrote:
| I didn't know that existed. Wondering if it also lists
| the side effects I experienced of medication when
| hospitalised at a NHS hospital?
| _Microft wrote:
| Just because we are at a medical topic and you are
| mentioning pomelos: they contain a substance (naringin)
| that can interfere with certain drugs. Just fyi
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| I think it's quite common to get flu like symptoms. Several
| people in my family did.
| throwaway4good wrote:
| It could also be driven by money.
|
| The alternative Pzifer jab is 10-20 times as expensive.
|
| That is a lot money, some of which may find its way to work the
| media and the decision makers.
| throwaway4good wrote:
| AZ is no-profit for now. I don't think Pfizer is.
|
| https://www.ft.com/content/c474f9e1-8807-4e57-9c79-6f4af145b.
| ..
|
| AstraZeneca vaccine document shows limit of no-profit pledge
|
| Company has right under contract to declare pandemic over by
| July 2021
| drcode wrote:
| A problem with bureaucracies is that they often care deeply if
| people die from an action they are responsible for, but are
| fine if there are massive deaths due to inaction.
| amelius wrote:
| The solution is simple though: politicians simply ask experts
| how many people die if they do X versus Y, and make sure it
| is recorded (e.g. by journalists) so they can refer to it
| later.
| levosmetalo wrote:
| Now as a politician, you just need to find the right expert
| that will recommend you whatever you want to do.
| amelius wrote:
| Of course you ask a reputable one, e.g. head of CDC etc.
| otherwise prepare to get in trouble with journalists.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| > of course you ask a reputable one
|
| What if that turns out to be more difficult than you
| originally realized.
| dahfizz wrote:
| Even assuming this utilitarian viewpoint is the correct
| one, you're putting a lot of faith in the general
| population to trust the experts / journalists and to be un-
| emotional when examining the facts.
| justapassenger wrote:
| Because you can very easily destroy public trust medicines if
| you approve something unsafe, even if in grand scheme of
| things, it was better for humans. Just look at
| antivaccination movement, and imagine how many more people
| would be there if their claims were actually supported by
| data.
|
| Humans aren't rational.
| blablabla123 wrote:
| Practically the last half year of Germany's corona policy
| is influenced by the anti vaccination movement. It's really
| annoying, on the other hand I think the anti vaxxers seemed
| to have stopped all major public appearances. So at least
| one positive thing.
| subltemelt wrote:
| It's interesting because I feel the opposite as an acute care
| doctor in the US. If I give a medication, or get a scan, or
| whatever, and the patient has an adverse reaction, it's the
| medication/scan's fault. If I don't give the medication,
| don't get the scan, and something bad happens, it's my fault.
| At least that's how people see it for now. Leads to a lot of
| over-treatment and extra unnecessary testing in my opinion,
| especially around COVID (for example, I frequently see high-
| dose dexamethasone given for longer than 10 days or given to
| normoxic patients, despite the recommendation being for 6 mg
| daily for 10 days, and only for patients requiring oxygen).
| amelius wrote:
| So a more accurate description is: politicians care deeply
| if people die from an action (or inaction) that went
| against the public opinion.
| dahfizz wrote:
| To take this further, public opinion cares much more
| about action than inaction.
|
| A handful of unjust police killings cause widespread
| protest / riot / unrest, but 15,000 unprevented homicides
| are largely accepted as part of life.
|
| You can argue that they are morally equivalent, but our
| brains get more angry at someone doing a bad thing than
| at someone not doing a good thing.
| nradov wrote:
| I thought that methylprednisolone was now preferred over
| dexamethasone for COVID-19 treatment.
|
| https://covid19criticalcare.com/medical-
| evidence/methylpredn...
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Exactly. You care if people die on your lawn. So you give
| out medication, do scans, etc. so that if people die they
| do it on someone else's lawn. It's ass-covering all the way
| down.
| andyjohnson0 wrote:
| > You care if people die on your lawn.
|
| I don't know how you know that. Given the significant
| time and effort required to become a doctor, isn't it at
| least as likely that they are motivated about people
| _not_ dying on _any_ lawn?
| drcode wrote:
| What you say makes complete sense, I'd argue the incentives
| are different for government agencies, however.
| jayd16 wrote:
| >If I give a medication, or get a scan, or whatever, and
| the patient has an adverse reaction, it's the
| medication/scan's fault.
|
| What about the Hippocratic oath? First do no harm.
| [deleted]
| StavrosK wrote:
| I mean, it doesn't actually say that, it says "I will do
| no harm" and "I will abstain from all intentional
| wrongdoing". That doesn't mean that doing nothing is
| fine, because you didn't do harm.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Almost as if people are doing their jobs then?
|
| I don't think that beurocrats are supposed to be leaders. The
| elected officials should be pushing for the change, not the
| people who run the operations.
| lxgr wrote:
| The cliche of the EU is that it's bureaucrats all the way
| up, though.
|
| Of course this is an exaggeration, but there is a somewhat
| disturbing neglect of EU elections, functions and political
| appointments in the public view (it's seen as less
| prestigious than national/federal elections in many EU
| member states).
|
| As a result, it's a climate that doesn't always attract and
| get the leadership it really needs (given that the EU
| formally and practically overrules legislation and
| jurisdiction of member states).
| thepangolino wrote:
| How do you explain the lockdowns then?
| drcode wrote:
| Lockdowns are enforced inaction, so the logic is
| counterintuitive in that case.
| rebuilder wrote:
| It's not just bureaucracies. People in general prefer bad
| outcomes due to inaction to bad outcomes due to action. See:
| trolley problem.
| lastofthemojito wrote:
| Feels similar to government IT risk aversion that I've seen.
| Folks are afraid to approve a new piece of software, or a new
| version, or a hotfix or whatever, because what if it goes
| awry and causes problems? But little weight seems to be put
| on "what if we keep running the same version we've been
| running for years and now that there's a known vulnerability,
| someone exploits it?".
| kitd wrote:
| "Better the devil you know" etc etc
| ampdepolymerase wrote:
| Exhibit A, the FDA when it comes to new drug approvals.
| yowlingcat wrote:
| Oof. I think you strike upon a generally accurate point.
| Thinking about how this applies to all sorts of bureaucracies
| now (including corporate ones)
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| Well, yeah. First, do no harm. It's not ethically acceptable
| to kill or seriously hurt a bunch of otherwise healthy people
| in order to plow on through with vaccination that'll save a
| bunch of other people. Especially since there are many other
| vaccine types, the issue with AZ could be a tainted batch
| instead of a fundamental problem with AZ per se, etc.
| numpad0 wrote:
| I'm not sure if it's bureaucracy or human nature, as
| government procedures had been responsive to the pandemic,
| and pressure to urge inactions have been overriding the pre-
| pandemic determined actions.
| drcode wrote:
| Pretty much all the responses of the government that were
| done quickly were to prevent action (i.e. no going to
| restaurants, no flights to certain areas, etc) so I'd argue
| that that also represents "inaction", just in a roundabout
| way.
| mikem170 wrote:
| Right. They were playing it safe, as opposed to having to
| defend themselves some day in the future for not playing
| it safe.
|
| This would explain why the Swedish state were so heavily
| criticised for not locking down. Also would explain the
| UK government arresting people for being outdoors
| (there's not really any data supporting outdoor
| transmission, that I know of).
| Nursie wrote:
| I'm not sure at this point. When it was one suspicious death,
| countries suspending the vaccine definitely seemed like an
| overreaction, and unfortunately this particular vaccine has
| been something of a political football and subject of a lot of
| noise.
|
| But as more blood-clot deaths emerge... you gotta think caution
| is wise.
|
| OTOH yes, we in the UK have administered a _lot_ of this stuff,
| and you 'd think someone would have noticed a serious side
| effect like this. So far reports from the UK seem to show no
| greater incidence of blood clot problems than would be expected
| without the vaccine.
|
| Difficult to call, but I hope it's all being investigated
| thoroughly.
| yokaze wrote:
| > But as more blood-clot deaths emerge... you gotta think
| caution is wise.
|
| I would challenge the term "caution", as it implies giving
| the vaccine is more risky than not.
|
| > Difficult to call, but I hope it's all being investigated
| thoroughly
|
| I agree there. But rather not for medical reasons.
| Nursie wrote:
| > I would challenge the term "caution", as it implies
| giving the vaccine is more risky than not.
|
| I suppose it depends on the alternative - if it's "not
| having the vaccine" clearly that's worse. If it's
| "controlling the death rate by prolonging lockdowns" then
| that's clearly not desirable either, but not quite as bad.
|
| If it's just "give a different vaccine", then that would be
| no problem. Of course then there are the supply issues it's
| unlikely that simple.
| ipaddr wrote:
| It may be more risky for a certain population (it looks
| like younger people). We just don't know yet.
|
| The majority of people getting the vaccinations are older.
| Perhaps we will see more cases will emerge for the younger
| age groups.
| WanderPanda wrote:
| > Difficult to call, but I hope it's all being investigated
| thoroughly.
|
| Important point! I start to get anxiety that there might be
| some Chernobyl level incompetence building up in our
| bureaucratic countries. I feel like we are getting to levels
| of a huge quantities of regulations, where then to unblock
| the process, relevant regulations are relaxed to be able to
| move forward, leaving us with a lot of regulations that make
| us feel safe, while the elephant in the room is building up
| through other valves. I fell like the 737 max thing also more
| or less fits this framework. So for the future: Let them
| incentives be aligned and them regulations work in the right
| direction!
| drcode wrote:
| > Difficult to call, but I hope it's all being investigated
| thoroughly.
|
| We don't have time for that, we can't wait for some
| government panel to announce in 2025 "actually the blood
| clots were no more common than in the general population"
| h3cate wrote:
| Most countries are pausing rollout for 2 weeks. After over
| a year of covid 2 weeks won't make a big difference.
| Nursie wrote:
| > We don't have time for that
|
| I hope it's being invested thoroughly _by the people that
| know this stuff inside out, from AZ, Oxford and doctors on
| the ground where this has happened_
|
| Damn right a government panel is useless here!
| clawoo wrote:
| > we in the UK have administered a lot of this stuff, and
| you'd think someone would have noticed a serious side effect
| like this
|
| Apparently EU vaccines are produced in Europe, maybe there's
| something wrong in the local production facilities that's
| causing this. UK has only used AZ vaccines produced in the
| UK, afaik.
| Nursie wrote:
| Could be, yes, the production issues a couple of months
| back were centred around a plant in Belgium, I wonder if
| perhaps all is still not well there?
| DanBC wrote:
| https://twitter.com/Cox_A_R/status/1371485854846320640?s=20
|
| > I don't know anyone in pharmacovigilance who thinks what is
| happening now in EU states is rational based on known
| information.
|
| > EMA had this right last week. We are seeing panic spread at
| EU state level.
|
| https://twitter.com/isth/status/1370424157947752452
|
| > The [International Society on Thrombosis and Haemostasis]
| recommends all eligible adults continue to receive the
| #COVID19 vaccine, despite recent decisions by some countries
| to at least temporarily suspend the use of the AstraZeneca
| vaccine due to reports of thrombosis. Read the full statement
| here: https://isth.org/news/556057
| afavour wrote:
| > But as more blood-clot deaths emerge... you gotta think
| caution is wise.
|
| Last I saw it's 30 blood-clot deaths. Given the number of
| people that have received the vaccine that's a tiny, tiny
| amount. Even if those 30 were directly linkable to the
| vaccine (and so far no such link has been proven) you could
| still make the argument that the benefits of mass
| vaccinations outweigh the concern.
|
| I don't envy anyone in charge of making those choices,
| though.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Some anti baby pills cause 8-12 trombose cases in 10,000
| women. And they are properly tested, approved and on the
| market.
|
| Usually I don't read notes coming with meds, but I am
| almost sure that even everyday stuff has potentially deadly
| side effects in the ball park number of the blood cloths AZ
| is causing.
| josefx wrote:
| > And they are properly tested, approved and on the
| market.
|
| And there would probably be an investigation into that
| the moment people using them showed up growing a third
| arm instead of getting a trombose.
| petre wrote:
| If it only happened on the continent and there really is an
| issue, it might lie with one or more batches from the
| Belgian factory. My country has only halted the allegedly
| problematic batch. The UK has been using the domestically
| manufactured vaccine without issue.
| dcolkitt wrote:
| Well, you see fifty years a few thousand birth defects occurred
| because one drug was approved too fast. Therefore millions now
| have to needlessly die while perfectly good vaccines go stale.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| this is awful first order thinking. If public authorities are
| perceived as untrustworthy on the safety of vaccines, there's
| a very high chance there will be widespread rejection of
| vaccination altogether in the population.
|
| People aren't utilitarian machines, trust in drugs is very
| easily broken, vaccines in particular. Showing neglect and
| lack of precaution may harm vaccination efforts for decades.
| mcintyre1994 wrote:
| > Nearly 60 years ago thalidomide was prescribed to treat
| morning sickness in pregnant women. What followed was the
| biggest man-made medical disaster ever, where over 10,000
| children were born with a range of severe and debilitating
| malformations.
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26043938/
|
| > The thalidomide scandal may have led to 10,000
| miscarriages, stillbirths and infant deaths in Britain,
| according to the former director of the trust that oversees
| payments to hundreds of people disabled by the drug taken by
| their pregnant mothers.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/mar/06/thalidomide-.
| ..
|
| IMO you're playing the effect of that down a bit by saying "a
| few thousand birth defects occurred".
| the8472 wrote:
| And yet it's fewer deaths than due to overly cautious
| vaccine approvals.
| Arnt wrote:
| How do you know that _before the cautious testing and
| approval procedure_?
|
| The EU recently approvied and has bought 200M J&J
| vaccines, I don't remember numbers of the other vaccines.
| If that vaccine were about as harmful as thalidomide,
| about 3000 babies would die during birth, and a
| considerably larger number would be born without an arm
| or similar.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Vaccines are not that different just because they are for
| different sickness. And there are no vaccines with any of
| these side effects, so there is no reason to believe the
| COVID vaccines will cause anything even close to that.
| Besides the normal stuff every drug has.
| the8472 wrote:
| Without hindsight we can still see that countries
| differed in approval timelines by a month even though
| they should have the same information available at the
| same time. Which means either one is taking more risks
| than necessary or another one is wasting time (and thus
| lives).
|
| And that's just approval, then there's the whole issue
| with the EU taking too long to negotiate lower prices
| instead of pre-paying for faster production ramp-up.
| [deleted]
| s_dev wrote:
| It's entirely possible a facility is producing vaccine that
| isn't up to QA standards i.e. a bad batch.
|
| The Irish reasoning for suspending AZ wasn't just because of
| blood clots but blood clots in the brain which have a
| completley different severity.
| DrBazza wrote:
| > In terms of quality, there are also no confirmed issues
| related to any batch of our vaccine used across Europe, or
| the rest of the world.
|
| https://www.astrazeneca.com/media-centre/press-
| releases/2021...
| s_dev wrote:
| Right but since when is "We investigated our data and found
| no problems" sufficient -- only independent verification
| will do.
| oezi wrote:
| Ratio is 50/50 Biontech/AstraZeneka.
| s_dev wrote:
| BioNTech partnered with Pfizer.
| dan1234 wrote:
| As I understand it, the ratio has been roughly 50/50 and there
| have been 13 clotting cases with AZ and 15 with Pfizer.
|
| Twitter thread with some commentary & sources:
|
| https://twitter.com/Martin_Moder/status/1371033872046166025
| calchris42 wrote:
| We will at some point have vaccinated the true believers and be
| left convincing the rest of the population to get their shots.
| From that perspective, taking action to demonstrate that we are
| being absolutely rigorous on the safety of the vaccines might
| be the global optimal in terms of minimizing time to herd
| immunity. Especially if we keep manufacturing the shots while
| studying the data.
|
| Just a thought with zero data behind it...
| leto_ii wrote:
| While I'm not necessarily disagreeing with your idea, couldn't
| you make the opposite case as well? Namely that since the
| AstraZeneca vaccine is mostly British, the government of that
| country has an interest in hiding/downplaying potentially
| harmful side-effects?
|
| As far as I know by now a bunch of European countries have
| already suspended vaccination with the AstraZeneca vaccine.
| These include France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands - not
| really a politically homogeneous bunch.
| s_dev wrote:
| >These include France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands -
| not really a politically homogeneous bunch.
|
| Litterally all members of the same economic and political
| Union. The EU.
| leto_ii wrote:
| Sure, but the EU is not a federation. There are still many
| divergent interests between these nations. Take the
| Netherlands and Italy for example - not a lot of agreement
| between those two, usually that is. They do seem to agree
| on AstraZeneca though.
| Frypa wrote:
| This. I've lived in both Germany and UK and from my humble
| experience with both the government and the health standards,
| I think it's more likely the UK/AZ are downplaying this. It
| could be that they are right and the impact is minimal given
| that millions of people have been vaccinated. But I do
| believe the german version here more. The tory government
| can't be trusted.
| alecco wrote:
| Are you saying the NHS is complicit in hiding deaths due to
| vaccines?
| xgb84j wrote:
| The ethical issue is that the people dying from COVID and the
| people who might have an adverse reaction from the vaccination
| are not the same people.
|
| If mostly old people die from COVID but the adverse reaction of
| the vaccine is independent of age, then for very young people
| the risk of an adverse reaction of the vaccination might
| outweigh the risk of permanent damage from COVID.
| ralfn wrote:
| Yeah. As someone not in any risk group I will prefer the
| Pfizer or Moderna one. I'll be happy to get the Janssen one
| or even the Sputnik, but if the vaccine they offer me is AZ
| then I will refuse.
|
| And not just because of the obviously higher risk associated,
| but also because it appears not to be effective against the
| new strains. (Especially the new South Africa strain). Unlike
| for example the Janssen vaccine (goes by their parent company
| of Johnson and Johnson in the US) which was actually
| validated in South Africa or the rna ones which are just a
| technical masterpiece.
|
| Keep in mind that the real shortage of vaccines is production
| locations right now. And the type of production of the
| Janssen, AZ and the Sputnik vaccine is all similar. So why
| even produce more of the worst vaccine in any of these
| locations.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Sputnik is not approved, manufacturers are cooperating for
| all the other vaccines already.
|
| Regarding the strains, all vaccines are less effective
| against the South African one.
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| But if these reactions are a result of the vaccine, it has to
| be at an extremely low rate of people vaccinated. Even the
| small rate of death from COVID for young people is going to
| be higher than that risk.
| s9w wrote:
| There hasn't been a single corona death in Germany
| complex1314 wrote:
| In Norway at least, where we have high compliance and
| relatively few corona deaths, one important point is to keep
| public trust in the authorities. The worst case scenario would
| be loss of trust in the vaccine and loss of trust in the health
| authorities. Then people would not get vaccinated even if the
| authorities were recommending it.
|
| Also the symptoms are bizarre, the deaths and hospitalizations
| from blod clot have all been young health care workers in good
| health with onset of symptoms a few days after getting their
| first shot. They have all had low platelet count which is very
| unusual with blood clots and complicates treatment immensely
| because the standard thrombolytic treatment is then not safe to
| use.
| jansan wrote:
| Do I see this correctly that Norway has about 2 COVID-19
| deaths per day on average recently? If so the governments is
| doing the absolutely right thing. Not halting vaccination
| with AZ would be highly irresponsible.
| marvin wrote:
| That is approximately right. Total death toll from Covid is
| 640 from a population of 5.3 million.
| happyconcepts wrote:
| Wow. Then we should look more closely at the glymphatic
| system no?
| bananaowl wrote:
| According to these reports hosted on gov.uk there are reports
| of fatalities and reactions.
|
| Pfizer:
| https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
|
| AstraZeneca:
| https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
|
| Disclaimer from UK.gov:
|
| Part of our monitoring role includes reviewing reports of
| suspected side effects. Any member of the public or health
| professional can submit suspected side effects through the
| Yellow Card scheme. The nature of Yellow Card reporting means
| that reported events are not always proven side effects. Some
| events may have happened anyway, regardless of vaccination.
| This is particularly the case when millions of people are
| vaccinated, and especially when most vaccines are being given
| to the most elderly people and people who have underlying
| illness.
| https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid...
|
| Edit: Added disclaimer from UK.gov
| andybak wrote:
| 1 fatal case of Immune thrombocytopenia for AstraZeneca 1 of
| Thrombocytopenia for Pfizer
|
| Slightly different reporting periods but I'm pretty happy
| with the odds and I'd take either if offered.
| nerbert wrote:
| Much better odds than covid anyway.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| I don't see any problem with reporting official information.
|
| Can we please fucking stop the downvotes?
| stupidcar wrote:
| An explanation of the above reports, including why they can't
| be used to make any inference about the safety of the
| vaccines:
| https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-
| covid...
| bananaowl wrote:
| Not quite sure why I'm getting downvoted for publishing
| those two links, but hey :)
|
| Anyway, here's the UK's disclaimer from the Yellow Card
| summary link you posted.
|
| Part of our monitoring role includes reviewing reports of
| suspected side effects. Any member of the public or health
| professional can submit suspected side effects through the
| Yellow Card scheme. The nature of Yellow Card reporting
| means that reported events are not always proven side
| effects. Some events may have happened anyway, regardless
| of vaccination. This is particularly the case when millions
| of people are vaccinated, and especially when most vaccines
| are being given to the most elderly people and people who
| have underlying illness.
| DrBazza wrote:
| There's no guidance on how to read that.
|
| I suspect it's probably "possible side effects and deaths
| within 28 days of administering a vaccine", in the same way
| that the UK records "deaths within 28 days of a positive
| COVID test". One does not imply the other was the cause.
| (edit) other commenter points to the official UK docs.
|
| Even with that information, you need to know the non-vaccine
| incidence of the illnesses in that report to make any
| meaningful comparison and assessment of the efficacy of the
| vaccine. Which is what I rely on scientists to do.
|
| From the horse's mouth:
|
| Ann Taylor, Chief Medical Officer, said: "Around 17 million
| people in the EU and UK have now received our vaccine, and
| the number of cases of blood clots reported in this group is
| lower than the hundreds of cases that would be expected among
| the general population. The nature of the pandemic has led to
| increased attention in individual cases and we are going
| beyond the standard practices for safety monitoring of
| licensed medicines in reporting vaccine events, to ensure
| public safety."
|
| https://www.astrazeneca.com/media-centre/press-
| releases/2021...
| rurban wrote:
| So far they only vaccinated older people with it. These
| complications all happened in younger people where we don't have
| a coverage if millions. More like a few thousands.
|
| Thanksfully Germany acted now rationally, like the other
| countries. One idea would be to administer only half the dosis on
| younger people, as this was already tested, with much better
| results than with the full dosis. AZ is pretty strong, compared
| to the others.
| whyenot wrote:
| Vaccine skepticism is already very high in many European
| countries, including Germany. Vaccination doesn't work if 1/3 to
| 1/2 the population doesn't want to get the vaccine because they
| are afraid of the side effects. There may be some value in
| governments showing citizens how cautious they are being, even if
| it is not necessarily warranted based on the number of adverse
| reactions.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| The PR damage alone from this move is undeniably going to cause
| an unimaginable amount of loss. People who were on the fence of
| taking the vaccine have just solidified on their decision.
| donovanian wrote:
| The PR damage happens when authorities engage in noble lying
| and all of this weird non-transparent messaging.
|
| Public health really hasn't been upfront with a lot, and their
| back and forth on a number of issues, while maintaining this
| air of authority is ultimately counter-productive to building
| trust.
| fasteddie31003 wrote:
| The pandemic has made me believe we need to be greater
| consiquentalists in our polices. It's pretty obvious that on the
| whole the AstraZeneca vax will save more people than are killed
| from the side effects. We don't not live in a 0 risk existence.
| hnedeotes wrote:
| > We don't not live in a 0 risk existence.
|
| ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah
| corndoge wrote:
| Is that obvious? If you have the choice between self
| quarantining and trying to avoid contracting a virus that, if
| contracted, has a low percentage of killing you, vs choosing to
| get a vaccine that also has a low percentage of killing you,
| why would you choose the vaccine?
| dcolkitt wrote:
| This is like saying you should never leave your house,
| because you could die in a car accident. (And the chance of
| dying from the AZ vaccine is at most the chance of dying
| driving to vaccination site.)
| corndoge wrote:
| No, it's not like saying that
| scotty79 wrote:
| Because one "low" is few orders of magnitude lower than other
| "low".
| corndoge wrote:
| Right, but that's assuming you get the virus; to properly
| compare it you have to factor the chance you contract the
| virus in the first place. I'm not saying the math works out
| better, I haven't done it myself, but I'd bet most people
| would choose to try to avoid contracting
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| Yeah, I'm willing to avoid contracting the virus... by
| getting the vaccine, which certainly isn't as deadly as
| the virus has been. It isn't just the kill rate, though:
| I truly want to avoid the long-term complications that
| some folks are getting. I'll avoid the suffering that
| comes with the virus too, even without the complications.
| shawabawa3 wrote:
| most people in my experience are fed up of trying to
| avoid contracting and would rather the much lower risk of
| vaccine (bare in mind 10+m people have received this
| vaccine in the UK with no known issues)
| Cu3PO42 wrote:
| Maybe because one probability is significantly lower than the
| other. Maybe because you just can't self quarantine because
| you cannot work from home. Maybe because you need to take
| care of other family members and don't want to put them at
| risk.
|
| There's a lot of good reasons for choosing a vaccine even if
| the risk isn't strictly zero. And you also need to remember
| that receiving vaccination isn't mandatory. If you personally
| aren't comfortable with the risks you don't have to get
| vaccinated.
|
| This makes me skeptical of the suspension, but I'm not an
| export on these matters and haven't done enough research to
| claim to have done my due diligence, so I'll refrain from
| either advocating for or against this step.
| onetimemanytime wrote:
| Ummmm....we can wait and get another vaccine? The vaccine is
| done on HEALTHY people, we're not talking about meds on
| terminal stage cancer patients with nothing to lose.
| [deleted]
| totalZero wrote:
| You can also just expose yourself to the virus and build
| immunity that way. Up to you.
| onetimemanytime wrote:
| Nope. They are options, like quarantine, masks, different
| vaccines. It's not "this vaccine right now or death."
|
| The most sensible thing is to investigate this, maybe more
| _without_ the vaccine died from thrombosis, but need to
| see.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| THat works great if you don't die.
|
| That doesn't work so great if you don't die and have
| lifelong complications, though. It doesn't work so great if
| you get it and kill your child/grandmother either.
|
| It doesn't work so well if you have to catch the virus
| multiple times to have immunity either (folks aren't always
| immune after catching it). Not to mention the unknowns with
| mutations of the virus.
|
| It is seriously much better to try to avoid catching the
| virus at all. The virus means you might be ok... or you
| might die, or you might have a lifetime of suffering that
| you wouldn't get with a vaccine.
| fasteddie31003 wrote:
| Ummmm... I already have been vaccinated and it feels amazing
| not having a fear of death over me. Guess what. I'm going on
| vacation to a beach in a few weeks because you know, science.
| onetimemanytime wrote:
| I hope not, but those can be famous last words. Even if AZ
| works as marketed, it's no where near 100%. Then we have
| different strains
| fasteddie31003 wrote:
| Nothing is going to ever be 100% safe. Live your life how
| you want, but I'm personally fine with a little risk and
| live a more fulfilling life with more life experiences. I
| ride a motorcycle. It's defiantly not safe, but I've had
| so many great memories on it that I am fine with the
| risk.
| totalZero wrote:
| Plenty of motorcyclists forget to keep the rubber side
| down, get hurt, then continue riding after recuperating
| from injuries.
|
| Still, the consequences for those unfortunate riders can
| stay with them throughout life.
|
| Ride safe.
| mikem170 wrote:
| What you said about different strains has never been more
| than click-bait and conjecture. Please stopping spreading
| this, people are scared enough already. This is not how
| t-cell immunity and coronaviruses work [0].
|
| From an article titled "Lab studies suggest Pfizer,
| Moderna vaccines can protect against coronavirus variant"
| I quote:
|
| "While the blood serum samples produced less neutralizing
| antibody activity, it was still enough to neutralize the
| virus, they wrote in a letter to the journal. This is in
| line with other studies. And it's well within what is
| seen with other viruses, one of the researchers said."
| [1]
|
| [0] https://www.google.com/search?q=covid+immunity+from+o
| ther+co...
|
| [1] https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/17/health/pfizer-vaccine-
| south-a...
| isolli wrote:
| Agreed, and the same argument can be applied _against_
| lockdowns (meaning measures such as mandatory stay-at-home
| orders that go beyond usual NPIs). I think it is slowly
| emerging that hard lockdowns have done more harm than good.
| There is no zero risk in life.
| esperent wrote:
| There's a big difference here though - when it comes to a
| vaccine, we have hard stats to define the risk/reward ratio.
|
| I believe it's likely that lockdowns may cause some deaths,
| or possibly even lots of deaths. However, they certainly help
| prevent the spread of deadly disease too and hence prevent
| many deaths. We can probably get fairly definite numbers on
| how many deaths lockdown prevents in a large population. I
| don't think we can get similar numbers on how many they
| cause. My gut says they probably prevent a lot more than they
| cause, but I'd like to see any studies on this, if anyone has
| a link to share.
| donovanian wrote:
| > What are you basing your claim about lockdown causing
| death on?
|
| It's pretty obvious there's a profound psychological,
| developmental (children), and economic toll of lockdowns.
|
| For anyone that's below 60 or so, it's very clear they've
| got net negative effects on their life from draconian
| across the board measures that go on this long.
|
| edit: wow immediately flagged? Is it verboten to mention
| the simple fact of economic trade-offs in any decision we
| make?
|
| I'm not even saying that lockdowns are bad, I'm saying that
| they have profound consequences that can't be brushed away
| or ignored.
|
| The fact that so many are reticent to even admit that is
| why I think it's so important to mention it.
| mikem170 wrote:
| I agree with you. There is a lot of fear around this
| topic, so I assume rather than engage with on the merits
| people may be downvoting you in defence of their
| emotions.
| isolli wrote:
| Fair question. In a sense, the evidence for vaccines is
| upfront, while the evidence for lockdowns required the
| careful accumulation of data. I would cite for instance the
| paper by Ioannidis and co-authors [0].
|
| "In summary, we fail to find strong evidence supporting a
| role for more restrictive NPIs in the control of COVID in
| early 2020. We do not question the role of all public
| health interventions, or of coordinated communications
| about the epidemic, but we fail to find an additional
| benefit of stay-at-home orders and business closures.
|
| The data cannot fully exclude the possibility of some
| benefits. However, even if they exist, these benefits may
| not match the numerous harms of these aggressive measures.
| More targeted public health interventions that more
| effectively reduce transmissions may be important for
| future epidemic control without the harms of highly
| restrictive measures."
|
| [0] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/eci.13484
| devthane wrote:
| It probably depends where you are located. There are some
| less developed countries countries that jumped the gun on
| hard lockdowns without any sort of care infrastructure I
| which people have died due to inability to get food or care
| for births.
|
| For a source https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.reuters.co
| m/article/amp/...
|
| I don't attempt to extend that to more developed countries
| however. And I can't say they things wouldn't be worse if
| they hadn't locked down, but according to a family I know
| in Uganda, they were locked down before they had even one
| case. I haven't done the research on whether that is true
| or not so take it or leave it.
| gotoeleven wrote:
| As we have learned over the last year, doing a cost benefit
| analysis on anything related to covid is the equivalent of
| drowning your grandmother in a bathtub.
| mikem170 wrote:
| And not just financial costs, but quality of life costs. One
| to two years of restrictions, quarantine, and/or lockdown is
| a sizeable fraction of everyone's lives.
|
| I feel bad for people in countries where people are even
| restricted from being outdoors, despite hearing again and
| again that outdoors is the safest place to be.
| virgilp wrote:
| In EU at least plenty of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are still
| incoming, so there are actually alternatives to AZ.
|
| Do not forget that these vaccines are still very new, plus
| there's the possibility of a production issue with the AZ
| vaccine that affects only part of the production; I wouldn't
| say it's "politically-motivated" or a dumb idea to pause AZ
| vaccinations until one does a deeper investigation; I
| personally chose to avoid AZ due to a history of strokes in my
| family, I preferred to reserve a spot on the Moderna list.
| Better safe than sorry.
| fasteddie31003 wrote:
| It's the trolly problem. Pull the lever and kill one person.
| Don't pull the lever and kill 3 people. I'm a lever puller.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| Only it isn't that simple.
|
| Pull the lever, and the lever might do things you didn't
| expect - like derail the last few cars. Don't pull the
| lever, and people die for sure.
|
| If you derail the last car and don't try to put it back
| before the next train, you now suddenly have more folks
| that don't trust the lever and avoid all trains, not just
| the one you operate.
| hatch_q wrote:
| But the real risk here is that the lever will get stuck.
| Even if 1 person dies from vaccine - it can create huge,
| long-lasting case against vaccination, causing more people
| to choose not to vaccinate and eventually killing a lot
| more people.
|
| There must be no doubts with vaccines, 100% trust in them
| is essential.
| fasteddie31003 wrote:
| Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the great.
| colechristensen wrote:
| In the US, ~160,000 people over the age of 85 have died while
| 216 people under the age of 18 have died. Covid represents a
| proportion of deaths from all causes of 13.5% for 85+ and 0.58%
| under 18. The trend in between the age group extremes continues
| in an expected way.
|
| You can't make the same decisions about risks when you have one
| side so skewed by age. There is absolutely no guarantee that
| side effects from vaccination would be a preferable risk for
| younger populations or that vaccination side effects would have
| comparable age-related effects.
|
| Covid response isn't a religion, it's not "we have to do
| everything" or "we shouldn't do anything", responses need
| reason not gut reactions.
| hef19898 wrote:
| 0.58% is an order of magnitude higher then 30 out of 17
| million. Going by these numbers, AZ is still better than
| COVID. And I doubt any worse than other vaccines.
| colechristensen wrote:
| That is an incorrect statistical comparison.
|
| It is 0.58% of all _deaths_ being caused by covid. As in
| 994 out of 1000 people under 18 died in the same period
| from other things.
|
| Compared to people who are _alive_ covid killed 0.000288%
| (or 1 in 350,000) under 18s.
|
| 30 in 17M is too few to have a reliable statistic, but that
| comes out to 1 in 567,000.
|
| If that holds, is age invariant, etc. etc. and ignoring the
| time-based nature of the covid deaths, taking that vaccine
| would represent a *50%* increase in death risk for under
| 18s, which is just absurdly high. (it doesn't matter that
| that 50% isn't exactly right, anything remotely close is an
| unacceptable risk)
|
| Statistics is hard.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Wouldn't taking the 1 in 567,000 risk eliminate the 1 in
| 350,000 risk. Vaccine risk and disease risks don't stack.
| But I could be mistaken, statistics is hard you know.
| theaeolist wrote:
| How is 1/350,000 a LOWER risk than 1/567,000? I don't get
| it.
| mikem170 wrote:
| They are relatively close, enough so that unknowns may
| change the equation. Are there more unknowns for covid in
| young people, or more unknowns from the vaccines?
|
| (I'm not commenting on how to solve this equation, just
| pointing out other factors)
| Kranar wrote:
| One metric is the ratio of COVID deaths / total deaths
| the other is COVID deaths / total population.
|
| Since everyone is expected to get the vaccine, it's not
| fair to compare COVID deaths / total deaths to vaccine
| deaths / total population, you need to compare COVID
| deaths / total population to vaccine deaths / total
| population.
|
| In this case, assuming the numbers posted are remotely
| accurate, then this specific vaccine could end up being
| far more dangerous to people under 18 years of age
| compared to getting COVID and waiting it out for two
| weeks.
|
| We don't know and I'm not asserting one way or another.
| I'm just saying that making comparisons is much more
| difficult and nuanced than the straightforward naiive
| approach.
| h3cate wrote:
| Why put people that are at low risk from covid at risk by
| giving them a vaccine?
| xgb84j wrote:
| Yes, but those are different people that might be killed, which
| makes it an ethical dilemma.
|
| Depending on the type of adverse reaction, it might be safer
| for young people to not get vaccinated at all or with a
| different vaccine. (For example if the adverse reaction affects
| mostly young people, while COVID affects mostly older people.)
| WanderPanda wrote:
| Thats why everyone should be free to chose to get vaccinated.
| It is not fair to transfer the disease risk from old/risk
| groups to (longterm) side-effect risks for young/healthy
| people
| dehrmann wrote:
| It's a little cold, but the rollout targeting old people
| first helps a lot with de-risking. It reminds me of the
| group of people over 60 who worked on containing the
| Fukushima reactor. That was more altruistic and would only
| happen in some cultures, but it's a similar net outcome.
| lxgr wrote:
| > Thats why everyone should be free to chose to get
| vaccinated.
|
| Isn't that the case? At least in my country, there is no
| obligation to take the vaccine, and even incentives (e.g.
| being able to attend public events sooner) are seen very
| critically.
| h3cate wrote:
| People in the UK are pushing for a vaccine passport that
| people will need to be allowed into venues or travel.
| Here's a story from today about BA introducing a passport
| to travel - BBC News - Covid-19: British Airways plans
| app-based travel pass
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-56392570
| ktybdr wrote:
| There are definitely people with the view that they
| should be mandatory and I've personally started to
| encounter social pressure to get vaccinated, which I
| don't want to do, because I lead a low-contact hermit's
| life and the odds of dying from COVID which I probably
| won't catch if I maintain my lifestyle a few more months
| appears to be lower than the chance I'll die from a
| vaccine that I definitely get
|
| For my age cohort the chance of death from either is
| infinitesimal but because of Bayes it might make sense to
| continue to avoid both, but if I try to explain that to
| my peers they might think I'm a Trump supporter, and as
| everyone knows, Trump supporters should be shunned from
| polite society (especially since the "insurrection"), so
| I see this as a choice between social excommunication and
| a questionable injection I don't want
|
| Fun times
| wbronitsky wrote:
| I'm curious as to why you find the injection
| questionable? From my understanding, all of the vaccines
| approved in the US followed the same path every other
| vaccine follows. The difference was that Covid is
| everywhere, so stage 3 went really quickly, where it
| could normally take many months or years for the
| requisite amount of people to catch the disease in
| question.
|
| To me, these vaccines have been as rigorously tested as
| they could be, and none of this was really ever about
| people in your health category anyways, so that seems
| irrelevant in the "utility of vaccination" argument.
|
| I could be incorrect though, so I'm interested in your
| unease and rejection of what I find to be sound science.
| Retric wrote:
| Assuming your odds of catching COVID is 1 in 1,000 that's
| still a higher risk for any adult age group than the
| vaccines. I doubt your risk of catching covid is actually
| that low.
|
| More importantly it's not just about avoiding death, a
| bad case of COVID is terrible even if you survive. On top
| of this you reduce the risk of spreading it to someone
| else.
| fasteddie31003 wrote:
| No one is forcing you to get the vax. I would have personally
| taken the Moderna vax months before the FDA approved it
| because I was following the research closely.
| mikem170 wrote:
| I'm curious, were you able to find specific numbers for any
| of the studies done for regulatory approval? The raw data
| showing how many people got the drug, how many had side
| effects, and how this compares to normal rates?
|
| I haven't had any luck with that. I assume these numbers
| are what the FDA is looking at. Possible side effects are
| documented in the packaging for a drug, but that doesn't
| qualify the risk without numbers. I'd prefer to know this
| for any drug I'd consider using. I find it strange that
| this data is so hard to find.
|
| I ask because it sounds like you went pretty deep in the
| vaccine you mentioned, maybe you bumped into this.
| h3cate wrote:
| Ha if only this were true. UK companies are requiring
| employees have the vaccine and ba is requiring the vaccine
| to travel.
| yread wrote:
| I've mentioned it in a comment in the previous thread but it's
| not completely unexpected and with no causal link. Adenovirus
| induced blood coagulation problems are known:
|
| Adenovirus-induced thrombocytopenia: the role of von Willebrand
| factor and P-selectin in mediating accelerated platelet clearance
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000649712...
|
| You can see the number of reported cases across Europe in the
| EUDRA Vigilance database (if you manage to get through the Oracle
| BI interface and if it doesn't error out)
|
| https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/human-regulatory/research-devel...
|
| I don't understand why AstraZeneca doesn't just say: yeah blood
| clots are a risk, incidence 1/100,000 and everyone can move on.
| Why does everything needs to be so politicized with this vaccine.
| colechristensen wrote:
| >Why does everything needs to be so politicized with this
| vaccine
|
| It is politicized because it effects more or less everyone on
| the planet and people are setup to take popular things and turn
| them into polarizing issues for political power in politicians
| and social capital for ordinary people. This is how a whole lot
| of people seek out happiness, by being "right" in their social
| circles, especially in a way that shows them as superior to
| large groups of others who are "wrong".
|
| Social media preys intentionally or unintentionally on this
| human psychological vulnerability (can we get a CVE on the
| human psyche?) and every bit of media wants to sell you a
| compelling story so they stoke the flames of A/B conflicts.
|
| The mass psychology/mythology/philosophy of the day is based
| around this crap and will turn anything into a "political"
| issue and people just generally aren't well educated enough to
| think independently or evaluate situations rationally on their
| own so they allow their reason to be driven by systems which
| are evolutionarily dependent on preying on addictive human
| behavior.
| gt565k wrote:
| oh boy anti-vaxxing groups on FB are gonna eat this up
|
| all things considered, that's pretty bad news if they fucked up
| on some batches and people died because of poor QA
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| The anti-vax groups have been eating this up since before it
| was even related to the AZ vaccination. There were posts about
| medical professionals in the US who received the Pfizer vaccine
| having similar issues shortly after having that injection.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| Those cases actually happened (they've been reported by
| reputable sources, not anti-vaxxers blogs), but nobody cared
| because the numbers are small.
|
| It's definitely weird to see countries reacting when this
| happens with AZ.
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| Sure those cases happened. Of course in a country of 300
| million people strange stuff happens every day.
|
| What is more likely, that two independently developed and
| tested vaccines using a different technique both have the
| same rare side effect or that these things happen at a low
| level in the population and are completely uncorrelated
| with the vaccine?
| rhino369 wrote:
| They would eat it up if this was swept under the rug and it
| later comes out there was a problem.
|
| You can't cover up and refuse to investigate merely because the
| investigation might have bad optics.
|
| The worst case scenario is that there is problem, its gets
| covered up, and then a few weeks later the problem kills people
| and now the public has zero faith in vaccines.
| maxerickson wrote:
| It seems the rate of these conditions isn't any different for the
| vaccinated than for the population (last bit of the article makes
| this point).
|
| What's the thought process here?
| wyck wrote:
| Most likely liability. Since all the AZ vaccines were rushed to
| market they did not go through the regular channels of
| approval, in some countries legislation had to be changed in
| order to limit the liability of doctors/technicians and the
| companies themselves.
|
| I've personally seen the waiver forms send to doctors, and none
| of the usual testing was done, including the effect on
| youngsters, pregnant women, etc.
|
| There is a very good reason we had these regulations in place
| to begin with.
|
| tl'dr: Governments have let AZ off the hook legally if side-
| effects or worse occur.
| rel2thr wrote:
| Blood clots have a known set of causes and risk factors. If the
| people getting these clots aren't people who normally would get
| clots , it's cause for concern. The overall rate doesn't matter
| much
| dazc wrote:
| EU leaders shooting themselves in the foot? Not sure what
| thought goes into that scenario other than none at all?
|
| WHO say no evidence of any risk
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-56404542
| detaro wrote:
| Yeah, this seems to make no sense from the outside and the data
| I've seen, which all puts this in fairly normal ranges. And not
| enough transparency into the _why_ then IMHO. But well,
| transparency into why this is supposed to make sense is
| something sorely missing from German covid policies for a long
| time now...
|
| EDIT: as pointed out elsewhere, the official press release
| gives us that there has been new data in the past few days with
| a specific concern, that's at least some info.
| 5cents wrote:
| The rates at population levels are not enough. These are rare
| cases and, at least partially, in groups of people who
| shouldn't get that ill and suddenly die
| maxerickson wrote:
| _Last week, Lothar Wieler, head of Germany's Robert Koch
| Institute for Infectious Diseases, said there was no evidence
| that patients who received the vaccine were more likely than
| patients of a similar age group to suffer blood conditions._
|
| Is that guy wrong or basing the statement on outdated
| information?
| Sol- wrote:
| Might be outdated, since he talks about clotting generally
| but the agency in charge of halting the vaccinations
| mentions a specific rare complication today [1]:
|
| > accumulation of a special form of very rare cerebral vein
| thrombosis (sinus vein thrombosis) in connection with a
| deficiency of blood platelets (thrombocytopenia) and
| bleeding in temporal proximity to vaccinations with the
| COVID-19 vaccine AstraZeneca.
|
| Perhaps really just a bad batch somehow if this particular
| complication wasn't observed in the UK.
|
| [1] https://www.pei.de/EN/newsroom/hp-news/2021/210315-pei-
| infor...
| fabian2k wrote:
| There is new data, and the statement from the Paul Ehrlich
| Institute refers specifically to a specific type of
| thrombosis. The PEI is the institute responsible for
| vaccines, the RKI is for infectious diseases in general.
|
| It's hard to say if this is a good decision, my impression
| is that this is too risk-averse given the real danger and
| very significant chance of COVID 19 infections. But it does
| seem to be based on different data than just a few days
| ago.
|
| PEI Statement:
|
| https://www.pei.de/EN/newsroom/hp-news/2021/210315-pei-
| infor...
| rossdavidh wrote:
| So, does anyone know why Astra/Zeneca is not approved in the
| U.S.? Did they not try, or it's still ongoing, or did they have
| problems?
| zain wrote:
| They haven't submitted to the FDA for emergency use
| authorization yet because their trials aren't done yet. Their
| trials started well after Pfizer/Moderna and are longer than
| J&J. They're expected to apply in the next 3-4wks.
| pkaye wrote:
| The trial were delayed. I read just today that the results are
| being reviewed to see if sufficient for submittal to the FDA.
| sampo wrote:
| My understanding is, FDA requires data from trials run on US
| population. Trials from other countries are not sufficient
| alone. AstraZeneca is currently running a trial in the US.
| sampo wrote:
| I have seen 2 similar cases of immune thrombocytopenia in the
| news in US, one related to the Moderna vaccine, and one related
| to the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/08/health/immune-thrombocyto...
| (alternative link: https://archive.is/RisZF)
|
| https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/doctors-death-afte...
| the-dude wrote:
| The EU commission has framed AZ as _not trustworthy_ from the
| moment the first delivery targets could not be met.
|
| This has influenced public opinion in NL quite a bit ( in DE too
| I suspect ). I can read in the local comment sections that people
| want to decline the AZ vaccine as they _don 't trust it_, and _it
| is only 60% effective_. They would rather have Pfizer, even
| Sputnik or rather no vacination at all than AZ. These commenters
| seem quite hostile to AZ and the UK for that matter.
|
| And these comments are from before the clotting allegations.
|
| This is and has been quite a contra-productive negotiation
| strategy from the EU commission, directly endangering public
| health in my humbe opinion.
| detaro wrote:
| > _The EU commission has framed AZ as not trustworthy from the
| moment the first delivery targets could not be met._
|
| source? Yes, there is some negative opinion about this, but at
| least in Germany it's much more based on media citing
| "government sources" and general FUD tactics than anything the
| commission has said.
| libertine wrote:
| It's funny because on the other way around it seems like the
| British Government did precisely the opposite by selling this
| vaccine as a prime example of British superiority and why
| "Brexit makes sense".
|
| You're criticizing EU commission for transparently expose the
| shortcomings of this private company, but you seem to forget
| what this wave of what apparently are thousands of "internet
| specialists" that know better then independent regulator bodies
| for medicines.
|
| Yes, this isn't EMA (that British propaganda painted as a slow
| and incompetent agency) - it's each country own regulator that
| have been responsible for the safety of millions of citizens,
| and they have been doing a pretty good job for many, many
| years.
|
| This isn't a joint operation. It's scientists expressing their
| concern about these cases which are anything but normal.
|
| Or now, every single EU country regulator (including Norway)
| are all incompetent, including the doctors who reported these
| cases and are following closely their development? They're all
| in this conspiracy to put down AZ?
|
| I mean people rightfully criticize anti-vaxxers, but trust me,
| this bullshit attitude is just the same as the anti-vaxxers.
| It's blind fanaticism towards a vaccine, that even science
| should be disregarded, exactly the extreme opposite of anti-
| vaxxes.
| zajio1am wrote:
| > The EU commission has framed AZ as not trustworthy from the
| moment the first delivery targets could not be met.
|
| AZ was considered less trustworthy than Pfizer or Moderna
| vaccines several months before that due to irregularities in
| phase 3 clinical trials (original dosage leads to ~62%
| efficacy, while inadvertently given half-dose to a part of test
| subject leads to higher efficacy):
| https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
|
| Conflicts between AZ and EU commission seems silly compared to
| that and IMHO lead more to discreditation of Ursula von der
| Leyen.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| The deaths don't seem very high, I wonder if this is meant to be
| exactly the opposite of what they say: purely a political move to
| justify their slow vaccine rollout compared to the quick UK one
| (which used AZ).
| BaseS4 wrote:
| Germany is clearly a conspiracy theorist. Vaccine injuries and
| faulty manufacturing ins Alex Jones-tier cringe. What's next,
| Germany offers diplomatic immunity for Qanon?
|
| Vaccines have never harmed anyone. I can't believe this is on HN.
| tablespoon wrote:
| It's also worth noting that it seems like Germans perceive the
| AstraZenica vaccine as second-rate, and were even skipping
| appointments in the hope of getting the Pfizer/BioNTech shot
| later.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/25/world/europe/germany-coro...:
|
| > Many people -- including health workers -- are skipping
| appointments or refusing to sign up for the AstraZeneca shot,
| which they fear is less effective than the Pfizer-BioNTech
| vaccine, the officials say. As a result, two weeks after the
| first delivery of 1.45 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine
| arrived in Germany, only 270,986 have been administered,
| according to data collected by the public health authority, the
| Robert Koch Institute.
| f430 wrote:
| I think the concerns are very valid about AZ and German's have
| a right to choose. Big point is that HN is largely an American
| forum so there will be a bias against AZ doubters.
|
| Interesting that Twitter and Facebook also not labeling the
| concerns about AZ as "Fake News" so likely there is some merit
| to the claims against AZ.
|
| I am also against taking AZ as well. If HN folks are confident
| it is fine go ahead. I will choose what I'm comfortable with
| and Germans or anybody else for that matter should have a say.
| ghaff wrote:
| Why would there be an American bias against AZ doubters? It's
| not approved in the US and I expect a lot of otherwise pro-
| vax people would not want an AZ vaccine--which, in at least
| some states, is not actually a choice you have once a vaccine
| is approved.
| lkjlwekfjklwejf wrote:
| Fauci is a fucking piece of shit fascist. He needs to nine-ironed
| in the head.
| ssully wrote:
| Just announced that France is also suspending use of the vaccine
| [1]
|
| [1]: https://apnews.com/article/germany-suspends-astrazeneca-
| vacc...
| lgeorget wrote:
| Until tomorrow afternoon, when the european agency in charge of
| approving drugs should give its guidance on the matter. [1]
|
| [1]:
| https://www.francetvinfo.fr/live/message/604/f7f/da5/ff4/e9f...
| (in French)
| lkjlwekfjklwejf wrote:
| https://patriots.win/p/12hkvmnScu/fauci-more-pandemics-in-th...
| Now this fucking piece of shit asshole says "more pandemics in
| the future because of climate change"
|
| GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY COUNTRY YOU COMMIE FUCK!
| petre wrote:
| They should at least donate the vaccines to Ukraine and Moldova
| and other poorer countries through the Covax mechanism instead of
| letting them go to waste.
|
| I'm due to get vaccinated with AZ in less that two weeks and I
| will deninitely do it regardless, if doesn't get halted of
| course. Most EU countries decided to use it on recipients older
| than 55 and now they're halting it due to a baseless claim. It
| has worked fine and the UK has already vaccinated millions of
| people with it.
|
| https://yougov.co.uk/topics/international/articles-reports/2...
| johnnycerberus wrote:
| Judging by what the German press is writing nowadays about their
| politicans, especially the populists (and the unionists also)
| that are increasingly frustrated on the incapability of Germany
| (and the EU altogether) to handle the COVID situation and deliver
| a homemade vaccine, without the help of the USA and UK, it
| doesn't surprise me. It could be politically.
| fab1an wrote:
| Germany has a "homemade" vaccine (BioNTech), in fact it was the
| first reliable vaccine on the market, and pioneering an
| entirely new medical paradigm at it, but the EC botched the
| process of acquiring it.
| johnnycerberus wrote:
| Yes, I know that the brains behind the vaccine are the people
| from BioNTech, but without the engineering, manufacturing and
| delivery guaranteed by Pfizer, we would have been in a bad
| spot here in the EU. Research is great, but implementation is
| what kills us... and bureaucracy.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| How can you botch acquiring something being developed and
| made in own country?
| jansan wrote:
| That is what we have been asking us for more than two
| months. This almost looks like sabotage.
| semigroupoid wrote:
| Because it is _not_ made in Germany. Pfizer is responsible
| for producing it and their plants are primarily in the US.
| fab1an wrote:
| I don't think that's the case, the US isn't exporting any
| vaccines afaik and the EU doses are primarily produced in
| Europe.
| tpush wrote:
| The manufacturing of the vaccine is a three-stage
| process[0]:
|
| The First stage is done in the US.
|
| The second stage is done in the US and Germany.
|
| The third stage is done in the US and Belgium.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pfizer-
| BioNTech_COVID-19_vacci...
| rsynnott wrote:
| The Pfizer-Biontec being used in Europe is, generally,
| produced by Pfizer (and Biontec) plants in Europe.
| [deleted]
| _ph_ wrote:
| Mainly, by signing the orders to late and to to few doses.
| Which held back extension of the production capacities. In
| the meantime, a new production site in Germany went
| operational (Marburg) and increased the output of BioNTech.
| In Q3 there is probably enough production to supply
| Germany, but that means at least one more quarter where
| people and businesses die.
| dustinmoris wrote:
| 1. Hype up a virus to create a pandemic of fear
|
| 2. Hype up fear against the vaccine which would get you out of
| the pandemic of fear
|
| 3. Impose the most outrageous and ridiculous restrictions on
| people's lives which make it even illegal to see your own family.
|
| 4. Control by fear
|
| Anyone who still follows restrictions is not worthy of life.
| globular-toast wrote:
| These vaccinations are the largest unethical experiment since the
| fear of fat.
| jedberg wrote:
| Three weeks ago I was debating someone here on HN, defending the
| FDAs choice to deny approval of the AZ vaccine. I pointed out
| that while the FDA can be conservative compared to the EU, they
| have a strong track record of being right.
|
| Thalidomide is the most well known example, but there are many
| others:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumiracoxib -- Approved in Europe,
| not the USA. Withdrawn from sales due to side effects.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zimelidine -- Same.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tolrestat -- Approved in Europe,
| failed stage 3 clinical in the USA
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rimonabant -- Approved in Europe,
| failed in the USA, withdrawn _worldwide_ because the side effects
| were so bad.
| de6u99er wrote:
| My better half was olanned to get vaccinated with it tomorrow.
| Because of people dying from blood clots after getting
| vaccinated, we decided it might be a good idea to take Aspirine
| as blood thinner. But today I read that oeople had issues with
| bleeding and cloting.
| geek_at wrote:
| actually the numbers state that AstraZeneca reduces blood
| clots.
|
| AstraZeneca: 13 Pulmonary embolisms Pfizer-BioNTech: 15
| Pulmonary embolisms
| jansan wrote:
| How many countries have stopped AZ fo far?
|
| - Denmark
|
| - Norway
|
| - Ireland
|
| - Netherlands
|
| - Iceland
|
| - Bulgaria
|
| - Romania (only partly, see child comment)
|
| Am I missing any?
| johnnycerberus wrote:
| Romania did not stop the vaccination. It is ongoing. Only the
| faulty ones (as believed from the intel/reports we got from
| Italy and Netherlands) were eliminated from the pool.
| f430 wrote:
| South Korea is also facing huge public pressure to ban AZ
| throwaway210222 wrote:
| DRC
| throwaway210222 wrote:
| DRC downvoted?
|
| Here you go then: https://www.iol.co.za/news/africa/drc-
| postpones-covid-19-vac...
|
| Sigh
| yread wrote:
| Thailand
| clawoo wrote:
| > - Romania
|
| Romania hasn't, only for specific lot numbers that were
| reported by Italy and Denmark as problematic.
| alberto_ol wrote:
| Italy
| jedisct1 wrote:
| France (announced today).
| jansan wrote:
| South Africa stopped using it in February, because it did not
| work well against their mutant. Not sure about current status.
| scruple wrote:
| France.
| agd wrote:
| Let's see if any new data comes out, but from what's public right
| now I can only see this pause costing many lives across Europe.
|
| We've had millions of doses in the UK without serious side
| effects, so unless there were faulty batches I think any risk
| must be minuscule, and certainly lower than the known risks of
| covid deaths for unvaccinated people.
|
| This is a case where a cautious 'first do no harm' approach will
| likely cost many lives.
| libertine wrote:
| These cases are 4x greater then the ones in the UK, so either
| UK isn't reporting some cases, or something isn't right with AZ
| production.
|
| Also, I'm pretty sure each regulator knows the pros and cons of
| this decision, and they know well the consequences of stopping
| the vaccination - it's not like they are all incompetent. I
| mean, imagine the odds of the amount of ignorance to have
| reached this level of decision making in several independent
| countries.
|
| Not likely, at all.
|
| It's not a "a case where a cautious 'first do no harm' approach
| will likely cost many lives.", it's them doing their job and
| follow the procedure that has worked pretty well, based in
| science. It's what builds trust in vaccines and medicines,
| knowing that regulators are there, aware, and if they think
| something is wrong they won't take a stupid risk out of pride
| or pressure.
| calhoun137 wrote:
| Since these vaccines got emergency use authorization, that means
| they did not follow the standard procedure for clinical trials.
|
| Therefore, precautionary measures which respond dynamically to
| trends detected in newly available data, is the logical, ethical,
| and scientifically correct thing to do, imo.
| makomk wrote:
| As I understand it, one of the reasons vaccinations were so
| delayed in the EU compared to the UK is that they went through
| the normal approval process rather than emergency use
| authorization.
| totalZero wrote:
| The foundational weakness in what you're saying is that
| politicians tend to make decisions based on sentiment, rather
| than basing their actions on data.
|
| I'm not saying the conclusion is incorrect, but it's driven by
| fear, uncertainty, and doubt -- not quite the same as a clear
| evidentiary basis.
|
| That could be acceptable if the logic goes that AZN bears the
| burden of proving that every potential adverse side effect is
| extremely rare. However, by that logic the vaccinations will be
| paused several times and more people will suffer due to COVID.
| willis936 wrote:
| What newly available data?
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Most interesting would be data from the UK. My understanding is
| they've had by far the biggest AZ rollout, so any anomalies
| should be more obvious - assuming it's a design problem, and not
| caused by a manufacturing defect from one specific supply.
| pixiemaster wrote:
| with ~300 deaths per day in germany, how many people will this
| kill?
| greenpresident wrote:
| Casual estimates are at 1700/week.
|
| https://mobile.twitter.com/politicsforali/status/13714790084...
| niklasbuschmann wrote:
| This number is highly dependent on the case numbers of a
| country, so I wouldn't be too sure about it.
|
| My very rough calculation: There are ~ 200,000 vaccines
| administered daily in Germany, of which maybe 50% are
| AstraZeneca, so lets say we are delaying 100,000 vaccines /
| day - corresponding to 0.1% of the population vaccinated with
| Astra-Zeneca per day. Currently there are ~ 200 daily
| COVID-19 deaths in Germany, so in proportion one would expect
| ~ 0.2 additional deaths per day (~2 per week) due to the
| delay.
|
| Assuming people prioritised to get AstraZeneca are 10x as
| likely to die from COVID than the general population, this
| still leaves us with 20 deaths / week due to the delay.
|
| The big question is now how many people will die because they
| are infected by someone who could have gotten vaccinated
| sooner, but with a R of ~1, and less than 20 weeks until the
| whole population is vaccined, I doubt this will give two more
| orders of magnitude.
| yayr wrote:
| this does not seem to be official
|
| the usual figure now is 5 Million vaccinations and 30
| reported deaths from blood clotting. Which appears to be not
| much different from the number without vaccinations.
|
| https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/oxford-astrazeneca-
| vaccin...
| greenpresident wrote:
| The estimate I name is the number of additional people
| dying per week if we stop using AZ vaccines today.
| tlogan wrote:
| My understanding is that they were 30 blood clotting cases
| - not deaths. Am I correct?
| mns wrote:
| So you are saying that no one would die in Germany if the
| vaccine would not be temporarily suspended? That's a bit
| simplistic. Not to mention that we go so far as to consider
| that every life is precious and we need to fight for every
| single COVID patient, but the people that could be affected
| by this are just statistically insignificant.
| hef19898 wrote:
| From the numbers I saw, the problems with AZ seem to affect
| only a very small portion of people.
|
| It kind of feels like people are only now reading the note
| that comes with a drug. And we are using these drugs on
| millions of people, so yeah even the one in a million
| complications will start to show.
|
| It sure seems that AZ is singled out on that so. And I
| really wonder why. Because it sure is getting into
| dangerous territory by now that we are artificialy limiting
| our vaccine availability.
| FpUser wrote:
| >"we go so far as to consider that every life is precious"
|
| We who? If you're talking about healthcare the chances of
| survival are constantly moderated by various policies (
| both government and private ) against the money spent.
| exyi wrote:
| Maybe many immediately. However, getting bad press for vaccines
| and the government not doing enough to prevent "unnecessary"
| death could decrease the voluntary vaccination rate
| significantly. That would bring much more problems in the long
| term. Of course, you can only guess what would happen, they
| want to play the safe game, medicine in general is not a friend
| with risk.
| isolli wrote:
| Vaccine-related deaths are highly visible, daily covid deaths
| not so much...
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| They have been very visible a year ago (jeez, it's been a
| year already, what a time to live in), but people got
| mightily desensitized to this. 300 more deaths? Meh. In the
| other news, the sun continues to rise every morning.
|
| Until of course it's yourself, a family member, or a friend
| that joins the rank of those 300.
| isolli wrote:
| To be fair, people in Germany were quite worried when covid
| deaths were around 1000 per day. 300 deaths per day is on
| par with a bad flu season. The important question, of
| course, is: are deaths on the way up or down?
| dcolkitt wrote:
| This is just after like post 9/11, when a large percentage of
| travelers decided to drive instead of fly out of fear of
| plane hijackings. Even though you're orders of magnitude more
| likely to die in a car accident than an act of terrorism.
| 5cents wrote:
| In Norway, two health care workers are receiving intensive care
| for isolated low platelets and blood clotting. A third was also
| admitted but died from a cerebral catastrophe. These are all
| young (<50 years) and previously healthy. Of course this is
| serious and needs proper investigation.
|
| Maybe the risk for some specific groups justify giving them
| another vaccine?
| fab1an wrote:
| Looks like this may be a bit more relevant than many of the
| snarky comments would suggest - the relevant German authority on
| this said that they have seen a unexpected increase in a specific
| type of blood clotting issue that usually is very rare:
| https://www.pei.de/DE/newsroom/hp-meldungen/2021/210315-voru...
| est31 wrote:
| Is that the real reason? In times of crisis one must be wary of
| propaganda. AstraZeneca has recently announced they'd deliver
| even less to the EU because of Italy's interception of the
| delivery headed to Australia [0]... Europe having to halt the
| vaccinations with AstraZeneca due to none being in stock makes
| europe lose far more face than halting them because of quality
| concerns...
|
| [0]: https://www.wsj.com/articles/astrazeneca-warns-europe-of-
| lar...
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| The Paul Ehrlich Institut is an independent scientific
| institute, who make suggestions based on science.
|
| Of course they are influenced by what they see in the news
| and questions by the government, but aren't a political
| player.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Ehrlich_Institute
| luckylion wrote:
| > The Paul Ehrlich Institute (German: Paul-Ehrlich-Institut
| - Bundesinstitut fur Impfstoffe und biomedizinische
| Arzneimittel, PEI) is a German research institution and
| medical regulatory body, and is the German federal
| institute for vaccines and biomedicines. It is a federal
| agency and subordinate to the Federal Ministry of Health.
|
| They are hopefully scientific, but they are definitely not
| independent, not even by name.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| It is, according to the law (Gesetz uber das
| Bundesinstitut fur Impfstoffe und biomedizinische
| Arzneimittel) a "selbststandige Bundesbehorde" and true,
| it is not independent as a judge and not independent as
| public broadcasters, but its not a mere department of the
| ministry directly tied to the political will of the
| minister, but bound to its task by law.
| patrickmcnamara wrote:
| Where does it say that AstraZeneca are delivering less
| because of Italy's interception of vaccines?
| est31 wrote:
| > AstraZeneca on Friday said unspecified export
| restrictions now rendered plans to bring in large amounts
| of doses made outside Europe unlikely. It said it now
| expects to provide 100 million doses to the EU in the first
| half of this year, down from earlier commitments of around
| 270 million.
| patrickmcnamara wrote:
| > bring in large amounts of doses made outside Europe
| unlikely
|
| I assume this is referring to the US export ban. It
| definitely isn't referring to Italy.
| jimmydorry wrote:
| Australia also likely won't be looking to export theirs
| now, until their whole country is immunized. They are
| targetting to produce 100 million doses by the end of the
| year.
|
| All of this over the 3.8 million doses they bought, and
| were intercepted and taken by Italy (whose export control
| already reduced the shipment size to 780k doses).
| idiliv wrote:
| It doesn't.
|
| > AstraZeneca on Friday said unspecified export
| restrictions now rendered plans to bring in large amounts
| of doses made outside Europe unlikely.
|
| This suggests that countries _outside_ the EU have imposed
| export restrictions that contribute to the vaccine
| shortage.
| pkaye wrote:
| There is also a Dutch manufacturing plant which is not
| being utilized for production because AZ didn't get
| approvals yet.
| sradman wrote:
| > The EMA has said that as of March 10, a total of 30 cases of
| blood clotting had been reported among close to 5 million
| people vaccinated with the AstraZeneca shot in the European
| Economic Area, which links 30 European countries.
|
| "The decision today is purely precautionary..." given this
| level of signal. We don't have details on the age groups
| involved and the normal rates expected but I can hazard a Fermi
| Estimate that the risk is minuscule compared to COVID-19
| itself. I look forward to seeing the actual data in coming
| days/weeks. Precaution without downside is acceptable; this is
| not one of those cases, IMO. YMMV.
| detaro wrote:
| And the press statement says that this is based on new data
| compared to when they looked at it on the 11th. Hope we'll
| see what that is.
| andrewon wrote:
| Several considerations here:
|
| 1. If holding off AstraZeneca vaccine does not affect
| vaccination rate during the investigation period, it is a
| prudent thing to do.
|
| 2. If vaccine rate is expected to drop, number of expected
| increase in death per day due to covid vs blood clog should
| be compared, if we were to minimize short term death.
|
| 3. More concerning is unknown effect that could take a long
| time to materialize. This is a tough call to make since any
| effect is only theoretical at this point.
| ArkanExplorer wrote:
| Surely more people will die from COVID than from blood
| clotting, due to this delay?
|
| Or perhaps not, given that 2020 deaths in Germany were
| 985,145, only 4.85% higher than 2019, and only 3.2% higher
| than 2018 (and so basically in line with what we would expect
| from an aging society).
|
| https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Gesellschaft-
| Umwelt/Bevoel...
| libertine wrote:
| You're missing the point. This is an anomaly.
|
| It's not about the "oh it's worth the risk compared to
| COVID 19". If it's a side effect it wasn't spotted in the
| trials, why was that?
|
| It's not a side effect? It was a problem in production?
| What problem? Was is tampered with or was an accident? What
| failed in QA to let that batch come to the public? Was is a
| storage problem that compromised the batch quality? Was it
| while in transport or in the local hospital?
|
| You talk about this like background noise. It's not. It
| should be investigated.
|
| It's good that this is happening, because it shows
| regulators are doing their job. This is what builds trust
| in vaccines, not disregarding odd occurrences because they
| seem to have no "statistical relevance". That's just
| ignorance talking.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| And those last couple of sentences are really, really
| important: If forging ahead despite the blood clotting
| causes folks to lose trust in vaccines, it could be worse
| than Covid has. And realistically, we don't need more
| folks to be anti-vaccine.
| libertine wrote:
| Exactly. This subject can easily backfire and blow the
| trust of a population on vaccines, or worst, on the
| regulators.
|
| Imagine this is the outcome of a production problem, yet
| regulators refused to acknowledge this until it was out
| of proportions because the problem wasn't fixed. Not only
| people would lose trust on vaccines, they would lose
| trust on the regulator - this extends far beyond this
| vaccine, but all vaccines and medicines.
|
| People need to feel safe, and to know that regulators are
| not sleeping on their job. It's not a bureaucratic job,
| but that they are actively looking at data and reports
| from doctors.
| freewilly1040 wrote:
| No one is saying side effects should not be investigated.
| The question is whether the vaccine administration should
| be halted in the meantime, and that would be determined
| by the risk/reward of preventing covid deaths.
| libertine wrote:
| Just like I trust the regulators for vaccine approval, I
| trust them in the decision of stopping the administration
| of a vaccine to further investigate the problem. This
| goes together.
|
| It's not a political decision no matter how many people
| try to spin this. This is the outcome of doctors
| reporting an anomaly to a regulator. The system is
| working, and this should give you reassurance, not doubt
| about the consequences of stopping a vaccine.
|
| I'm pretty sure they know the consequences of this
| setback, so for them to stop it it's because something is
| not right.
| hntrader wrote:
| "It's not a political decision"
|
| It likely is, though.
|
| From the perspective of the regulators, there are
| asymmetric _personal_ consequences.
|
| If they make a decision that leads to 50 clotting deaths
| but saves 5000 people from COVID as a counterfactual,
| their head is on a chopping block because those 5000
| foregone deaths are invisible but the 50 deaths are
| visible.
|
| If they make a decision to halt the vaccine distribution
| and this kills an extra 5000 people - well that's no
| problem because they were just being careful.
|
| Society has set up a political situation where there is
| literally only one choice that absolves the bureaucrats
| from a negative personal outcome. Of course they're going
| to go that route.
|
| Personal incentives are incredibly powerful drivers of
| behavior, whatever the publicly stated reasons for an
| action may happen to be.
|
| It _may be_ the case that they 've made the right
| decision, but we can't assume that it was for the right
| reasons.
| lm28469 wrote:
| > Or perhaps not, given that 2020 deaths in Germany were
| 985,145, only 4.85% higher than 2019, and only 3.2% higher
| than 2018 (and so basically in line with what we would
| expect from an aging society).
|
| Are we still having this debate.... Of course the overall
| mortality didn't change much, people stayed at home for
| literally 75% of the year.
|
| Do you have the split stats for accidental deaths, road
| deaths, disease related deaths, &c. ? Because otherwise
| it's meaningless. We can put everyone in an artificial coma
| and get as little death per year as possible, it isn't a
| really interesting metric without the context.
| ArkanExplorer wrote:
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/525353/sweden-number-
| of-...
|
| Sweden, 2020 deaths only 6.2% higher than 2018, and
| following a weak 2019 flu season.
|
| These are entirely acceptable death figures within the
| context of aging European societies.
|
| COVID is basically a once-a-decade flu variant: like
| Swine Flu in 2009, which came and went without lockdown:
| https://swprs.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/sweden-
| monthly-...
|
| So COVID is dangerous enough to lock down entire
| societies, but not dangerous enough to justify continued
| vaccination when 1 in 166,666 have blood clotting? This
| is probably the background rate.
|
| It seems like Europe and its bureaucrats just can't let
| go of lockdown. Or alternatively, they wish to push the
| vaccines and end of lockdown into Spring/Summer, where
| natural seasonality will take care of COVID and give the
| appearance that lockdown and vaccines were a success.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| > Or alternatively, they wish to push the vaccines and
| end of lockdown into Spring/Summer, where natural
| seasonality will take care of COVID and give the
| appearance that lockdown and vaccines were a success.
|
| Did you somehow forget that this is the second year of
| Covid? We've already gone through the whole "natural
| seasonality" cycle and the disease is very much still
| here.
| leereeves wrote:
| Take a look at this COVID daily trends graph from the
| CDC:
|
| https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-
| tracker/#trends_dailytrends...
|
| From an average of about 50k cases reported daily in
| April through October to about 200k cases reported daily
| in November, December, and January, then back down to 60k
| by March.
|
| And there's a similar winter increase in the worldwide
| cases (some of which is from the US cases, but not all):
|
| https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/worldwide-
| graphs/#...
|
| It's impossible to be sure after just one year, but that
| hill in the winter certainly suggests a seasonal illness
| to me.
| Tarsul wrote:
| yes, a certain seasonality is very probable. But with the
| variants we have right now (e.g. B1.1.7 from Kent),
| summer won't be enough to stem the tide. I'm saying this
| from a central european perspective (with not enough
| vaccinations either to help).
| addicted wrote:
| Winter also corresponds with holiday seasons.
|
| Further, South American countries were some of the worst
| hit during the Nov - Feb timeline. South Africa was badly
| hit around this time. And all these are Southern
| Hemisphere countries that were experiencing summer around
| then.
|
| Now, there's clear evidence that warmer weather makes
| things easier, since the virus has lower survivability
| outside a host in the heat, so all things equal, the
| spread would be lower in warmer weather, but it's not so
| much lower that it can be considered seasonal, like the
| flu.
| eecc wrote:
| If you're on meds, don't skip doses. If not, please go
| find a specialist and get some help.
| [deleted]
| tazjin wrote:
| > the risk is minuscule compared to COVID-19 itself
|
| You don't know this at all - we don't know what age groups
| are affected here, and COVID is pretty much negligible in
| many younger age groups. It's best to wait for more data to
| come in before drawing any conclusions.
| draw_down wrote:
| There is such a discursive wall around the vaccines, there
| is no quarter for any idea that one of the vaccines could
| have risks that should give anyone pause. Covid will kill
| you, vaccines will save you, end of story.
| mike_d wrote:
| > COVID is pretty much negligible in many younger age
| groups
|
| "Paediatricians in Israel, which has surged ahead in
| vaccinating its adult population, reported a sharp rise in
| covid-19 infections among young people, with more than 50
| 000 children and teens testing positive in January--more
| than Israel saw in any month during the first and second
| waves."
|
| https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n383
| tazjin wrote:
| Susceptible to infection, absolutely, but are they
| suffering severe symptoms or dying in large numbers? No.
|
| A single metric (e.g. positive tests) is not enough to
| assess any severity here, and even those metrics come
| with caveats because all of our methods of determining
| them are imprecise.
| blagie wrote:
| The risk *of death* from COVID is pretty negligible for
| some age groups. The biggest confusion of this whole
| situation is we've fixated on CFR numbers as a measure of
| risk.
|
| Risks of long-term consequences don't seem to be all that
| low.
| tazjin wrote:
| I haven't seen anything that indicates that the risk of
| long-term consequences is significantly elevated above
| other viral diseases. There is a condition (which we know
| too little about, and which - as one of the few good
| outcomes of the COVID situation - is now actually getting
| some attention) that can lead to fatigue and other
| symptoms after fighting off a viral infection, but it's
| not unique to COVID.
|
| A year ago there was a lot of noise about things like
| heart issues induced by COVID, which turned out to be
| mostly statistical errors in the papers that made the
| claims.
|
| A lot of people (often people who never actually had a
| positive test) also claim to suffer from various mental
| impairments after their COVID infections, and some
| newspaper ran an article saying that some of these
| symptoms were alleviated after the people were given
| anxiety medication. Go figure ...
| h3cate wrote:
| The risk of covid-19 in the majority of the population is
| miniscule
| draw_down wrote:
| Seems reasonable that a covid vaccine (which were developed
| much more rapidly than any vaccines before) could have
| problems. But to say so is painted as "anti-vaxxer" talk,
| conspiracy theory, you hate public health, you're killing
| grandma, etc.
| refraincomment wrote:
| Okay, so they looked for correlations with a million conditions
| and when they found a vaguely significant one they
| automatically suspended the vaccination campaign prolonging by
| days or weeks the national lockdown.
| 2ion wrote:
| It's not a medically reasonable response that solicits snarky
| remarks, it's the complete retardation of the official covid
| response so far, and even reasonable decisions just are landing
| on a pile of steaming crap now.
|
| - billions per week of half assed lockdown vs a few billion
| more for high quality timeley vaccine delivieries of the good
| stuff --- of course they chose the lockdown
|
| - open schools as if nothing happens vs using UV-based air
| filtering machines and so on as a minimum level of precaution
| --- of course they choose to open schools with classrooms some
| of which even don't have windows that can be opened properly
|
| - governing party members of parliament scamming the public out
| of money by selling overly expensive, low quality masks
|
| - minister of health busy sueing newspapers for disclosing
| prices on his million dollar real estate purchases vs minister
| of health actually being busy 24/7 with fighting the crisis
|
| the list goes "on and on and on", these are just the most
| popular ones right now. It's just a dumpster fire at this point
| and the positives will not be recognized divorced from said
| pile of crap.
| nradov wrote:
| Is there any correlation with ABO blood type? Usually non-O
| blood types are more prone to clotting disorders.
| Rochus wrote:
| From the article:
|
| _Compared to the status of 11.03.2021, additional cases (as of
| Monday, 15.03.2021) have now been reported in Germany. In the
| analysis of the new data status, the experts of the Paul
| Ehrlich Institute now see a striking accumulation of a special
| form of very rare cerebral vein thrombosis (sinus vein
| thrombosis) in conjunction with a deficiency of blood platelets
| (thrombocytopenia) and bleeding in temporal proximity to
| vaccinations with the COVID-19 vaccine AstraZeneca._
|
| Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
| raducu wrote:
| I'm set to take the oxford d vaccine, but I could also take the
| pfizer vaccine.
|
| I've had elevated blood markers for clotting during covid-19,
| and now I hear of this.
|
| I'm thinking of taking 75 mg aspirin, before and after the
| vaccine. On the other hand, the issue is the patients have low
| platelet count and I understand that this is the way aspirin
| reduces blod clotting.
|
| So, do these patients have low platelet count because they had
| blod clots, or the other way around?
|
| Afik, in the case of COVID-19, clotting is an autoimune issue,
| so perhaps the clotting is not something related to the astra
| Zeneca vaccine, but something about the immune response itself.
| libertine wrote:
| You should talk to your doctor and not self prescribe
| yourself.
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| Talk to your doctor before making decisions. Taking aspirin
| right before a vaccine might not be a good idea as it can
| blunt your immune system response, but the whole point of a
| vaccine is to elicit a strong immune response that builds
| memory. I know acetaminophen is specifically mentioned as
| something not to take right before the COVID-19 vaccines (and
| afterwards, if you can deal with the immune response
| naturally).
| HenryBemis wrote:
| >can blunt your immune system response
|
| (Not a doctor) From listening to the "Faucis" of various
| countries (incuding the original): I believe that the
| vaccine is not a watered down virus _, so technically you
| are not making yourself vulnerable /more sensitive to the
| virus. It is suppsed to 'teach' your body how to build the
| defence.
|
| _Only the Chinese virus is a 'watered down' version of the
| virus. All the others (including the Russian) is an RNA-
| type-thingie.
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| What in the world are you going on about? Drugs can make
| your immune system's response less severe--this is
| straight medical fact, look up diphenhydramine (benadryl)
| or anti-histamines in general.
|
| No where did I say any of these vaccines are 'live' or
| even attenuated coronavirus. It is 100% impossible to get
| infected with covid-19 from any of the vaccines. However
| it is possible to take a drug which lowers your immune
| system response and you fail to build a strong response
| to the vaccine and the spike protein RNA or other bits in
| the vaccine. Hence why I said _talk to your doctor before
| doing anything like taking aspirin right before the
| vaccine_.
|
| This site is full of pure lunacy when it comes to any
| COVID-19 or medical issues. The comments in this thread
| and many others over the past weeks are just unbelievable
| low quality. Folks, stay in your lanes with software and
| startups...
| addicted wrote:
| Best comment yet.
| kube-system wrote:
| > Only the Chinese virus is a 'watered down' version of
| the virus. All the others (including the Russian) is an
| RNA-type-thingie.
|
| This is not true. There are 11 current vaccines in use
| around the world, of 4 different types. Even the vaccine
| mentioned in this article is an adenovirus-vector
| vaccine.
|
| The Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines are the only
| mRNA vaccines.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_vaccine#Vaccine_ty
| pes
| shortandsweet wrote:
| I'm not a doctor but I can tell you what they will say and
| save op $200 for a useless visit. Doctor will mention
| there's no data and does not recommend it.
| dash2 wrote:
| This seems like a case where the precautionary principle is
| misleading. Maybe there's a small chance that the vaccine can be
| harmful for a few people. Meanwhile there's a large chance that
| not having the vaccine can increase your chance of getting COVID.
| Doesn't even a week's delay in vaccinating predictably increase
| the number of deaths in a country, perhaps by a large amount
| given the nonlinear dynamics of epidemics?
|
| I'm assuming that these decisions aren't political and are
| genuinely being taken for medical reasons. I mean, I sure hope
| so.
| throaway_484888 wrote:
| > I'm assuming that these decisions aren't political and are
| genuinely being taken for medical reasons. I mean, I sure hope
| so.
|
| It's the EU's punishment for the UK leaving. I don't think
| anyone really thinks otherwise.
| oezi wrote:
| The EU is punishing itself?
|
| - AstraZeneka is part swedish.
|
| - The vaccine is approved and the contracts are signed. No
| money back for adverse effects.
| throaway_484888 wrote:
| > The EU is punishing itself?
|
| Yes they're cutting their nose off to spite their face! Or
| to let their own citizens die - whatever it takes to have a
| pop at the British!
|
| The UK is having success using primarily AstraZeneca (not
| 'AstraZeneka') and the EU don't like that, so they're
| attacking it.
| mhh__ wrote:
| The drop in export volume is probably punishment enough, this
| would be a bizarre play
| ketzu wrote:
| > It's the EU's punishment for the UK leaving. I don't think
| anyone really thinks otherwise.
|
| Then call me the first one, I seriously doubt this is the
| reason.
| majewsky wrote:
| > even a week's delay in vaccinating [may] predictably increase
| the number of deaths in a country
|
| The big impact is not a few days of delay. The big impact is
| the loss of trust in this vaccine in the general populace.
|
| > I'm assuming that these decisions aren't political and are
| genuinely being taken for medical reasons. I mean, I sure hope
| so.
|
| Obvious disclaimer: I'm not a medical expert.
|
| However, I wouldn't be so sure it's a wise decision. I
| primarily trust Karl Lauterbach's [1] opinion on these matters,
| and he is actively criticizing the move on Twitter as an
| overreaction [2].
|
| [1] Karl Lauterbach is the director of an institute for
| epidemiology at a German university and also a member of the
| German Federal parliament for the Social Democrats (who are
| part of the current coalition).
|
| [2] Source (in German):
| https://twitter.com/Karl_Lauterbach/status/13714710614018949...
| _Microft wrote:
| Don't be deterred by the downvotes on the parent comment; the
| quoted source is reputable.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Lauterbach
| calhoun137 wrote:
| > Doesn't even a week's delay in vaccinating predictably
| increase the number of deaths in a country
|
| One of the many unknowns about these vaccines is the length of
| time they give immunity, this can only be determined with
| confidence by looking at the data after a sufficient amount of
| time has passed. If the immunity only lasts for say 10-20
| weeks, then getting it one week early, would mean the immunity
| goes away one week early as well. So in this case, I'm not sure
| there would be a major measurable impact. If the immunity lasts
| for say 50 weeks, that would be a different story.
| yokaze wrote:
| > I'm assuming that these decisions aren't political and are
| genuinely being taken for medical reasons. I mean, I sure hope
| so.
|
| Not that I agree with the decision, but it's more complicated.
| People have to trust the vaccines to actually take them. There
| is already the fear that the process has been rushed, and
| particularly with AstraZeneca, there are some trust issues.
| Again, I don't want to argue that the concerns themselves are
| founded, just that they exists.
|
| If that is the right measure to address those concerns is not
| purely medical or easily quantifiable. If you don't suspend it,
| would people still take the vaccine? Would they take the
| others?
|
| Personally, since that is the case, I think one should stick
| with the facts. Be transparent about it, and try not to preempt
| whatever people may think. I would take it without a moment of
| hesitation, if I would be offered the opportunity.
| [deleted]
| motohagiography wrote:
| There is an availability bias, where stories about people dying
| after vaccinations are amplified in fringe media, and conversely,
| the numbers of people who died in nursing homes of actual covid
| were suppressed by mainstream authorities. There's uncertainty on
| every part of the issue. Interpreting the general uncertainty we
| live with as evidence for a hidden agenda on the part of
| authorities is it's own self fulfilling bias, but when I read
| about these vaccine risks, I'm looking for a plausible model of
| the options.
|
| I would (and did) jump out of planes with a parachute
| recreationally, but if untrustworthy people started advocating
| it, proposing it should be mandatory, and unstable people dressed
| up in double flight suits in the streets started shaming others
| into doing it, I would definitely not jump out of planes anymore.
|
| If it were true that the probability of complications/death from
| covid are heavily skewed to people over 75 and some obvious co-
| morbidities, we could vaccinate everyone in that risk group in a
| matter of weeks. What is the case for anyone who isn't a medical
| worker outside the real at-risk cohort to take on the endogenous
| risk of a vaccine? I could make one, but I'm more interested in
| what more knowledgeable people have to say about it, and judging
| by rising popular skepticism, we're going to need one.
|
| When covid started last year, as someone young'ish and healthy I
| signed up to volunteer for human challenge trials and started to
| organize a convalescent plasma drive, because that's what I
| thought being civic minded meant. I have living family members
| who were affected by polio before widespread vaccinations were
| available, and recognize the importance of vaccines on herd
| immunity. After a year of hall of mirrors bullshit about masks
| and politics, I'm struggling with the case for why a low-risk
| healthy person would take a vaccine with non-trivial side effect
| risks for a virus that is less dangerous than their normal
| activities, when the vulnerable people who get vaccinated (for
| whom the risk/reward is clearer) are no longer vulnerable.
|
| Is there a conversation to be had on the model for this, or does
| it come down to "conspiracy theorists who put us at risk," vs.
| "normal people" and there's no point in engaging it? Is the best
| argument just a matter of, "we live in a society and part of that
| is accepting the jab?"
| matthewmorgan wrote:
| From the BBC's health correspondent: "The data supplied by
| AstraZeneca shows there have been 37 reports of blood clots among
| the 17m people across Europe who have been given the vaccine" ...
| "The 37 reports are below the level you would expect. What is
| more, there is no strong biological explanation why the vaccine
| would cause a blood clot."
| jonplackett wrote:
| Maybe AZ should have charged EUR3 per shot instead of EUR2 and
| spent the extra EUR on a PR agency. They just seem to be
| constantly taking a hammering in the press, unfairly I'd say.
| rocqua wrote:
| The feeling I am getting is that AZ is being less cautious with
| their promises. What I fear is that they did the same with
| their fase 3 trials.
|
| I read an unsourced claim on HN a few weeks ago that they did 9
| phase-3 trials, and applied for approval on the basis of only
| 2. Which would be rather bad if true. Moreover, it is clear
| that their 1.5 dose regimen was a mistake in trial execution.
|
| Meanwhile, the FDA still hasn't approved AZ.
|
| It seems possible that AZ was overeager to present good
| results, and thus was less cautious than they should have been.
| It's only a possibility, but its one that worries me.
|
| Anyone here have an source to confirm / debunk the rumor that
| AZ did 9 trials, and only applied on the basis of 2 trials?
|
| edit: I just looked at the stats in the UK, and it certainly
| seems like since they started vaccinating cases have dropped
| off, and deaths have dropped of even faster. Since vaccines are
| probably targeted at the more vulnerable, it certainly seems to
| show that the vaccine has very positive net effects.
| libertine wrote:
| I really don't understand the "unfairness" about how AZ is
| being treated. This isn't an NGO that's doing their best with
| limited resources, it's a private company that is getting
| funded to expand their operations - this isn't charity, and I
| doubt anyone asked for charity.
|
| EU is buying vaccines with profit margins, and those are
| delivering.
|
| If that cost structure is proving to not be enough for AZ, then
| they shouldn't have accepted it, because clearly what they are
| doing now is borderline criminal, all while hiding behind a
| "best effort" clause in a contract, that's being stretched far
| beyond what is acceptable.
|
| They messed up the trials, they set up production
| infrastructure that would have never worked to begin with
| (because of the UK contract not allowing exports of vaccines),
| giving notice of failed deliveries on short notice, and still
| make new promises of deliveries that are showing yet again not
| to be true. They are yet to file approval for other production
| facilities in EU that should have been working for MONTHS.
|
| Now they dare to question independent regulators from different
| countries by saying their vaccines are fine - when they didn't
| seem to even have bothered to investigate any of the cases -
| it's like they looked at a spreadsheet and said "this anomaly
| is within these intervals", completely disregarding the type of
| cases, their local incidence, time window and age group.
| Ignoring the fact that these occurrences are 4x greater then
| the ones in the UK.
|
| I understand that the EU doesn't want to file a lawsuit because
| it's counter productive, but at this point I think it's the
| only path - pull the funding, place it on other candidates, sue
| AZ. It's too much incompetence for such an endeavor, which
| makes you question if they are not simply cutting corners.
| Again, they seem to be pushing "best effort" to what is
| acceptable.
| Kaido wrote:
| It was totally deserved, the EU helped fund the vaccine with a
| EUR336 million grant and what they did was stopping the exports
| from the UK plants to the EU while still exporting from the EU
| to the UK.No wonder that they didn't delivered the promised
| doses since their best efforts were being allocated to the UK.
| jonplackett wrote:
| I know they accused AZ of this but as far as I know there is
| no evidence. Do you have a source?
| patrickmcnamara wrote:
| Not that unfairly. They keep reducing vaccine deliveries on
| short notice in the EU and have been opaque in general. I think
| they have delivered about 10% of what they agreed to for Q1.
| yread wrote:
| Indeed they promised 120M doses in Q1 and so far delivered
| 12.3M, out of which about 70% has been administered. While
| delivering basically exactly as promised to the UK and having
| a stockpile of 30M doses waiting in a warehouse in the US
| because they paid a higher per dose price.
| sampo wrote:
| > having a stockpile of 30M doses waiting in a warehouse in
| the US
|
| To be fair, AstraZeneca wanted to ship those to Canada and
| Mexico, but Biden (and earlier Trump) has forbidden
| exporting vaccines out of US.
| gbil wrote:
| I wouldn't use the word "promised" here. The contract ,
| which is public, mentions "Best effort" deliveries only.
| The promised word is used to by EU officials who made a
| mess out of it and in articles for views.
| hef19898 wrote:
| True that. There is also a clause the frees AZ from any
| delivery delays caused by the request of additional doses
| above the agreed deliveries if these orders had a
| negative impact on availability. Or something a long
| these lines. And the EU happened to order more, which is
| the reason why AZ did rework on the factory, if memory
| serves well.
|
| There is definetly a couple of case studies for a lot of
| discipline in that. Besides virology, epidemiology or
| medcine.
| throwawinsider wrote:
| While only 30% of the doses are actually being used.
|
| EU has only themselves and their innate incompetence to
| blame.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| To be fair, I think the contract between AZ and Oxford
| University actually restricts them from making a profit for a
| period of N months/years.
|
| So they are only technically allowed to adjust the price to
| take into account the different operational costs depending on
| the manufacturing site.
| signal11 wrote:
| I believe AZ have said they will not profit off the vaccine
| until the pandemic ends. The interesting thing is that they
| may get to decide when that happens.[1]
|
| [1] https://www.fiercepharma.com/pharma/astrazeneca-puts-a-
| time-...
| hef19898 wrote:
| From top of my head, not before June / July or when the WHO
| declares the end of the pandemic.
| jonplackett wrote:
| Yes I did know that (I'm just being silly really) but even
| so, PR is a cost and so they wouldn't even be making any more
| profit!
|
| I do think people aren't giving AZ enough credit for doing it
| at cost though. Especially compared to the EUR50 per dose
| Pfizer initially quoted the EU!
| mywacaday wrote:
| Poor reporting to not include that Italy, France, Ireland,
| Bulgaria, Denmark and The Netherlands have all paused the vaccine
| along with Norway which is mentioned. Expect better of Reuters.
| elliekelly wrote:
| The very first sentence of the article makes it clear that
| Germany is neither the first nor only European country to
| suspend AZ vaccinations:
|
| > making it the latest of several European countries to hit
| pause
|
| The article also cites the EMA, an EU institution, and notes:
|
| > Several EU countries have called a halt to the AstraZeneca
| vaccine
|
| Would you have them list each and every country individually?
| It seems, to me, that you're just complaining for the sake of
| complaining. Expect better of HN comments.
| mywacaday wrote:
| Yes, or at the very least the number of countries that have
| paused the vaccine, this is a rapidly changing story and
| where this reporting lands in the narrative is important. I
| had to go check anothe news site to see which/how many EU
| countries had now paused the Astra Zennica vaccine.
| verytrivial wrote:
| As far as I understand it, the EU member states are not generally
| short on doses, more on distribution and other regulatory issues.
| If they pause AZ, they can use something else which is already
| being manufactured right now, and likely within the EU, quelle
| surprise.
|
| I would not be surprised if this is simply a political and
| economic snub from the EU, one of very many the UK can expect
| over the coming decades.
|
| The UK has spent the last half decade ENDLESSLY trying to score
| points against the EU on any and every topic. This sort of
| wrangling is part and parcel for the relationship the UK has
| chosen. Basically, if the current UK Government has gone anywhere
| NEAR this topic, don't expect the truth to linger. This certainly
| includes the chest-beating around the AZ vaccine, which the
| government were actually going to require be shipped with a
| fscking Union Flag on every vial.
|
| Edit: My understanding was based around stories like this
| suggesting some delays, that AZ were "striving" to deliver, and
| more dosed being ordered after AZ testing not covering over 65s
| (at the time), some hesitancy, and general mud slinging. When I
| say "generally short" I guess I should say that I doubt even the
| chest-beating Brits will be fully two-dose vaccinated to 80-90%
| before Autumn. It's been a year and a month or two is second
| order optimization in my view.
|
| If you are concerned about shortages, there are some other
| continents to consider first.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/24/astrazeneca-ex...
|
| https://www.biopharma-reporter.com/Article/2021/02/18/EU-add...
| atleta wrote:
| Depends on how you define short on doses. We have less than
| what we've planned but we seem to adminster less than we have
| at the moment.
| s_dev wrote:
| >As far as I understand it, the EU member states are not
| generally short on doses
|
| Let me correct that understanding. The EU is absolutely short
| on doses. AZ has only delivered 10% of what they promised.
| There is no doubt if the EU had a greater supply the vaccine
| rollout would be going much better.
| rsynnott wrote:
| You understand it incorrectly. EU vaccination is largely
| constrained by doses. The exception is AZ, which in some
| countries has already seen people declining it, but AZ is
| currently a tiny portion of the EU's available vaccines due to
| AZ's failure to deliver. This will indeed delay things more if
| it isn't sorted out quickly (but possibly not THAT much more,
| because AZ is so behind on deliveries).
| detaro wrote:
| And "some people declining it" doesn't mean there isn't a
| large backlog of people you can give it to.
| detaro wrote:
| The last German news before this was "available vaccine slots
| need to be reduced due to missing deliveries". While the
| distribution certainly had and has its issues, using the
| limited available stock is less of a difficulty than handling
| the fact that the available stock is limited.
| chmod775 wrote:
| Absolute fucking stupidity.
|
| Thirty cases of blood clotting out of five million. More people
| will die because they're not vaccinated.
|
| And that's ignoring the fact that this may just be a statistical
| blip. There's a lot of diseases humans could catch, and sometimes
| there's going to be clusters.
|
| German politicians said they're suspending vaccinations "out of
| an abundance of caution".
|
| Given these numbers, we should continue to vaccinate _out of an
| abundance of caution_.
|
| These people would refuse to board a rescue vessel because "it
| seems kind of unstable" and prefer to keep treading water.
| Mudface_72 wrote:
| The headline is misleading, half of Europe put AZ on hold.
| Because the complications hit young health workers. We prefer
| to keep our health workers alive, maybe other countries have
| other strategies, just go ahead, maybe we will follow.
|
| On Monday Germany, Spain, Italy, and France were among those to
| suspend deployment of the vaccine, following similar moves made
| last week by Denmark, Norway, Ireland, and others.
| yoaviram wrote:
| An hypothesis: I'm not sure about Germany but in France, Spain
| and several other European countries 40% of the population do
| not want to get vaccinated. I believe the countries that have
| suspended AZ have done so so that those who generally doubt the
| safety of vaccination don't have a reason to further doubt this
| one. Even if a small percentage of those 40% is convinced by
| this act it's a large number of people.
| _Wintermute wrote:
| Or alternatively they've added extra doubts to the
| vaccination effort which will result in more people deciding
| not to get a vaccine.
|
| In my opinion they're very much pandering to the large anti-
| vax populations of these countries.
| temp-dude-87844 wrote:
| Given that some amount of alternate vaccines are available,
| governments are doing the right thing by "deferring" deployment
| of this vaccine for a short while, because this move has the
| highest chance avoiding direct harm to people from medicine
| (which is often perceived worse than harm that would have
| befallen people without medicine) and highest chance of avoiding
| an increase of brand-agnostic vaccine mistrust from the public.
|
| As news about some countries pausing its deployment spread, the
| pressure rises on other countries to follow suit, as they weigh
| the risk of public mistrust.
|
| If in the near future, public mistrust about this brand of
| vaccine climbs higher but confidence in other vaccines does not
| drop as much, then governments will benefit from having deferred
| deployment of this vaccine, and they may benefit further by
| suspending deployment of this vaccine entirely, even if the
| vaccine is entirely vindicated to be safe.
|
| This outcome would be unfair for the manufacturer, but it would
| sacrifice this brand to preserve public trust. Public trust is a
| key factor in healthcare policy in societies where some
| healthcare participation is voluntary and elections can
| significantly influence policy priorities.
| macspoofing wrote:
| >Given that some amount of alternate vaccines are available,
| governments are doing the right thing by "deferring" deployment
| of this vaccine for a short while, because this move has the
| highest chance avoiding direct harm to people from medicine
|
| I think so too, especially since AZ is one of the least
| effective ones available.
| Zebrakopf wrote:
| Thank you temp-dude for this viewpoint. I did not think about
| it in this way before. Weighing the possible deaths of barring
| one of the vaccines against the possible deaths of a rise in
| mistrust towards vaccines seems like an impossible task.
|
| However, the findings of blood clotting alone would not have
| sufficed for this argument as they really should be no cause
| for concern at this point in time. The knee-jerk response of
| other countries on the other hand makes this reasoning much
| more valid. Something something self-fulfilling prophecy
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