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Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'

reuters.com

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Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'

#101

Post by stupidcar »

bananaowl wrote: post #64
giantandroids wrote: post #8

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.

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…

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...

Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'

#102

Post by isolli »

WesolyKubeczek wrote: post #13
isolli wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vaccine-related deaths are highly visible, daily covid deaths not so much...

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.

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?

Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'

#103

Post by s9w »

giantandroids wrote: post #8

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.

There hasn't been a single corona death in Germany

Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'

#104

Post by DrBazza »

bananaowl wrote: post #64
giantandroids wrote: post #8

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.

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…

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...

Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'

#105

Post by Arnt »

the8472 wrote: post #67
mcintyre1994 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 d…

And yet it's fewer deaths than due to overly cautious vaccine approvals.

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.

Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'

#106

Post by hef19898 »

mns wrote: post #82
hef19898 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 eve…

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/…

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.

Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'

#107

Post by fabian2k »

maxerickson wrote: post #84
5cents wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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?

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...

Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'

#108

Post by lxgr »

mrtksn wrote: post #86
drcode wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

The cliché 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).

Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'

#109

Post by _Microft »

majewsky wrote: post #15
dash2 wrote: post #3

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 epidemic…

> 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 su…

Don't be deterred by the downvotes on the parent comment; the quoted source is reputable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Lauterbach

Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'

#110

Post by xgb84j »

fasteddie31003 wrote: post #9

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.

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.)

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