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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'

#131

Post by leto_ii »

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.

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.

Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'

#132

Post by VBprogrammer »

gt565k wrote: post #73

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

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.

Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'

#133

Post by fab1an »

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...

Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'

#134

Post by throwaway210222 »

throwaway210222 wrote: post #46
jansan wrote: post #37

How many countries have stopped AZ fo far? - Denmark - Norway - Ireland - Netherlands - Iceland - Bulgaria - Romania (only partly, see child comment) Am I missing any?

DRC

DRC downvoted?

Here you go then: https://www.iol.co.za/news/africa/drc-postpones-covid-19-vac...

Sigh

Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'

#135

Post by gbil »

yread wrote: post #127
patrickmcnamara wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'

#136

Post by DanBC »

Nursie wrote: post #20
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.

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…

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

Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'

#138

Post by semigroupoid »

chrisseaton wrote: post #98
fab1an wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How can you botch acquiring something being developed and made in own country?

Because it is not made in Germany. Pfizer is responsible for producing it and their plants are primarily in the US.

Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'

#139

Post by isolli »

esperent wrote: post #111
isolli wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 d…

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

Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'

#140

Post by devthane »

esperent wrote: post #111
isolli wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 d…

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.com/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.

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