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Denmark to permanently cease using AstraZeneca vaccine

reuters.com

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Re: Denmark to permanently cease using AstraZeneca vaccine

#151

Post by caddemon »

throwaway4good wrote: post #58
fighterpilot wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not allocate most of the Pfizer to the young and give the AZ exclusively to the older people?

They used to give AZ to mostly younger people as the side effects where seen to be stronger than for the PFE. A fear could be that when they start to give the PFE to younger people, they will see the same stuff as with AZ as it triggers the same immune response.

Pfizer has been distributed to many young people in other countries though and no such issue has popped up. Not saying it's outside the realm of possibility, but I think it's increasingly unlikely. Plus it'd be no surprise to me for the mRNA vaccines to have somewhat different side effect profile than the "traditional" ones.

Re: Denmark to permanently cease using AstraZeneca vaccine

#152

Post by caddemon »

yokaze wrote: post #79
yokaze wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It all comes down to guessing how to best convince the unconvinced to actually vaccinate. People usually react badly to getting "second-class medicine", if it is mandated. (Elderly people were asking, which vaccine they would get the good-one or the bad-one, literally). I would suggest to simply offer both to everyone and leave people the choice, if they want to risk a one-in-a-million chance of complications (for wo…

Correction: The risk is not 0 for men, only a fair bit lower.

Also it's more like 1 in 100K for women with AZ. Still very unlikely so I don't understand the need for people to under state it by 10x.

Re: Denmark to permanently cease using AstraZeneca vaccine

#153

Post by SiempreViernes »

marvin wrote: post #122
kspacewalk2 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like a while lot more deaths than potential clot cases (not to mention clot deaths, which might be zero in a population that small).

Norway has ~10 deaths from Covid in the But only a small minority of the So it's a pretty safe assumption at this point that AZ is a bad option for younger age groups in countries with similar numbers, assuming that other vaccines will soon be available (they will)

Sure, but at the same time 3 is too small a number to have any confidence in that expectation.

Looking at the rates from other countries where AZ has been deployed more heavily, it seems like Norway mostly had bad luck, and the rate is fairly small.

Though as you say for the younger population the risks with covid are also small and the choice ultimately depends on the infection rate in the country.

An interesting question is if there actually is any public health argument in favour of vaccinating the inhabitants in the countries that have managed to keep it out completely? There the choice is between taking on the risks of the vaccine versus just not allowing travel, and the public health impact of the latter isn't very clear.

Re: Denmark to permanently cease using AstraZeneca vaccine

#154

Post by ejolto »

amelius wrote: post #137
cameronh90 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Denmark (along with the other Scandinavian countries and the UK) have almost the lowest traffic-related death rate in the world too. As far as I can tell, Denmark are reporting such a high rate of death from the AZ vaccine relative to the number of doses deployed, that the risk would actually be quite bad compared to driving. However, the absolute numbers are tiny so the uncertainty is enormous. It's quite possible t…

The number of traffic-related fatalities in Denmark is around 200 per year, see e.g. [1]. Blood clots appear in 4 per 1M people (UK numbers, [3]) or 10 per 1M (Denmark numbers, [2]). That would mean about 24 to 58 Danish people would get blood clots from their first shot. Denmark had 2447 covid deaths, [4]. If you zoom in on certain age-groups, then perhaps Denmark's decision could still make sense, though. [1] https…

[2] states:

> ten cases of blood clots have been found in Denmark in people subsequent to taking the AstraZeneca vaccine.

and later,

> A total of 140,000 people in Denmark have received at least one dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine.

If you extrapolate these numbers you would expect ~410 patients with blood clots from AZ if you gave the vaccine to everyone in Denmark.

Re: Denmark to permanently cease using AstraZeneca vaccine

#155

Post by SiempreViernes »

rhn_mk1 wrote: post #133
AndrewUnmuted wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are people already forgetting how masks were actively disrecommended by 'professionals' at the start of the pandemic while plenty here and in other places were similarly saying that masks are obviously good? We are talking about science, I thought. Phrases like "obviously good," really are not in the scientific spirit. Professionals also said that double-masking is even more obviously, obviously good. But that obvi…

Nothing in the article states that double masking is not good. It merely states that the study doesn't give any reliable conclusions.

Are you saying it's obviously good, but you can't tell it helps?

Re: Denmark to permanently cease using AstraZeneca vaccine

#156

Post by the-dude »

de_keyboard wrote: post #136
eloff wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's exactly it. There is a tradeoff to be made here with likely deaths on both sides, and the government is choosing much higher numbers of deaths because it looks better for them politically. That's immoral and cowardly. I don't see any way to justify the decision they've made logically.

I think there were broadly 3 strategies: 1. Do very little intervention, but perhaps isolate the vulnerable. This was the "Sweden strategy". 2. Do big interventions if cases rise, but only so far as is required to prevent hospitals being over-whelmed. This was the strategy in most of Europe, and in particular the UK. 3. Do big interventions with the intention of reaching "covid zero", including restrictions on intern…

> but compared to rolling lock-downs for over 12 months?

So far. Add 6, 12 or 24 months.

Re: Denmark to permanently cease using AstraZeneca vaccine

#158

Post by da_chicken »

graeme wrote: post #61
da_chicken wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There certainly is, but there's also other vaccines which don't exhibit this problem. Why should we administer AstraZenica or J&J when Moderna and Pfizer are available and don't have any correlated blood clot issues?

Because there aren’t enough Moderna and Pfizer, and every day we don’t vaccinate, more people get sick and die, people can’t see their friends and family or live normally, and parts of the economy remain shut down. The cost is really severe! Especially globally, many countries have hardly been able to vaccinate at all.

You also don't know how severe the blood clotting problem is. It may escalate over extended time. We also don't know the mechanism by which it's causing blood clotting. That's the problem.

People are looking at this like it's just one case in millions or just 6 deaths in 6.8 million doses for J&J. You don't know that because we don't know what is going on. We just know the symptom; we don't know the "disease". It may be a permanent risk for all recipients. It may cause permanent damage for all recipients. It may be something that happens in 10% of the recipients over the next 10 years. All we know is that it's doing something that it should not and there is no explanation how.

"Let's give out a vaccine that we know is harmful to an unknown degree," is not a reasonable response.

The solution is to stop production and distribution of the vaccine you know is broken and instead ramp up production of the ones that do not have harmful side effects.

Re: Denmark to permanently cease using AstraZeneca vaccine

#159

Post by 0-_-0 »

peytn wrote: post #140
0-_-0 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Citing the attack from Macron and unfounded accusations over safety and efficacy, Bell [0] said the company could re-think its philanthropic stance. “There’s a point at which AstraZeneca could just say, ‘you’ve got to be joking, we’re going to stop [charging cost price] now because we’re not getting any credit for what we’re doing.’ The share price has gone down, not up. We’re making more vaccines than everybody els…

> “This is a safe and effective vaccine” > Sir John Bell, the Oxford University professor who helped drive the vaccine’s development Since academics traffic in reputation, this is an example of a conflict of interest I think.

The vaccine's safety and efficacy is not based on one person's opinion, it's an established fact.

Re: Denmark to permanently cease using AstraZeneca vaccine

#160

Post by peytn »

amelius wrote: post #137
cameronh90 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Denmark (along with the other Scandinavian countries and the UK) have almost the lowest traffic-related death rate in the world too. As far as I can tell, Denmark are reporting such a high rate of death from the AZ vaccine relative to the number of doses deployed, that the risk would actually be quite bad compared to driving. However, the absolute numbers are tiny so the uncertainty is enormous. It's quite possible t…

The number of traffic-related fatalities in Denmark is around 200 per year, see e.g. [1]. Blood clots appear in 4 per 1M people (UK numbers, [3]) or 10 per 1M (Denmark numbers, [2]). That would mean about 24 to 58 Danish people would get blood clots from their first shot. Denmark had 2447 covid deaths, [4]. If you zoom in on certain age-groups, then perhaps Denmark's decision could still make sense, though. [1] https…

The history of medical ethics is interesting. We’ve sort of drifted from pure utilitarianism. One problem is that since everyone dies eventually and our statistics aren’t complete, you can usually come up with ways to justify doing pretty much anything from a utilitarian standpoint.
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