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Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'

reuters.com

231–240 of 572 posts

Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'

#231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

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.

Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'

#233
post #105
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'

#234
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.

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.

Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'

#235
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.

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.

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.

Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'

#237

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.

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 vaccin…

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.

Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'

#238
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, in deed we have. As does France.

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).

Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'

#239
post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/a…

Where does it say that AstraZeneca are delivering less because of Italy's interception of vaccines?

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.

Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'

#240
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ch…

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.

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.

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