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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

#271

Post by dragonwriter »

hef19898 wrote: post #102
FredPret wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ll tell you one thing that’s even worse than elections - no elections

Absolutely! But having elections in 2021 makes every Covid-related decision by definition political. And that doesn't help. I should have made clear that the problem with elections is the timing, not elections in general. Governments should be focused on getting the population vaccinated as fast as possible now, and not worry about their / (re-)election chances.

> But having elections in 2021 makes every Covid-related decision by definition political

Every COVID-related (or other) decision by or about government is political, by definition, independent of election timing.

Election timing may effect the degree to which the people of a democratic state have effectively direct input on an issue whose existence and political salience would not be regularly forseeable, but that’s a very different issue than whether decisions about that issue are “political”.

Re: Denmark to permanently cease using AstraZeneca vaccine

#272

Post by sofixa »

throwawayboise wrote: post #257
sofixa wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Sweden has the worst infection and death rates per capita compared to all of Scandinavia: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1113834/cumulative-coron... https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/14034948209802... https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus/country/sweden

But they faired much better than e.g. Spain and Belgium. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/3/24/swedens-2020-death-...

Which are incomparable due to a vast amount of variables ( culture, population density, population spread in housing, temperatures, weather, etc.)

Re: Denmark to permanently cease using AstraZeneca vaccine

#273

Post by sofixa »

incrudible wrote: post #230
sofixa wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The secret to not having hospitals overwhelmed is to have enough capacity in the first place Enough for what? Hospital capacity was wildly sufficient for regular times, but the pandemic turned that around. Even Germany, which has multiple times the capacity per capita than France, is struggling in that regard. What is "enough"? > but also to avoid superspreader events Lol. Events with more than 2000 people outside…

> Enough for what? Hospital capacity was wildly sufficient for regular times, but the pandemic turned that around. Indeed, "enough" for normal times is not the same as "enough" for pandemic times. > Even Germany, which has multiple times the capacity per capita than France, is struggling in that regard. What is "enough"? Of course it's a "struggle" to suddenly work at capacity, but Germany wasn't in the situation of…

That was during the first lockdown. More recently, they're closer to capacity:

https://www.dw.com/en/coronavirus-digest-germany-icu-capacit...

> How do you know that it didn't help? We know from epidemiological studies that superspreader events were responsible for causing a surge of cases in a short amount of time.

It didn't help in the sense that hospitals are overcapacity and new cases, hospitalisation and death rates were still exploding until the recent pseudo-lockdown.

Re: Denmark to permanently cease using AstraZeneca vaccine

#274

Post by sofixa »

throwawayboise wrote: post #265
sofixa wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The WHO themselves were advising people NOT to wear a mask and that it might be even more dangerous to wear one than not to wear it months into the pandemic.. They also only revised this in June To protect yourself . The revised and current advice is to wear masks to protect the others and avoid propagating the virus. Why does everyone complaining about the masks thing miss that? And as others have already said, th…

> The revised and current advice is to wear masks to protect the others and avoid propagating the virus. This was a mistake. If authorities were going to be lying about masks anyway, the message should have been that they protect the wearer. People care more about themselves than they do about strangers.

> If authorities were going to be lying about masks anyway,

Who said they ( as if all authorities across the world are a singular entity) are lying about it?

Re: Denmark to permanently cease using AstraZeneca vaccine

#275

Post by marvin »

kspacewalk2 wrote: post #238
marvin wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

Lies, damn lies, statistics, and statistics with low sample sizes. In the UK they've had 13.5 million people under 60 vaccinated as of April 8, and a grand total of 79 cases and 19 deaths. The number of COVID deaths in people under 60 is more than 9000.

You're blaming the qualitative difference in the observations on sample size when Denmark, Norway and Germany all observe the same effect to differing degrees - namely, rare blood clots approximately an order of magnitude more frequent than data from Europe as a whole indicates.

You should at least acknowledge that the UK has a per-capita Covid lethality of 15 times that of Norway, and that this might also be a relevant factor in these decisions.

Re: Denmark to permanently cease using AstraZeneca vaccine

#276

Post by eloff »

tshaddox wrote: post #224
eloff wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> PS: also, why would they miss a cancer screening when it's literally the only pastime that isn't shut down. Fear to go anywhere near a medical environment. Long delays and cancelled procedures and appointments because medical professionals had other priorities.

Wouldn’t both of those situations be vastly worse if there were fewer or less strict lockdowns?

Sorry I missed the context for your PS. Yes they'd be worse without lockdowns. OP's argument is actually an argument for the side.

Re: Denmark to permanently cease using AstraZeneca vaccine

#277

Post by slashdev »

staticman2 wrote: post #221
eloff wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At a government level you have to be able to weigh bodies. Because there are often deaths or serious harm on both sides of a decision. Just because it's a hard decision doesn't mean there isn't a right choice that minimizes harm. This is also true of the trolley problem. In this case one side is clearly tipping the scales by multiple orders of magnitude more. To choose that side for political reasons is cowardice and…

I don't know if "weighing bodies" is the right approach to government, but even if it is people who "weigh bodies" are not likely to remain in power very long. There aren't a lot of humans who would support harvesting the organs of a healthy patient to save 5 sick ones, for example.

I put it crudely to be dramatic, but it is the core function of a government to choose between competing harms and benefits for different segments of the population (including populations outside their borders when it comes to foreign policy.)

> There aren't a lot of humans who would support harvesting the organs of a healthy patient to save 5 sick ones, for example.

That's a strawman. I'm not taking the position that the right decision is always choosing the least number of bodies. Maybe that is true, there are debates to be had there, but I'm not arguing that, and that's not comparable to the decision here with the AstraZenica vaccine.

Re: Denmark to permanently cease using AstraZeneca vaccine

#278

Post by eloff »

throwawayboise wrote: post #260
eloff wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At a government level you have to be able to weigh bodies. Because there are often deaths or serious harm on both sides of a decision. Just because it's a hard decision doesn't mean there isn't a right choice that minimizes harm. This is also true of the trolley problem. In this case one side is clearly tipping the scales by multiple orders of magnitude more. To choose that side for political reasons is cowardice and…

For me, the difference is that people can handle the idea of getting sick and dying. It happens to everyone eventually and there's nobody to blame. People are much less happy about deaths that are directly tracable to someone's decision (e.g. continuing to use a vaccine that will kill some small number of people).

That could be part of it for sure. I think the first do no harm mentality is a very strong bias in the medical community in general. And as pointed out elsewhere, it was the Danish medical authorities that made this call. They're the wrong people to do that.

Re: Denmark to permanently cease using AstraZeneca vaccine

#279

Post by InitialLastName »

sofixa wrote: post #181
Tenoke wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There was a bit of an initial, politically influenced confusion in the US at the beginning up until about June You are downplaying it - they were actively taking a stance against them in the US and June was already quite late into the pandemic. The WHO themselves were advising people NOT to wear a mask and that it might be even more dangerous to wear one than not to wear it months into the pandemic.. They also only…

> The WHO themselves were advising people NOT to wear a mask and that it might be even more dangerous to wear one than not to wear it months into the pandemic.. They also only revised this in June To protect yourself . The revised and current advice is to wear masks to protect the others and avoid propagating the virus. Why does everyone complaining about the masks thing miss that? And as others have already said, th…

> To protect yourself. The revised and current advice is to wear masks to protect the others and avoid propagating the virus. Why does everyone complaining about the masks thing miss that?

This might just be availability bias, but most of the people I see complaining about mask use also respond badly to other calls to lessen their negative impact on their family/neighbors/tribe/comrades/countrymen/fellow humans.

Re: Denmark to permanently cease using AstraZeneca vaccine

#280

Post by incrudible »

sofixa wrote: post #273
incrudible wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Enough for what? Hospital capacity was wildly sufficient for regular times, but the pandemic turned that around. Indeed, "enough" for normal times is not the same as "enough" for pandemic times. > Even Germany, which has multiple times the capacity per capita than France, is struggling in that regard. What is "enough"? Of course it's a "struggle" to suddenly work at capacity, but Germany wasn't in the situation of…

That was during the first lockdown. More recently, they're closer to capacity: https://www.dw.com/en/coronavirus-digest-germany-icu-capacit... > How do you know that it didn't help? We know from epidemiological studies that superspreader events were responsible for causing a surge of cases in a short amount of time. It didn't help in the sense that hospitals are overcapacity and new cases, hospitalisation and death r…

"An intensive care doctor has warned that only five to 10% of intensive care beds are still available in parts of Germany."

In most countries, running at 90% ICU capacity is the normal state of affairs, Germany being an exception.

Of course you can always warn that the health care system is just about to collapse.

In 2015:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/sep/19/nhs-collapse...

In 2016:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/sep/10/hospitals-on...

In 2017:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/feb/20/nhs-at-break...

In 2018:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/06/nhs-fa...

In 2019:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/dec/02/nhs-winter-c...

In 2020:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/21/doctors-warn-c...

In 2021:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/09/nhs-counts-the...

Spoiler: The NHS did not collapse. Working right at the brink of collapse is normal.

> It didn't help in the sense that hospitals are overcapacity and new cases, hospitalisation and death rates were still exploding until the recent pseudo-lockdown.

According to your own source, hospitals are not over capacity. If you had a few super spreader events, that could obviously change rather quickly. Whether a "pseudo-lockdown" meaningfully slows spread is not so obvious.

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