Most interesting would be data from the UK. My understanding is they've had by far the biggest AZ rollout, so any anomalies should be more obvious - assuming it's a design problem, and not caused by a manufacturing defect from one specific supply.
Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'
311–320 of 572 posts
Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'
#312Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Or alternatively, they wish to push the vaccines and end of lockdown into Spring/Summer, where natural seasonality will take care of COVID and give the appearance that lockdown and vaccines were a success. Did you somehow forget that this is the second year of Covid? We've already gone through the whole "natural seasonality" cycle and the disease is very much still here.
Take a look at this COVID daily trends graph from the CDC: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends_dailytrends... From an average of about 50k cases reported daily in April through October to about 200k cases reported daily in November, December, and January, then back down to 60k by March. And there's a similar winter increase in the worldwide cases (some of which is from the US cases, but not all): https:/…
yes, a certain seasonality is very probable. But with the variants we have right now (e.g. B1.1.7 from Kent), summer won't be enough to stem the tide. I'm saying this from a central european perspective (with not enough vaccinations either to help).
Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'
#313Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Thats why everyone should be free to chose to get vaccinated. Isn't that the case? At least in my country, there is no obligation to take the vaccine, and even incentives (e.g. being able to attend public events sooner) are seen very critically.
There are definitely people with the view that they should be mandatory and I've personally started to encounter social pressure to get vaccinated, which I don't want to do, because I lead a low-contact hermit's life and the odds of dying from COVID which I probably won't catch if I maintain my lifestyle a few more months appears to be lower than the chance I'll die from a vaccine that I definitely get For my age coh…
I’m curious as to why you find the injection questionable? From my understanding, all of the vaccines approved in the US followed the same path every other vaccine follows. The difference was that Covid is everywhere, so stage 3 went really quickly, where it could normally take many months or years for the requisite amount of people to catch the disease in question.
To me, these vaccines have been as rigorously tested as they could be, and none of this was really ever about people in your health category anyways, so that seems irrelevant in the “utility of vaccination” argument.
I could be incorrect though, so I’m interested in your unease and rejection of what I find to be sound science.
Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'
#314Absolute fucking stupidity. Thirty cases of blood clotting out of five million. More people will die because they're not vaccinated. And that's ignoring the fact that this may just be a statistical blip. There's a lot of diseases humans could catch, and sometimes there's going to be clusters. German politicians said they're suspending vaccinations "out of an abundance of caution". Given these numbers, we should conti…
An hypothesis: I'm not sure about Germany but in France, Spain and several other European countries 40% of the population do not want to get vaccinated. I believe the countries that have suspended AZ have done so so that those who generally doubt the safety of vaccination don't have a reason to further doubt this one. Even if a small percentage of those 40% is convinced by this act it's a large number of people.
Or alternatively they've added extra doubts to the vaccination effort which will result in more people deciding not to get a vaccine.
In my opinion they're very much pandering to the large anti-vax populations of these countries.
Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'
#315Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 a…
>These include France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands - not really a politically homogeneous bunch. Litterally all members of the same economic and political Union. The EU.
Sure, but the EU is not a federation. There are still many divergent interests between these nations. Take the Netherlands and Italy for example - not a lot of agreement between those two, usually that is. They do seem to agree on AstraZeneca though.
Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'
#316Earlier quoted context omitted.
Now as a politician, you just need to find the right expert that will recommend you whatever you want to do.
Of course you ask a reputable one, e.g. head of CDC etc. otherwise prepare to get in trouble with journalists.
> of course you ask a reputable one
What if that turns out to be more difficult than you originally realized.
Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'
#317It's also worth noting that it seems like Germans perceive the AstraZenica vaccine as second-rate, and were even skipping appointments in the hope of getting the Pfizer/BioNTech shot later. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/25/world/europe/germany-coro... : > Many people — including health workers — are skipping appointments or refusing to sign up for the AstraZeneca shot, which they fear is less effective than the Pfi…
I think the concerns are very valid about AZ and German's have a right to choose. Big point is that HN is largely an American forum so there will be a bias against AZ doubters. Interesting that Twitter and Facebook also not labeling the concerns about AZ as "Fake News" so likely there is some merit to the claims against AZ. I am also against taking AZ as well. If HN folks are confident it is fine go ahead. I will cho…
Why would there be an American bias against AZ doubters? It's not approved in the US and I expect a lot of otherwise pro-vax people would not want an AZ vaccine--which, in at least some states, is not actually a choice you have once a vaccine is approved.
Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'
#318Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The EMA has said that as of March 10, a total of 30 cases of blood clotting had been reported among close to 5 million people vaccinated with the AstraZeneca shot in the European Economic Area, which links 30 European countries. "The decision today is purely precautionary..." given this level of signal. We don't have details on the age groups involved and the normal rates expected but I can hazard a Fermi Estimate…
> the risk is minuscule compared to COVID-19 itself You don't know this at all - we don't know what age groups are affected here, and COVID is pretty much negligible in many younger age groups. It's best to wait for more data to come in before drawing any conclusions.
The risk *of death* from COVID is pretty negligible for some age groups. The biggest confusion of this whole situation is we've fixated on CFR numbers as a measure of risk.
Risks of long-term consequences don't seem to be all that low.
Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'
#319Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m not sure if it’s bureaucracy or human nature, as government procedures had been responsive to the pandemic, and pressure to urge inactions have been overriding the pre-pandemic determined actions.
Pretty much all the responses of the government that were done quickly were to prevent action (i.e. no going to restaurants, no flights to certain areas, etc) so I'd argue that that also represents "inaction", just in a roundabout way.
Right. They were playing it safe, as opposed to having to defend themselves some day in the future for not playing it safe.
This would explain why the Swedish state were so heavily criticised for not locking down. Also would explain the UK government arresting people for being outdoors (there's not really any data supporting outdoor transmission, that I know of).
Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'
#320Looks 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...
> The EMA has said that as of March 10, a total of 30 cases of blood clotting had been reported among close to 5 million people vaccinated with the AstraZeneca shot in the European Economic Area, which links 30 European countries. "The decision today is purely precautionary..." given this level of signal. We don't have details on the age groups involved and the normal rates expected but I can hazard a Fermi Estimate…
The risk of covid-19 in the majority of the population is miniscule