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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'

#341

Post by tazjin »

mike_d wrote: post #335
tazjin wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> COVID is pretty much negligible in many younger age groups "Paediatricians in Israel, which has surged ahead in vaccinating its adult population, reported a sharp rise in covid-19 infections among young people, with more than 50 000 children and teens testing positive in January—more than Israel saw in any month during the first and second waves." https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n383

Susceptible to infection, absolutely, but are they suffering severe symptoms or dying in large numbers? No.

A single metric (e.g. positive tests) is not enough to assess any severity here, and even those metrics come with caveats because all of our methods of determining them are imprecise.

Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'

#342

Post by Kranar »

theaeolist wrote: post #289
colechristensen wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is an incorrect statistical comparison. It is 0.58% of all deaths being caused by covid. As in 994 out of 1000 people under 18 died in the same period from other things. Compared to people who are alive covid killed 0.000288% (or 1 in 350,000) under 18s. 30 in 17M is too few to have a reliable statistic, but that comes out to 1 in 567,000. If that holds, is age invariant, etc. etc. and ignoring the time-based na…

How is 1/350,000 a LOWER risk than 1/567,000? I don't get it.

One metric is the ratio of COVID deaths / total deaths the other is COVID deaths / total population.

Since everyone is expected to get the vaccine, it's not fair to compare COVID deaths / total deaths to vaccine deaths / total population, you need to compare COVID deaths / total population to vaccine deaths / total population.

In this case, assuming the numbers posted are remotely accurate, then this specific vaccine could end up being far more dangerous to people under 18 years of age compared to getting COVID and waiting it out for two weeks.

We don't know and I'm not asserting one way or another. I'm just saying that making comparisons is much more difficult and nuanced than the straightforward naiive approach.

Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'

#343

Post by eecc »

ArkanExplorer wrote: post #277
lm28469 wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or perhaps not, given that 2020 deaths in Germany were 985,145, only 4.85% higher than 2019, and only 3.2% higher than 2018 (and so basically in line with what we would expect from an aging society). Are we still having this debate.... Of course the overall mortality didn't change much, people stayed at home for literally 75% of the year. Do you have the split stats for accidental deaths, road deaths, disease relat…

https://www.statista.com/statistics/525353/sweden-number-of-... Sweden, 2020 deaths only 6.2% higher than 2018, and following a weak 2019 flu season. These are entirely acceptable death figures within the context of aging European societies. COVID is basically a once-a-decade flu variant: like Swine Flu in 2009, which came and went without lockdown: https://swprs.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/sweden-monthly-... So C…

If you're on meds, don't skip doses. If not, please go find a specialist and get some help.

Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'

#344

Post by marvin »

jansan wrote: post #278
complex1314 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Norway at least, where we have high compliance and relatively few corona deaths, one important point is to keep public trust in the authorities. The worst case scenario would be loss of trust in the vaccine and loss of trust in the health authorities. Then people would not get vaccinated even if the authorities were recommending it. Also the symptoms are bizarre, the deaths and hospitalizations from blod clot have…

Do I see this correctly that Norway has about 2 COVID-19 deaths per day on average recently? If so the governments is doing the absolutely right thing. Not halting vaccination with AZ would be highly irresponsible.

That is approximately right. Total death toll from Covid is 640 from a population of 5.3 million.

Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'

#345

Post by mikem170 »

donovanian wrote: post #148
esperent wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> What are you basing your claim about lockdown causing death on? It's pretty obvious there's a profound psychological, developmental (children), and economic toll of lockdowns. For anyone that's below 60 or so, it's very clear they've got net negative effects on their life from draconian across the board measures that go on this long. edit: wow immediately flagged? Is it verboten to mention the simple fact of econom…

I agree with you. There is a lot of fear around this topic, so I assume rather than engage with on the merits people may be downvoting you in defence of their emotions.

Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'

#346

Post by jimmydorry »

patrickmcnamara wrote: post #250
est31 wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AstraZeneca on Friday said unspecified export restrictions now rendered plans to bring in large amounts of doses made outside Europe unlikely. It said it now expects to provide 100 million doses to the EU in the first half of this year, down from earlier commitments of around 270 million.

> bring in large amounts of doses made outside Europe unlikely I assume this is referring to the US export ban. It definitely isn't referring to Italy.

Australia also likely won't be looking to export theirs now, until their whole country is immunized. They are targetting to produce 100 million doses by the end of the year.

All of this over the 3.8 million doses they bought, and were intercepted and taken by Italy (whose export control already reduced the shipment size to 780k doses).

Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'

#347

Post by whyenot »

Vaccine skepticism is already very high in many European countries, including Germany. Vaccination doesn't work if 1/3 to 1/2 the population doesn't want to get the vaccine because they are afraid of the side effects. There may be some value in governments showing citizens how cautious they are being, even if it is not necessarily warranted based on the number of adverse reactions.

Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'

#348

Post by mikem170 »

colechristensen wrote: post #242
yread wrote: post #114

I've mentioned it in a comment in the previous thread but it's not completely unexpected and with no causal link. Adenovirus induced blood coagulation problems are known: Adenovirus-induced thrombocytopenia: the role of von Willebrand factor and P-selectin in mediating accelerated platelet clearance https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000649712... You can see the number of reported cases across Europe…

>Why does everything needs to be so politicized with this vaccine It is politicized because it effects more or less everyone on the planet and people are setup to take popular things and turn them into polarizing issues for political power in politicians and social capital for ordinary people. This is how a whole lot of people seek out happiness, by being "right" in their social circles, especially in a way that show…

Agreed. I add that the 24-hour news cycle is in it for the clicks, and they get lots of clicks selling fear. Risk assessment isn't one of our stong suits, either (human nature being what it is).

Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'

#349

Post by string »

h3cate wrote: post #328
fasteddie31003 wrote: post #9

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.

Why put people that are at low risk from covid at risk by giving them a vaccine?

Because it reduces transmissibility.

Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'

#350

Post by ArkanExplorer »

eecc wrote: post #343
ArkanExplorer wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/525353/sweden-number-of-... Sweden, 2020 deaths only 6.2% higher than 2018, and following a weak 2019 flu season. These are entirely acceptable death figures within the context of aging European societies. COVID is basically a once-a-decade flu variant: like Swine Flu in 2009, which came and went without lockdown: https://swprs.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/sweden-monthly-... So C…

If you're on meds, don't skip doses. If not, please go find a specialist and get some help.

We already place a human value on life in healthcare, via QALY (Quality Adjusted Life Years)

This is typically about $50,000/year in places like the UK.

If you run this same calculation against what we have done for COVID, the figure comes to tens of millions of dollars per life year.

The same sums spent on lockdown and lockdown compensation could have been invested in general healthcare, or tackling air pollution (which kills 800,000 Europeans a year).

COVID lockdowns should not be immune from the cost-benefit calculations that all other Government programmes are subject to. Its also totally reasonable to ask why we tolerate influenza, which is a leading cause of deaths and fills hospitals each season, but not COVID.

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