You do have to wonder if some of this is politically driven. Germany are losing hundreds of life's a day, while in the meantime the UK has administrated 23 million doses (not sure the ratio of those that were AstraZeneca) and not recorded a single fatality or adverse reaction and are seeing infection rates / deaths drop. I can understand caution under normal circumstances, but nothing is normal right now.
Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'
381–390 of 572 posts
Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'
#382Maybe AZ should have charged €3 per shot instead of €2 and spent the extra € on a PR agency. They just seem to be constantly taking a hammering in the press, unfairly I’d say.
It was totally deserved, the EU helped fund the vaccine with a €336 million grant and what they did was stopping the exports from the UK plants to the EU while still exporting from the EU to the UK.No wonder that they didn't delivered the promised doses since their best efforts were being allocated to the UK.
Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'
#383Earlier quoted context omitted.
"It's not a political decision" It likely is, though. From the perspective of the regulators, there are asymmetric personal consequences. If they make a decision that leads to 50 clotting deaths but saves 5000 people from COVID as a counterfactual, their head is on a chopping block because those 5000 foregone deaths are invisible but the 50 deaths are visible. If they make a decision to halt the vaccine distribution…
You could use the same arguments and mindset when you're an antivaxx. Vaccines can't be a holy cow that gets defended no matter what. It's always interesting that people who claim to not trust big business big pharma somehow defend everything vaccine related to death. Regulators halted it snd wait for new information to come in, that is how it's supposed to be.
I'm more saying that the incentives of regulators/politicians aren't always aligned with public health, since the decision that protects public health and the decision that protects careers aren't always the same thing.
Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'
#384Looks 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...
It's not a medically reasonable response that solicits snarky remarks, it's the complete retardation of the official covid response so far, and even reasonable decisions just are landing on a pile of steaming crap now. - billions per week of half assed lockdown vs a few billion more for high quality timeley vaccine delivieries of the good stuff --- of course they chose the lockdown - open schools as if nothing happen…
Polititians are stuck between trying to make the free-for-all phase as long as possible, but still look as though they did everything to help, so that they can win the next election.
Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'
#385Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just like I trust the regulators for vaccine approval, I trust them in the decision of stopping the administration of a vaccine to further investigate the problem. This goes together. It's not a political decision no matter how many people try to spin this. This is the outcome of doctors reporting an anomaly to a regulator. The system is working, and this should give you reassurance, not doubt about the consequences…
"It's not a political decision" It likely is, though. From the perspective of the regulators, there are asymmetric personal consequences. If they make a decision that leads to 50 clotting deaths but saves 5000 people from COVID as a counterfactual, their head is on a chopping block because those 5000 foregone deaths are invisible but the 50 deaths are visible. If they make a decision to halt the vaccine distribution…
But what are “the right reasons”? This one is a moral dilemma that has no solution. “OK, let’s kill these 50 people so that that those 5000 could live.” No one in their right mind can propose that.
Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'
#386Earlier 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…
Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'
#387You do have to wonder if some of this is politically driven. Germany are losing hundreds of life's a day, while in the meantime the UK has administrated 23 million doses (not sure the ratio of those that were AstraZeneca) and not recorded a single fatality or adverse reaction and are seeing infection rates / deaths drop. I can understand caution under normal circumstances, but nothing is normal right now.
I'm not sure at this point. When it was one suspicious death, countries suspending the vaccine definitely seemed like an overreaction, and unfortunately this particular vaccine has been something of a political football and subject of a lot of noise. But as more blood-clot deaths emerge... you gotta think caution is wise. OTOH yes, we in the UK have administered a lot of this stuff, and you'd think someone would have…
The equation changes when otherwise young and healthy individuals are at risk of serious complications, even if exceedingly rare.
Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'
#388Earlier quoted context omitted.
That trolly problem is a one off. Having a major vaccine lead to serious issues puts all of vaccines into question, creating a far larger problem spanning time. It's already the case that various sub-communities are hesitant to get the vaccine based upon previous experimentation on their populations long ago, such as the Tuskegee Study.
Using the Tuskegee Study is a bad example. The African American community has among the lowest rates of vaccine hesitancy, it’s about half of what Republican males report. Source: https://www.axios.com/concern-republican-coronavirus-vaccine...
My point still stands: with vaccines, you can’t create reasons for distrust.
Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'
#389Looks 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...
It's not a medically reasonable response that solicits snarky remarks, it's the complete retardation of the official covid response so far, and even reasonable decisions just are landing on a pile of steaming crap now. - billions per week of half assed lockdown vs a few billion more for high quality timeley vaccine delivieries of the good stuff --- of course they chose the lockdown - open schools as if nothing happen…
Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'
#390Earlier 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…
https://brnodaily.com/2020/12/16/news/excess-mortality-rate-...
And that's old numbers, since then the situation only got worse: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/3/15/czech-republic-what... https://edition.cnn.com/2021/02/28/europe/czech-republic-cor...