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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'

#431

Post by trhway »

fasteddie31003 wrote: post #189
virgilp wrote: 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.

>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.

people are such cool "lever pullers" until that one person is themselves.

Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'

#432

Post by intellegacy »

nabeelms wrote: post #420
geff82 wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's not forget that the German government resorts to "alternative facts" since the pandemic began just as they see fit. When we had nor masks available last march, they said "masks are useless" two months later they were mandatory "because they are the best thing we have". Recently, a post by the government on Facebook said "AstraZeneca gave us one of the best vaccines ever" just as people started to cancel their a…

I'm not aware what exactly the German government has said in the past w.r.t mask usage. However, governments claiming mask usage was not required near the start of the pandemic followed by them later requiring people to use masks was actually an understandable decision on their part from what I've understood of the situation as it unveiled. At the beginning of the pandemic, it was believed that the virus was using dr…

The lesson from 1918 for public health is that if you lie to or mislead the public once, even if by accident, you have reduced credibility in the future and are less likely to have the public listen to you. The authorities didn't learn this lesson and instead misled the public for 2 months, then did a 180 and expected people to blindly listen to them again.

As a citizen, would you trust the government if they did yet another 180, after demonstrating to you 2x that they didn't actually know what they were talking about?

Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'

#433

Post by petre »

sradman wrote: post #206
fab1an wrote: post #133

Looks 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…

It's 0.0015% compared to 4%, so at least a 2.6·1e3 difference. Given less than 0.004% chance to catch the disease in my city, the odds are 10 fold in favour of not getting vaccinated. I'll still get vaccinated regardless, because I am sick and tired of this pandemic and want to go on vacation instead of into an another lockdown this year.

Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'

#434

Post by systemvoltage »

overboard2 wrote: post #426
blueblimp wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No matter who you are, vaccination is safer than catching covid. The vaccines are designed and tested for safety; covid gains evolutionary fitness from making you sick. As a result, the risks from vaccination are orders of magnitude lower, no matter what the covid risk is. (Edit: Deleted second paragraph that wasn’t clearly worded.)

Covid evolves to spread itself more effectively. The fewer symptoms it causes, the better it can spread.

This is what 99% of the people don't understand.

The virus needs the host in order to spread. The virus doesn't have any other ulterior mechanism that wants to kill humans.

This is why spanish-flu virus got weaker over time because as it evolves, if it kills humans rapidly, it cannot evolve. So, nature sorts it self out.

Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'

#435

Post by systemvoltage »

azinman2 wrote: post #367
GhostVII wrote: post #363

Sounds like a real world case of the trolly problem. Either take no action (by giving out no vaccine) and let hundreds die each day, or give out the vaccine and kill a few people each day (assuming the vaccine is causing the deaths, which likely isn't the case anyways).

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.

> Having a major vaccine lead to serious issues puts all of vaccines into question

This is false. Problems with AstraZeneca has little to do with any other vaccine. They're engineered entirely differently and mechanisms of action are wildly different.

Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'

#436

Post by tinus_hn »

2ion wrote: post #339
fab1an wrote: post #133

Looks 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…

Suspending vaccinations for side effects that happen in 1 in 300000 cases is not medically reasonable. Even if all these cases are due to the vaccine, not vaccinating gives a worse result than vaccinating so it’s the dumb thing to do.

Which is what WHO and EMA are saying. But now that there’s panic, they’re not relevant anymore.

Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'

#437

Post by anoncake »

DanielleMolloy wrote: post #399
tazjin wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't seen anything that indicates that the risk of long-term consequences is significantly elevated above other viral diseases. There is a condition (which we know too little about, and which - as one of the few good outcomes of the COVID situation - is now actually getting some attention) that can lead to fatigue and other symptoms after fighting off a viral infection, but it's not unique to COVID. A year ago t…

Mh, do you really want to play down the possibility of unknown long-term consequences? Check out this: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.02.23.432474v1 The Spanish Flu has led to a „sleeping sickness“ epidemic years after it ceased.

There is nothing to play down. More than a year into the pandemic are there is still no evidence of long-term damage except in rare cases. Evidence of inflammation in monkeys does not qualify, before you ask.

Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'

#439

Post by offby37years »

wbronitsky wrote: post #313
ktybdr wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 teste…

It is impossible to study the long-term effects of any vaccine within a year. Impossible. Unless you are elderly or immunocompromised you are almost certainly exposing yourself to more personal risk by being vaccinated.

Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'

#440

Post by offby37years »

uomo wrote: post #402
BrissyCoder wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I get that herd immunity won't occur if a significant proportion of population isn't immunized... but it still works on an individual basis.

Yes, but herd immunity makes it possible to protect the total population from a disease including the ones that cannot get vaccinated, such as children or those with contraindications.

What's the COVID-induced death rate among children again?
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