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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'

#501

Post by ptaipale »

Izkata wrote: post #441
skinkestek wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can check overall deaths for Europe on Euromomo. It shows that despite everything we've done we've had significant more deaths in certain age groups. You seem to be genuinely curious. For those who want to scoff it off: look at those numbers and consider the fact that these numbers are what we see after a war-sized effort to prevent more damage: in most populations only a few percent have been hit. At the moment…

> and consider the fact that these numbers are what we see after a war-sized effort to prevent more damage Which doesn't seem to have worked - infection rates are dropping off all around the world, regardless of the vaccination levels. It looks more like we hit natural herd immunity at about the same time in different places whether or not masks and lockdowns were used.

The war-sized effort includes a lot of other things besides vaccines: lockdowns, masks, drastic reduction of international travel, tankerfuls of hand desinfectant, etc.

Yes, then it starts to have an impact; without those, there would have been mayhem.

Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'

#502

Post by ptaipale »

At the moment, the decision-making looks like a trolley-problem. You've set the trolley to move on the "let's vaccinate" track. You have a risk that there might be a person who suffers down those tracks. If you pull the lever to stop vaccinating, on its path on the other track, the covid trolley will smash into 20 people.

Because you will be held accountable for vaccination but not for progression of covid, you pull the lever to change tracks.

As one person draws it in Twitter: https://twitter.com/MiettinenTopi/status/1371702220174016520

Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'

#503

Post by ptaipale »

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…

"Only" 6 5 higher mortality is huge excess mortality.

(In reality, in Sweden mortality is about 4.5 % higher than the average of 2015-2019, but that is still very significant; and of course, covid is not just that one either dies or is fine; there is the substantial but currently not very well known number of people with long-term health impact from the infection)

Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'

#504

Post by ptaipale »

hef19898 wrote: post #267
ralfn wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. As someone not in any risk group I will prefer the Pfizer or Moderna one. I'll be happy to get the Janssen one or even the Sputnik, but if the vaccine they offer me is AZ then I will refuse. And not just because of the obviously higher risk associated, but also because it appears not to be effective against the new strains. (Especially the new South Africa strain). Unlike for example the Janssen vaccine (goes b…

Sputnik is not approved, manufacturers are cooperating for all the other vaccines already. Regarding the strains, all vaccines are less effective against the South African one.

... less effective, but still effective.

Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'

#505

Post by tazjin »

oivey wrote: post #468
ppf wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love to have a choice in determining whether the various risks are worth it for me, but my government has insisted on shutting all "non-essential" businesses, and only lifted a 3-month "stay at home" order last week.

That’s not really the same thing since an individual who, for example, goes to large gatherings also endangers others by making essential activities like going to the grocery store more dangerous for everyone. Besides that, wider spread of the virus increases the odds of dangerous mutations that make the vaccine less effective or the illness more severe. More spread also risks hospital overloads, which will hurt the…

COVID isn't the only health threat around, and the response is absolutely not proportional anymore.

FWIW, the LCD of most relevant studies show that maybe banning large gatherings is useful, whereas all other measures we've invented in the meantime have dubious efficacy at best - and extremely high costs.

There are plenty of places in the world that didn't implement the "fight COVID at any cost" policies and they're doing just fine. Trust me on that, I live in one of them.

Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'

#506

Post by mytailorisrich »

shafyy wrote: post #467
mytailorisrich wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is an anomaly. This is not established at all. Overall the number of blood clots observed is actually less than expected, with an incidence lower than in the general population (i.e. without vaccine at all). My source is BBC News this evening.

Ah, random guy on HN has more data than the official governmental health agencies.

On the contrary, I'm just repeating the published data and opinions of experts and indeed health agencies from the WHO to the EMA (European Medical Agency).

I think it is therefore those who are calling for who have suspended this vaccine to explain the reasons because they seem to baffle everyone.

Bearing in mind the previous 'doubts' some in the EU had about the vaccine's effectiveness for people above 65 I am not convinced that this 'cautionary approach' is all in good faith... And the head of Italy's medicine authority has just said that this was politically motivated...

Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'

#507

Post by heavenlyblue »

alecco wrote: post #294
Frypa wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. I've lived in both Germany and UK and from my humble experience with both the government and the health standards, I think it's more likely the UK/AZ are downplaying this. It could be that they are right and the impact is minimal given that millions of people have been vaccinated. But I do believe the german version here more. The tory government can't be trusted.

Are you saying the NHS is complicit in hiding deaths due to vaccines?

I find so many of my British friends who are attacking the NHS-of-Germany (for being overly political in this scenario) while totally missing the point that British NHS could be doing exactly the same thing at the same time.

That being said a lot of Europeans who would come to the UK would be appalled by the quality of NHS compared to other European countries.

So I would argue that I would trust what German NHS says more than the British one.

Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'

#508

Post by blueblimp »

blub wrote: post #478
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.)

Your claim is false, because for some (many?) people this disease doesn't seem to cause even mild symptoms. It's always possible that some terrible consequence will only be visible years later, like for Measles, but we don't know that.

Without a crystal ball, there’s no way to know ahead of time who’s going to have an asymptomatic case. If there were a way to predict it with high accuracy, it’d be a different story, but for now that’s science fiction.

Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'

#509

Post by cutemonster »

dahfizz wrote: post #244
amelius wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So a more accurate description is: politicians care deeply if people die from an action (or inaction) that went against the public opinion.

To take this further, public opinion cares much more about action than inaction. A handful of unjust police killings cause widespread protest / riot / unrest, but 15,000 unprevented homicides are largely accepted as part of life. You can argue that they are morally equivalent, but our brains get more angry at someone doing a bad thing than at someone not doing a good thing.

Or 42 000 people dead in traffic accidents (in the US year 2020), most of this preventable, eg by middle of the road separation barriers or separate bike lanes.

Most of the public doesn't care or understand, neither do the politicians. Not interesting to fix because no one intentionally did anything bad? And, spending time on this won't win any elections?

Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'

#510

Post by gdubs »

tazjin wrote: post #321
blagie wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

Someone very close to me is a “long hauler” and the quality of life effects have been horrible. A young and healthy person, now dealing with fatigue, blood clotting, and a host of other uncomfortable and troubling issues. Throughout, medical professionals have been struggling to give people like this answers as to what exactly is happening to them — and the common refrain is “we don’t knew enough about it yet, but we’re seeing a lot of this.”

I’ll let the eventual studies give the percentages. But my (personal, non professional) take on this is that long-hauler experiences are a LOT more common then people realize, have been fairly ignored while people have fixated on the death count, and have big possible implications for quality of life for younger, otherwise healthy people.

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