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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'

#521

Post by brmgb »

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…

> - 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

This is not the issue. A few billion would not have magically solved the problems with vaccine deliveries. The EU has contracts with pharmaceutical companies which these companies are not honoring sometimes intentionally so.

AstraZeneca for example doesn't have the production capacity to supply what they promised to the EU even if the Belgian site was working properly. That's the result of the EU audit. These companies are betting that the consequence of them not fullfiling their contractual obligation will be insignificant compared to their benefits. As these companies remain hugely profitable, their production issue is not linked to difficulty accessing capital. It is naive to assume things would have gone differently if the EU was paying more. It would just have meant more profits for them.

The heart of the issue is that contraty to the USA or China the EU is weak so companies don't hesitate trampling it. If a Chinese company did to China what AstraZeneca is doing to the EU, the CCP would take control of it and its CEO would never be seen again. Meanwhile, the USA has little qualm using its legal system to punish companies defying the state to much. Congressional inquiries are not fun.

Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'

#522

Post by anthonypasq »

angry_octet wrote: post #459
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…

Norway is one of the few countries where it makes sense to be extra cautious, as they have excellent medical records and strong control over virus transmission. It's absolutely mad for Italy, Austria etc. But this is not a surprise: countries that handle the pandemic well (evidence based rather than populism or dogma) continue to manage the vaccine rollout well, and vice versa.

By most metrics the US and UK have handled the pandemic horribly, yet are at the front of the pack by a mile in terms of vaccines.

Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'

#523

Post by libertine »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #520
libertine wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What published data are you referring to? Because the event that's causing this is in no way within the statistical references most of the British media is pumping out - which is what you're talking about when you say "blood cloths". It's not "just blood cloths", it's the type of cloths, where they are located, with low pallet count, with more incidence on a younger age group, localized in an hospital staff.

Well... Article published 40 minutes ago: The European Union medicines regulator has reiterated there is "no indication" that the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid jab causes blood clots, after several countries paused their rollouts. European Medicines Agency (EMA) head Emer Cooke said she remained "firmly convinced" that the benefits of the vaccine outweighed any risks. But even if the blood clots observed are in fact due t…

Again you keep referencing British media that it's clearly doing a bad job reporting this - if they are doing this on purpose that's to be discussed.

The problem isn't the blood clots. That's the spin British media is giving to this, and that's what EMA is addressing.

Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'

#524

Post by tungdo »

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…

I'm very disappoint finding out that the minister of health is just a lobbyist with no medical background. He seems to care a lot about suing people who talk about his villa than doing actual work.

Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'

#525

Post by somedude895 »

krzyk wrote: post #460
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…

> 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" Wow, this is exactly how the masks thing played out in Poland. I wasn't aware that this "makes are useless" followed by "masks are mandatory" (with Poland together with a ban on selling them on the biggest platform, big like Amazon is in the US - Allegro). And now…

Wow, same in Switzerland. They told people to keep using fully packed trains and buses and that masks weren't necessary. Couple weeks later, when masks were well available they suddenly made it mandatory to wear them on public transport.

Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'

#526

Post by oivey »

ppf wrote: post #492
oivey wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

How exactly will staying at home "for a few more months" stop a virus mutating forever? It's not that bad, we have to live with it. Viruses mutate all the time. I'm not sure what your point is with the apparent difficulty of understanding the risks of a new vaccine. Are you saying "it's hard, so just trust what the authorities tell you"?

In a few more months everyone will be vaccinated, significantly limiting the spread, slowing mutation.

To be clear, we’re talking about the risk of the AZ vaccine specifically. It seems like there might be something specifically wrong with it. Ceding approval authority to bodies like the FDA is how medicine is regulated all over the world. That’s how literal snake oil is blocked from sale. Among other things, it prevents desperate patients from making uninformed, dangerous, and expensive treatment decisions. The average person really isn’t equipped to read a medical study and adequately interpret the results. This information isn’t even at the maturity level of a study, and the risk is that people hurt themselves and undermine the confidence in this vaccine and others.

Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'

#527

Post by tazjin »

mapme wrote: post #445
tazjin wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A simulation from the economist gives ~2% chance of being hospitalized if you get COVID as a 29 yr old male with no comorbidities. https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/covid-pandemic-mort...

That's not what your link says, not specifically:

> Moreover, the database is not a representative sample of the sars-cov-2-positive population. Because it only contains records from people who have interacted with a medical service provider, it excludes those who weather the disease at home without medical assistance.

This will exclude the vast majority of people in younger age groups who were affected. Serology studies have shown us that in many densely populated places infection rates have been far into the double-digit percentages - if this statistic was true in the way you interpreted it, we would know that by now.

Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'

#528

Post by ptaipale »

ByteJockey wrote: post #423
nabeelms wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Governments didn't say that a mask wasn't required. They said masks didn't help (presumably to prevent a run on them). It's definitely an understandable decision, but there's a big problem with it. When officials start doing this, you have to play a sort of game where you try to figure out why they said something and what it signifies. You have to try to divine the state of reality and figure out what to do based on…

Indeed. I'm quite furious that my government (Finland) ordered such a "mask assessment" from a retired professor, in order to reduce the political pressure caused by PPE shortages.

Now anti-maskers and other covid deniers are citing that report: "don't do anything, even the government research says it is useless".

Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'

#529

Post by ggreer »

libertine wrote: post #514
ggreer wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a lot of people (myself included) are more than willing to take a vaccine with these risks. As long as there is informed consent, what’s the problem? Banning everyone from getting this vaccine is typical bureaucratic ass-covering. Their incentives are not aligned with ours. They get in trouble if they’re directly responsible for a few deaths, but not if they’re indirectly responsible for hundreds of thousands…

The problem is that it's starting to look more and more like a production problem and a bad batch, and you shouldn't be vaccinated with a product that probably should have failed QA. It's not bureaucratic ass-covering, it's literally the protocol that's in place and has worked to keep populations safe. >250 miles of driving gives you a one in a million chance of death. This vaccine is safer than that. Again you're mi…

The alternative to a car with bad brakes or a plane with design flaws is another car or another plane. The alternative to a covid vaccine is that you get covid. Even for young and healthy people, that can mean debilitating long-term illness.

There is no safe option here. We have to think like we are in war time, not peace time. Allowing people with informed consent to take this vaccine will save far more lives than banning everyone from taking it.

Re: Germany pauses AstraZeneca vaccinations as a 'precaution'

#530

Post by ppf »

oivey wrote: post #526
ppf wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How exactly will staying at home "for a few more months" stop a virus mutating forever? It's not that bad, we have to live with it. Viruses mutate all the time. I'm not sure what your point is with the apparent difficulty of understanding the risks of a new vaccine. Are you saying "it's hard, so just trust what the authorities tell you"?

In a few more months everyone will be vaccinated, significantly limiting the spread, slowing mutation. To be clear, we’re talking about the risk of the AZ vaccine specifically. It seems like there might be something specifically wrong with it. Ceding approval authority to bodies like the FDA is how medicine is regulated all over the world. That’s how literal snake oil is blocked from sale. Among other things, it prev…

That's nice, and I suppose everyone entering and leaving the country will need vaccine passports. It's as if everything that we were told would never happen, is going to happen. "A few weeks to flatten the curve", and now we are swallowing the idea of 100% vaccination and associated papers.

As for your comments on regulation - yes, that is correct, which is why I was surprised when I got so much flak for pointing out that, at least in the UK, regulatory shortcuts were taken to rush the approval of Covid vaccines.

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