Re: Coronavirus
 

Re: Coronavirus
 

How quickly will AstraZeneca become a Swedish company if the vaccine is restricted. Much like Andy Murray is Scottish when he loses and British when he wins

Re: Coronavirus
 

Nah, their place in the great British success story is cemented as long as we avoid a deadly fourth wave.

I do hope they get to the bottom of the risk factors around clotting issue though - if this has to turn into an annual vaccine safety will be paramount to public confidence and "emergency use" is an easy decision knee deep in a pandemic, it might not always be so straightforward.

Re: Coronavirus
 

There's a risk factor in everything we do, and we need to look at the risk of death/serious illness from a blood clot, as opposed to the risk of death/serious illness from catching Covid.

In the current state of things, we also need to factor in the difference between having the vaccination or not, which introduces a greater risk of transmission to others from those who don't vaccinate (and also a probably reduced lifestyle for those who don't).

I think it's developing into a 'bark is worse than the bite' scenario, where people are more concerned about a possible blood clot than catching & transmitting Covid ;)

Regarding the yearly vaccination, by that time we will (hopefully) have better figures on the vaccine and it's side effects.

Re: Coronavirus
 

30 cases out of 18 million really ought to be re-stated every time this is discussed, because some of the commentary around this is starting to make it sound like taking the AZ vaccine is Russian roulette.

If there is a direct causal link then the odds of getting a blood clot from the vaccine are still ridiculously low. If there is a direct causal link, then some of the reported cases will still not have been caused by the vaccine because these things occur naturally in the population at a low rate anyway.

The danger here is that we talk ourselves into losing confidence in the vaccine for no other reason that talking about the latest covid-related gossip is now the national pastime.

If I were a betting man, I’d bet that the single-dose J&J vaccine is offered to younger people, and that the official advice underpinning that is that this is a harder-to-reach age group and a single vaccine is therefore advantageous. That will allow AZ to be restricted from the age group where it *might* pose an identifiable risk, without there being any loud public statements that undermine overall confidence in the AZ vaccine.

Meanwhile, as research continues, if there is a link, then it ought to be possible to identify why one vaccine causes clots and another doesn’t. Vaccines can and do get reformulated when necessary.

Re: Coronavirus
 

I don't think there's any doubt about the fact there's an identifiable risk given it's independently noted in the UK, Germany and others.

The question is whether it's an acceptable risk, which for a vaccination programme by consent hits problems for the members of the public who have been told they are extremely low risk of Covid complications anyway.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Pretty much this - if there is a small risk of increased clotting events in certain populations and there are enough vaccines of different types to go around, then recommending AZ for those at a lower risk and Pfizer, Janssen, Moderna and Novavax for everyone else seems sensible.

That said, if you're in an 'at risk' group for clotting events and already have had your first shot of AZ, not sure what's going to happen there - mix and match or take the risk of a second shot of AZ?

Re: Coronavirus
 

Suspect they'll apply the logic that they didn't get complications the first time and it's extremely rare rather than introduce mix and match.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Re: Coronavirus
 

30 cases out of 18million subjects is lower than what you expect in the general population.

I wonder how many people have fallen and broken their arm since having the vaccine? No doubt there could causal relationship between the vaccine and broken limbs if you looked hard enough.

Re: Coronavirus
 

It isn’t though, that’s why almost everyone is investigating.

Incidence of these rare blood clots could be as low as 2 per million in a 12 month period. Germany is seeing a higher incidence than the UK, as are other EU nations who based on their hapless vaccine rollout wouldn’t expect to see any at all.

The uneven distribution by age, sex, presumably is making it even more noteworthy.

Re: Coronavirus
 

The key thing is the blood clots have not occurred with the other Covid 19 vaccines.

I looked into why other countries throughout the world were being so cautious. One element is that they have a far higher level of vaccine scepticism - polls in France suggest half the population may decline a vaccine. So, unless statistically small issues are exhaustively investigated, populations may refuse the vaccine even if it is rolled out. Waiting and investigating may result in a higher uptake rate.

Re: Coronavirus
 

It’ll be a good one for the public inquiry to find out what the MHRA knew and when under their “yellow card” scheme. It would seem odd for a statistically significant deviation to be observed in the hapless EU programme but not first emerge in the world beating UK vaccination programme.

Re: Coronavirus
 

It's good at least to see that the vigilance systems work. From the noises of various regulatory bodies, it seems like women under 50 are at a higher than normal risk. Of course, the UK has been working on the oldest most vulnerable populations first so significant numbers in the UK may not have popped up until now.

If I have time later, I might have a look at Norway's vaccine prioritisation process to see if health workers or teachers were prioritised earlier which would then have exposed a much younger cohort earlier than the UK's process.

Re: Coronavirus
 

As low as two or as high a five per million that means, using 18million as a stake in the ground, but obviously the vaccinated number will go up, that you would expect to see anywhere between 36 - 90 cases, in that cohort of 18 million naturally.

As Chris pointed out some weeks ago, it seems to be young women affected mostly. A section most likely to take contraception pills, that also cause blood clots as a side affect.

https://www.stoptheclot.org/about-cl...control_clots/

---------- Post added at 15:48 ---------- Previous post was at 15:38 ----------

That is not correct

https://www.medpagetoday.com/special...clusives/91813

More investigations are required but I would think it is still too early to put a causal link to these issues at the hands of the vaccines.