outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

this is a disaster

🚨 AstraZeneca vaccinations being suspended in Ireland from this morning pic.twitter.com/SnoIb2DkEY

— Gabhán Ó Raghallaigh (@gavreilly) March 14, 2021

Covid-19: Netherlands suspend use of AstraZeneca vaccine https://t.co/08iwC0nvqV

— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) March 15, 2021

I read that the Pfizer blood clotting numbers are similar, idk if that is correct but if this is an excessive response then the only winners are going to be the tin-hat brigade and the Rona. Especially in regions with low take up rates.

Someone said this morning that (according to AZ for what it’s worth) the percentage of blood clots in vaccine recipients is actually *lower* than in the general population! I wonder if there’s something specific about the nature of these events that is leading all these public health bodies or if they are just being abundantly cautious

Yes I was going to ask the same thing, I read on BBC yesterday that they don't believe the numbers of clot issues is anything larger than what they normally expect and that there is no evidence that the vaccine is the cause. So why has a connection been made? Is it simply because the people have had the jab close to having the clot? Because if so, I foresee many more false connections for other side effects being made which is a bit depressing.

this just in, vaccine correlates with a craving for Krispy Kreme

Possibly multiple clots linked to the same batch? xp

I think it is the kind of thing they have to investigate but my (obviously) non-scientific opinion is that this is a cohort of people probably much more at high risk for blood clots - and probably even more so during a time when everyone is indoors and inactive - during normal times anyway. Still, it’s what they have to look into. Just surprised it hasn’t appeared to have shown up here yet with all the vaccinations done so far.

[Prof Andrew Pollard -director of the Oxford vaccine group]
(on BBC just now:)
He said there was "very reassuring evidence that there is no increase in a blood clot phenomenon here in the UK, where most of the doses in Europe been given so far".

Finland has also done a "very careful study" and not found an increased risk, he added.

Yes think I'm just doing what I actually hate and that's jumping at news headlines. This is just all precautionary and necessary and typical of what we'll be seeing for this year and behond I guess.

I mean..... he would say those things, wouldn’t he?

If it’s an excessive reaction it may well feed vaccine scepticism but maybe they are banking on it actually countering it: “look how careful we are about possible negative effects, which turned out not to be an issue”

Now they tell me, I had this vaccine yesterday.

Ah you’ll be fine

I was getting a bit paranoid because I was having chest pain/upper back pain but I just reminded myself that I get random sharp pains all the time. Today I am getting leg pains but again hardly surprising MMS

Whoops

...hardly surprising as I was confined to bed for the best part of 24hrs due to side effects. I wonder if that’s a factor, that ppl prone to thrombosis are at greater risk due to being... prone

All I can say is I'm glad I didn't read this thread before I went for the vaccination. Curiously, I've never had an injection that felt less like an injection, no idea why that should be.

That was my experience too! I certainly felt it later though

Interesting!

My main point of comparison is my annual flu jab - really feel that going in in a way I didn’t with this one

JCVI says no link fwiw.

“Safety is absolutely paramount, we monitor the data very carefully”

Prof Anthony Harnden, Deputy Chair of the JCVI tells #BBCBreakfast there is no link between blood clots and the Oxford-Astrazeneca jab, after the Netherlands suspended its rollout ⤵️https://t.co/xwRpjQDAUs pic.twitter.com/15Mez4AKBd

— BBC Breakfast (@BBCBreakfast) March 15, 2021

my take on why we need to be very careful when interpreting stories about the AZ vaccine and blood clots https://t.co/3IDchEmp8R

— David Spiegelhalter (@d_spiegel) March 15, 2021

My main point of comparison is my annual flu jab - really feel that going in in a way I didn’t with this one

I'd never had a flu jab till last year but it was definitely a lot jaggier than this covid one! By the way, I've just thought of a reason why the word 'jab' doesn't sit right with me, it's because you're more likely to say 'jag' if you're Scottish.

This is interesting too, but as the comments say, clots are a pretty high risk for covid itself, at a much higher rate than so far reported.

Def, and a thing to bear in mind about risk in general. My age group has a 1 in 1000 chance of being hospitalised due to covid iirc - if this reaction in like 50 out of 20 million ppl is due to the vaccine then we need to know, but it should still be emphasised that the maths is greatly in favour

xp yeah I think there’s a north/south divide

https://www.usnews.com/news/business/articles/2021-03-15/germany-suspends-astrazeneca-vaccine-amid-clotting-concerns

This is a disaster because there’s no evidence the AZ vaccine causes blood clots and these decisions, just as another wave starts in the EU, will kill thousands of people, and they will provide years of talking points to anti vaxxers.

eu rises seem to be because of the uk strain, which the uk is now mostly over, albeit after weeks of 1000+ casualties a day.

(that based on one news report i heard somewhere)

eu rises seem to be because of the uk strain, which the uk is now mostly over, albeit after weeks of 1000+ casualties a day.

Yes, the British media seems to have conveniently forgotten the horrendous death toll in the UK over the winter in the rush to gloat over/gawp at rising COVID deaths in the EU. This despite the fact that even in Italy, which is the favoured country for COVID horror stories in the UK, the figures are nowhere near as bad the UK was several weeks previously.

Speaking of Italy, they've suspended the AstraZeneca vaccine now.

There's an international debate about expanding vaccine access that is being mostly ignored in the U.S., even though we're the ones blocking it. https://t.co/e4kRC0IA2H

— 'Weird Alex' Pareene (@pareene) March 15, 2021

wait, the US is blocking it AND ignoring the debate? that's an insane coincidence

nothing to worry about, Boris has declared that the UK medicine regulatory agency as "one of the toughest and most experienced in the world".

weird that even a vague correlation of vaccines and blood clots is being treated as such a big deal when we just accept that birth control comes with an increased risk of blood clots and a huge percentage of the population is on it.

birth control pills I mean

Pfizer, All UK spontaneous reports received between 9/12/20 and 28/02/21

Deep vein thrombosis 8
Pulmonary embolism 15
Thrombocytopenia 13

AZ, All UK spontaneous reports received between 4/01/21and 28/02/21

Deep vein thrombosis 14
Pulmonary embolism 13
Thrombocytopenia 12

— Alex Tabarrok (@ATabarrok) March 15, 2021

this is from samples of almost exactly 10m AZ and 10m pfizer.

so what exactly IS driving the panic, then? did someone in the Royal families in several countries get clots?

like 0.00039% clot rate (not even a death rate, just a rate of blood clots) compared with 3% death rate for COVID-19 if people who were going to get a vaccine now don't.

HMM.

They hate Britain. Obviously. And who can blame them?

They halt vaccine trials briefly while they look into things like this, right? JUst wondering if the shortened timeframe is what’s making them jumpy. Trying to get my head around it cause I agree with everyone that it seems like it will be p damaging given a lot of these countries already have an issue with vaccine scepticism. I heard a scientist on the radio today talking about how puzzling it was that they’ve made these decisions because not only is there no proof, there is no plausible biological mechanism for this vaccine to cause clots

yeah, trials usually get halted for a few days while they investigate. and usually it's not a big news item (it happened on Pfizer once).

governments actually suspending is problematic because it sends a message to people that it's not safe and you can't unring that bell. and with government agencies actually saying the vaccine should still be used....i'm baffled as to why more governments are joining on this other than it just appearing to rain shit on AstraZeneca since Phase 3 began

so what exactly IS driving the panic, then? did someone in the Royal families in several countries get clots?

― Red Nerussi (Neanderthal), Monday, March 15, 2021 3:08 PM (twenty-two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

best guess it total lack of trust in the AZ vacccine caused by repeated AZ fuckups, exacerbated by general vacine skepticism in many of these countries, followed by political pressure contagion effect.

You jest, Tom, but I can't help but wonder whether (mainly) continental European countries crippled by the anti-vaxx plague aren't practicing pre-emptive damage control with a sprinkling of cheap counter-Brexit nationalism on top. I mostly suspect France of this, maybe Germany as well (and Italy is Five Star Movement land).

xps

i've been to the doctors in germany and they're nuts so fair enough. ireland suspending it kind of surprising to me.

Meanwhile, the European Medicines Agency is singing a different tune: 'the benefits of the AstraZeneca vaccine in preventing COVID-19, with its associated risk of hospitalisation and death, outweigh the risks of side effects.'

From: https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/news/emas-safety-committee-continues-investigation-covid-19-vaccine-astrazeneca-thromboembolic-events

ireland suspending it kind of surprising to me.

Yeah, this is the one I expected the least. Likewise Norway, which kickstarted this whole wave of skepticism if memory serves.

it's kind of amazing how all these vaccines show up in record time at much higher efficacy than expected and then we find novel ways to not dispense them.

though fortunately there are other vaccines still being utilized.

Stuff like this and consciously denying vaccine access to countries in the global south just make me think, do you want this pandemic to ever end or nah

I mean, as well as being pure evil in the latter case

As an aside, I fucking hate how France has such an amazing healthcare system – especially compared to Quebec – yet anti-medical rhetoric has gained so much ground there over the past few decades that their level of self-pwning is now off the charts. People who are able to distinguish between Big Pharma (a murderous international conglomerate in all but name) and Actual Medicine That Saves Lives are going extinct.

The leitmotiv being 'it's not natural!' Yeah, unlike, I dunno, hemlock.

i've been to the doctors in germany and they're nuts so fair enough. ireland suspending it kind of surprising to me.

The HSE takes guidance about vaccines from the National Immunisation Advisory Committee (NIAC).

On Saturday, 13 March 2021, NIAC got a new safety alert from the Norwegian Medicines Agency. The alert was about 4 new reports of serious, rare thromboembolic events (blood clotting), including some complicated by thrombocytopoenia (low blood platelet count) in younger adults after vaccination with the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine.

It has not been concluded that there is any link between the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine and these cases. As a precaution, NIAC has recommended we temporarily pause use of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine.

When to talk to your GP

Talk to your GP or GP out-of-hours if you:

feel increasingly unwell more than 3 days after your vaccination
notice blue spots on your skin
have a non blanching skin rash – one that does not disappear when you put pressure on it

It has not been concluded that there is any link between the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine and these cases. As a precaution, NIAC has recommended we temporarily pause use of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine.

this is a great advert for why not to use the passive in public health guidance.

You jest, Tom, but I can't help but wonder whether (mainly) continental European countries crippled by the anti-vaxx plague aren't practicing pre-emptive damage control with a sprinkling of cheap counter-Brexit nationalism on top. I mostly suspect France of this, maybe Germany as well (and Italy is Five Star Movement land).

Hey, it was the Irish that kicked all this off I think? And they love the Brits.

(xp) Oops just read your subsequent post.