outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

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.

xp idk, if you can’t use the passive voice for advice passed down from a big transnational medicines agency and enacted by a panel of independent experts, when can you

ugh i want to go on german tv and stick myself with six doses of astra zeneca vaccine to make a point, this is really nuts

This is a good summary afaict

Smart, detailed rundown on what's happening with AstraZeneca's Covid-19 vaccine and why it matters. Via @matthewherper https://t.co/oXxIYrfHOZ

— Jason Ukman (@JasonUkman) March 15, 2021

Wonder if US anti-vaxxers will have a field day with this (despite US not using this vaccine), or if Americans' lack of awareness that other countries exist will save us for once.

real life is irrelevant for them, it doesn't matter what actually happens or what anything means

Skydad's coming down soon enough to save them.

Lots of one-year-on pieces going about but this one is a cut above.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/03/how-the-west-lost-covid-19.html

yeah that was very good

holy hell, look at the shrinkage in hospitalizations and deaths in the elder populations in the US in the last two months:

https://i.ibb.co/XLJ2S0W/scrnli-3-15-2021-10-29-05-PM.png

https://i.ibb.co/JH1dF0w/scrnli-3-15-2021-10-30-00-PM.png

https://i.ibb.co/YbqngDr/COVID-19-NET-Image.png

The Moderna trial for children from 6 months to under 12 has been registered. It's phase 2/3, testing 3 different dose levels, for 750 participants: https://t.co/YaszjPCAgo

— Hilda Bastian, PhD (@hildabast) March 15, 2021

Put it in my veins (no, literally, please).