Norway investigates 23 deaths in frail elderly patients after vaccination | Hacker News Reader

Norway investigates 23 deaths in frail elderly patients after vaccination

bmj.com

best site I've seen to track global vaccine distribution. Its quite amazing that the US is injecting 844k doses per day. https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/covid-vaccine-tracker-glo...

With any sense we'd be tripling that number. We've got nearly 700 million shots to give.

It would take two years at that rate. If you tripled it, that would be a much more reasonable 8 months.

You need roughly 30-40% of population. That would result in the transmission rate low enough that the disease will die down on its own then.

Thankfully. I'd rather not bet my future on people who cut ventilation holes in their masks and claim 5g gives brain cancer.

Anyhow Whenever I get a chance to take a shot I will. Better save then sorry.

It’s an impressive number for something that Just got approval.

Often you have to build entire factories to get these kinds of numbers.

It took many months just to restock shelves with toilet paper.

Thanks for sharing that link, I haven't seen that. That's a well done page for sure.

The Israelis and the Brits are doing even better.

Like others have noted, this is a nice article in that does a good job of putting things in context without sensationalising.

However, as with many reports on vaccines more generally, I find the lack of 'background' information, which would paint a correct picture and would be otherwise relatively easy to add, to be very irresponsible.

How many people have been vaccinated in that age category? What percentage does 24 patients represent? Are there other vaccines in circulation? Do they have similar adverse-effect rates? Were there similar deaths in unvaccinated people of that age group? How does this compare to deaths from people who contracted coronavirus in the same group?

This is important context. "A person died from the vaccine" vs "0.0000001% death rate from vaccine compared to 0.001% from the disease" may be factually the same information, but sounds like very different news to most people.

What is more ethical?

- Inject a patient with a vaccine that may kill them.

- Do no harm, treat them if they get sick, mourn them if they die.

> The agency has investigated 13 of the deaths so far and concluded that common adverse reactions of mRNA vaccines, such as fever, nausea, and diarrhoea, may have contributed to fatal outcomes in some of the frail patients.

We have known that the vaccines can cause a strong immune response, is it really unbelievable it can kill very frail patients?

And even more interesting because in Russia the priority has been the under 60, health and key workers

I'm sure they signed a waiver. The government is safe.

I don’t know where you are from, but you don’t sign waivers for these things in Norway. There might be backlashes if there is consensus that giving these people the vaccine was incautious. As an example (and without linking the safety of these two vaccines), the Norwegian government has paid about 350 MNOK (about 40 million USD) to people with problems after the Pandemrix vaccine.

That doesn’t really mean that it will affect the ones who made these decisions though. So in that manner, the current government is probably completely safe.

Certainly not, which begs the question: Should the vaccine be administered to all, it seems that no is the right answer at the moment.

Covid19 kills at a rate of 10-20% in that age group. What's the bigger risk to them do you think?

People who can't do math with risks drive me crazy. No offense meant to you, it's just a button I have lately after arguing with my parents about the risks of the vaccine.

You have to multiply your 10-20% with the probability to actually contract covid.

Given the prevalence of COVID in all countries (i.e. almost 10% of population of my country were infected already), it is not that low and will only go up exponentially as governments can't hold lockdowns longer. At some point old people will not be able to avoid contracting the virus, and 10-20% of them will die.

Yes, that's obvious. But that's a risk many orders of magnitude worse than the vaccines given what we've seen so far of them.

You're one of those people. The lowest risk might be to vaccinate the rest of the population, thus stop the spread of COVID and avoid the danger of both COVID and the vaccine for the most vulnerable.

Governments considered this strategy, but the problem with it how many at risk people would die while we wait to have enough vaccine. I believe not a single country is pursuing this strategy.

We don't have enough vaccine for that.

They are indeed skipping the frailest and most sick people after this.

This is a simple trolley problem and it's the same for basically all medications and medical procedures. You either do nothing (don't vaccinate) and lots of people die, or you pull the lever (vaccinate) and maybe a few people die from rare side-effects, but many more are saved by eliminating the virus.

Or, you avoid vaccines for people at high risk of dying from the vaccine. Then you let herd immunity work. The question is what percentage chance do you have of dying from the vaccine versus getting the virus. Unfortunately, that's going to be hard to tell.

We probably are not going to give vaccines to immunocompromised people because the chance of a bad reaction are likely higher than the chance of getting the virus. The people who died are likely now in the category of don't vaccinate.

This really highlights the importance of herd immunity and why I will be front of the line for vaccine when they are available to me.

It is currently uncertain[a,b] if the vaccines prevent the spread of corona, and logically therefore it is unknown if the vaccinations contribute towards herd immunity or not.

[a]: https://www.wsj.com/articles/can-you-still-spread-covid-19-a...

[b]: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/08/health/covid-vaccine-mask...

it seems that no is the right answer at the moment.

What is your basis for saying this?

This headline is irresponsible. Old people die all the time, lots of people will die shortly after getting the vaccine. Things like car accidents, undiagnosed medical conditions, heart attacks etc.

Here is an actual quote from the article:

“It may be a coincidence, but we aren’t sure,” Steinar Madsen, medical director of the Norwegian Medicines Agency (NOMA), told The BMJ. “There is no certain connection between these deaths and the vaccine.”

From the very next line: > The agency has investigated 13 of the deaths so far and concluded that common adverse reactions of mRNA vaccines, such as fever, nausea, and diarrhoea, may have contributed to fatal outcomes in some of the frail patients

That would be a good excuse except, everyone within 30 days of a positive covid test has been a covid death, even car accidents

So people die all the time, sometimes is a "tragedy" other a "coincidence"

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