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Comment by maxerickson | Hacker News Reader

It seems the rate of these conditions isn't any different for the vaccinated than for the population (last bit of the article makes this point).

What's the thought process here?

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Yeah, this seems to make no sense from the outside and the data I've seen, which all puts this in fairly normal ranges. And not enough transparency into the why then IMHO. But well, transparency into why this is supposed to make sense is something sorely missing from German covid policies for a long time now...

EDIT: as pointed out elsewhere, the official press release gives us that there has been new data in the past few days with a specific concern, that's at least some info.

The rates at population levels are not enough. These are rare cases and, at least partially, in groups of people who shouldn't get that ill and suddenly die

Last week, Lothar Wieler, head of Germany’s Robert Koch Institute for Infectious Diseases, said there was no evidence that patients who received the vaccine were more likely than patients of a similar age group to suffer blood conditions.

Is that guy wrong or basing the statement on outdated information?

Might be outdated, since he talks about clotting generally but the agency in charge of halting the vaccinations mentions a specific rare complication today [1]:

> accumulation of a special form of very rare cerebral vein thrombosis (sinus vein thrombosis) in connection with a deficiency of blood platelets (thrombocytopenia) and bleeding in temporal proximity to vaccinations with the COVID-19 vaccine AstraZeneca.

Perhaps really just a bad batch somehow if this particular complication wasn't observed in the UK.

[1] https://www.pei.de/EN/newsroom/hp-news/2021/210315-pei-infor...

There is new data, and the statement from the Paul Ehrlich Institute refers specifically to a specific type of thrombosis. The PEI is the institute responsible for vaccines, the RKI is for infectious diseases in general.

It's hard to say if this is a good decision, my impression is that this is too risk-averse given the real danger and very significant chance of COVID 19 infections. But it does seem to be based on different data than just a few days ago.

PEI Statement:

https://www.pei.de/EN/newsroom/hp-news/2021/210315-pei-infor...

EU leaders shooting themselves in the foot? Not sure what thought goes into that scenario other than none at all?

WHO say no evidence of any risk https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-56404542

Most likely liability. Since all the AZ vaccines were rushed to market they did not go through the regular channels of approval, in some countries legislation had to be changed in order to limit the liability of doctors/technicians and the companies themselves.

I've personally seen the waiver forms send to doctors, and none of the usual testing was done, including the effect on youngsters, pregnant women, etc.

There is a very good reason we had these regulations in place to begin with.

tl'dr: Governments have let AZ off the hook legally if side-effects or worse occur.

Blood clots have a known set of causes and risk factors. If the people getting these clots aren’t people who normally would get clots , it’s cause for concern. The overall rate doesn’t matter much

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