Germany suspends use of AstraZeneca vaccine, along with Italy, France, Spain
dw.com
dw.com
I suspect that the UK would be very happy to take Germany's supply.
I find really likely that, no matter the result of the EMA's investigation, the already pretty skeptic population of certain countries will outright refuse being inoculated with the AZ jab from now on, making the goal of vaccinating everyone in the EU before summer absolutely impossible to reach.
With the clots in the news from legitimate sources, pushing through with the AZ vaccine could increase public distrust of vaccines in general.
Just speaking for myself: I was never planning to take a covid vaccine. And neither my sister and brothers are. My girlfriend also doesn't want any covid vaccine and our daughter will not get one either. I did help my grandmother to get her vaccine this week though and I believe for her it might make sense.
I am pretty healthy (not overweight) and don't have any comorbidities (diabetes and such), so I don't see a reason why I need this vaccine. And I would guess the reasoning is the same for my sister and my brothers and my girlfriend.
For comparison: for the flu virus we also don't try to get the whole population vaccinated, only the "at risk" groups.
Being healthy is not a certain indicator that the illness is going to be mild for you. It will most likely be light, but there's no guarantee about this being true.
And even if you don't end up in the ICU, you still risk complications which may hamper your health long term (see "long Covid"), or that could cause you long-term issues like an hampered sense of taste and smell. This is mostly avoidable by getting inoculated with one of the vaccines, which while they might not reduce to zero your chances of getting sick, they will basically zero any chance you have of serious complications. It's also very likely vaccinated people are less infectious after a jab.
All of this comes at the cost of a really small potential risk of side effects, each of one ostensibly much less likely than the chance of getting seriously sick due to the virus itself.
About the flu: we don't need to vaccinate everyone every year because usually people get one strain of the flu or another during their lives. Sars-CoV-II, on the other hand, is a completely new virus. See for instance what happened when during the Columbian exchange, where Rhinoviruses were introduced by the Europeans in the Americas. The natives had no kind of immunity for the common cold, so millions of people got seriously sick and died from an infection that did basically nothing to the Europeans.
Also, I must say it's morally reprehensible to not getting vaccinated during a pandemic, unless you plan staying isolated until the emergency ends (i.e even if and when the vaccinated will go out, you should still stay home). While you might not _need_ the jab, you could still spread the virus and help the infection reach new hosts. Vaccines are never 100% effective, some people with compromised immune systems do not develop strong antibodies, and that's why it is crucial to vaccinate everyone, both healthy and vulnerable.
My son is 16 years old, so I cannot even enter his age in that tool. I had to enter 19 years and it gave me the risk of 1 in 1000000 for death from COVID-19, which is lower than getting a blood cloth from the vaccine.
Why on earth should he take the vaccine? Why are people even thinking about making it mandatory, even for teenagers? This is absolute madness!
It's not the risk of you dying that is important. It's the risk of you passing it on to other people.
If your son passes it on to his grandparents, teachers, service workers, or even his girlfriends immunodeficient sibling, would you still think it's absolute madness?
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/03/15/europe/eu-uk-brexit-grace...
How many of those 17 million would have never even caught the bug? And how many of those will get it anyway, even with the vaccine? How many of those would have developed symptoms? How many of those had serious underlying health problems that may have escalated those symptoms to ICU necessity? And how many of those would have succumbed?
It can't possibly be "VASTLY" more than 0.0002%, right?
EU population is very roughly 500 million. Very roughly 560 thousand people have already died of covid in EU+EEA - that's 1 in one thousand of the whole population dying from covid in the last year, or 0.1%.
If they don't get a vaccine, unless you dig yourself a hole and you stay there until the virus has somehow disappeared, is almost certain you will get infected.
Meanwhile Trudeau has the gall to assure the AstraZeneca vaccine is "safe and effective": https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-astrazeneca-safe-1....
https://www.openaccessgovernment.org/astrazeneca-vaccine-saf...
Thalidomide is the most well known example, but there are many others:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumiracoxib -- Approved in Europe, not the USA. Withdrawn from sales due to side effects.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zimelidine -- Same.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tolrestat -- Approved in Europe, failed stage 3 clinical in the USA
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rimonabant -- Approved in Europe, failed in the USA, withdrawn worldwide because the side effects were so bad.
Perhaps you are mistakenly thinking of the time when AZ was delayed in ramping up it's clinical trial in the US, pending getting data to the FDA on two adverse events. The data was eventually given to the FDAs satisfaction, the trail has taken place, and it is reported that the results will be shortly handed off to the FDA for analysis, perhaps this week.