Almost all EU has banned AZ because of blood cluttering sideeffects. Happens in perfectly healthy humans.
Some countries have temporary suspended using it well they investigate a very small number of people who got blood clots, which very well might be random chance. Nobody has permenently banned and in all probability the clots are a coincidence (healthy people get blood clots sometimes) and the suspension will likely be reversed once it is fully investigated.
On the other, even Sweden suspended it (Astra-Zeneca is a British-Swedish company). I wish HN would stop pretending everything is fine with this vaccine - it might really be problematic.
https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-sweden-va...
Anyways, im not saying don't investigate, we should investigate all possible side effects. However so far it sounds more like a coincidence so im not worried. Healthy people get sick randomly sometimes when you're looking at groups of millions of people. Sometimes by chance it will happen near when they got the vaccine. Its important to keep perspective.
> Its important to keep perspective.
Yes, it is - on both sides. Just because, as someone here said, "I'm a lever puller" doesn't automatically mean that your opinion is better and more informed than that of health authorities across EU. (note that I'm not accusing you personally of being a "lever puller", I'm just venting about what I perceive to be HN propensity to take risks on other people and dismiss concerns).
> doesn't automatically mean that your opinion is better and more informed than that of health authorities across EU
I agree that health authorities know better than I do, but i don't think i'm disagreeing with any health authorities. There are some health authorities saying its safe to keep on using it and there are some temporarily suspending while the situation is being investigated out of an abundance of caution. Unless i missed something, not a single one is saying that the vaccine is unsafe or confirmed to cause blood clots.
> I'm just venting about what I perceive to be HN propensity to take risks on other people and dismiss concerns
There is no risk free view here. Less vaccinated people means more people with covid, which among other things means more blood clots because covid can sometimes cause that (although obviously that's not the primary concern with covid).
Obviously if we can confirm a link between the blood clots and the vaccine, we should stop the vaccine. But as it stands the evidence is extremely weak bordering on non existent, and stopping using that vaccine will cost lives.
Sorry - trolley problem, pull the lever to kill one person and save 3 others, that kind of metaphor.
> stopping using that vaccine will cost lives
In the EU, there are alternatives (e.g. in my country I could actually register to Moderna and due to the shorter time between shots I'd actually be completely vaccinated faster with Moderna than with AZ).
Look, I'm not saying AZ should be killed either. Just that in my mind, precaution is justified. Symptoms are bizarre, affected people are young with no other obvious reasons to be affected. Also read what this guy says: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26473368
Again, I'm not saying "AZ=bad". I'm saying precaution is reasonable, and the view that precautions states are "obviously wrong" and should just plough through with vaccination using AZ is a bit simplistic and less informed than people would care to admit.
People should really keep a sense of perspective and compare that with the risk of blood clots in general, the risk of Covid complications, and even more generally the risk of mundane things like going out or driving. E.g. based on the numbers above someone in my country, the UK, is 10x more likely to die in a car accident in any given year than to develop a blood clot after a jab of that vaccine...
To put it in concrete numbers: it's seven people in a sample where it's expected to be one. We're not talking hundreds or thousands of people, but seven.
The question to answer is what exactly causes this, so we can learn. It's almost unthinkable that a vaccine which has vastly greater benefits than risks will be banned over this.
I disagree with halting the vaccination, as timing is vital now. It's prime time for mutations with these infection rates since evolutionary pressure is really high right now (mixture of high spread and increasing immunity).
Third waves are rolling over Europe at this moment and we need to stop spread as much as possible to lower the chance of further mutations.
As was my point, it could be just a coincidence. The sample size isn't truly random, it's people who were picked to receive a vaccine. Correlation =/= causation. Investigation needs to be completed for the cases to be attributed to the vaccine.
This makes it different from the blood clots healthy people sometimes get.
"Compared to the status on 11 March 2021, additional cases (as of Monday, 15 March 2021) have now been reported in Germany. Analysing the new data status, the experts of the Paul-Ehrlich-Institut now see a striking 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.
The data are being further analysed and evaluated by the European Medicines Agency (EMA).
Vaccinations with AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine in Germany will be suspended until the EMA's evaluation is complete. Today's decision affects both initial and follow-up vaccinations."
These things are not done lightly.
This way we avoid deaths due to Covid and at the same time don't put healthy individuals at risk that would have only mild symptoms due to Covid.
Better to stop everything, be clear that action is being taken, transparently evaluate the risk and then start back up or stop as appropriate.
Not sure what will happen, if they do pull it alltogether, get 2 doses of some other vaccine ?
Here’s what the EU regulator says. The European Medicines Agency is 'firmly convinced' benefits outweigh risks - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-56411561
It's more of the EU playing "well, we didn't want it anyway" after getting the short end of the stick in AZ vaccine production (the EU has been a net exporter of AZ vaccine, but AZ deliveries are lagging behind significantly compared to UK).
EU deliveries of the AZ vaccine are behind the UK ones because they started production at least 3 months later and it takes time to debug pharmaceutical plants for new drugs.
Even in the UK the production process is still inconsistent with fluctuating yields