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Comment by vibrio | Hacker News Reader

Based on all the information provided in this article, this article is premature to publish. The headline is accurate, as 'experts say', but lack of any independent support of data supporting the claim, makes this dubious (at best) to publish at this point.

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Do remember that this expert is the person the premier Norwegian hospital picked as their spokesman for their press conference on this. So in essence what he says is the opinion of the Norwegian health care system, not just his own, about these cases. This isn't some random expert, giving an of the cuff opinion.

hes a clotting expert, not a COVID expert. So of course he sees clots everywhere. Are you sure he's the spokesman, or just making this claim as an independent researcher. There is nothing in the two articles I read saying this is an official position of the hospital.

Yes I'm definitely sure he is speaking for the hospital, and that he was speaking at the hospitals press conference. This has been all over the news here in Norway, every news outlet treat this as legit, and from the hospital / government.

acknowledged. I did some more searching and found several articles where the hospital seemed directly involved.

>hes a clotting expert, not a COVID expert. So of course he sees clots everywhere

and while I'm sure that a cancer expert has a tendency to see cancer more than your average guy, I'd still rely on a cancer expert for an opinion on cancer

this is a weird take. A clotting expert is supposed to comment on clotting issues, that this is a covid vaccine isn't even really relevant.

Correct, it’s irrelevant what type of medicine it is. But of course there should be a huge warning in the PIL and the patients should be able to read it.

Why do you say that? Yes it is relevant. The vaccine has caused multiple cases of patients with blood clots. Some have been fatal.

Analysis of these patienta and their clots by a clotting experts is highly relevant.

But that's what I come to HN for.

I'd say the timing was just right!

A lot of media was already trying to frame all of this into a political problem, fueling conspiracy theories, and trying to destroy the credibility of European independent regulators.

It's disgusting what happened in the past few days, casting doubt over regulators, doctors and scientists that were dealing directly with these cases and had hands-on data, thankfully there's transparency in these countries, and regulators are doing what they're supposed to be doing.

If only the same standard were applied to all statements about Covid.

Or, really, everything in the news.

But... then... there would be less news.

nobody wants to read the "Journal of Unsurprising Results Consistent With Evidence"

I do.

Wouldn’t it be nice

Is the quality degradation in news some variant of tragedy of the commons?

Just thinking the same thing

This is the source article, with likely a lot more information: https://www.vg.no/nyheter/innenriks/i/QmwR1V/professor-om-mi...

per google translate, it may have more information but not more data, nor independent confirmation of the experts' opinions.

Actually this is independent testing for the AZ vaccine. As in, the only testing not done by AZ themselves.

It all depends on how you look at it...

Pretty sure all countries that distribute it have their own independent data sets, or are you suggesting AZ runs the health care systems across Europe?

I'm pretty sure it was approved only based on testing done by AZ themselves. So there were no "independent" tests when it was approved.

As I said before, that's normal procedure for any medication, so we're arguing about the definition of "independent".

Btw the case in Italy was autopsied and found to not have any blood clots.

Edit: found a link in english for Italy

https://www.ansa.it/english/news/general_news/2021/03/16/ast...

I'm from Italy, and we had similar cases too: https://mantovauno.it/cronaca/non-ce-lha-fatta-il-carabinier...

The phrase "experts say" is often used in headlines where it may technically be true ("one or more experts personally believe X") but to the reader's mind it translates as "a majority consensus of the field's experts have agreed on X given new, relevant evidence". I don't think this dichotomy is accidental.

"See, look, they knew it was dangerous but the MSM suppressed it."

If you don't publish you feed conspiracy theorists. Better to transparently publish the information that you have.

This is an issue under active discussion that is extremely relevant to basically everyone right now. That every information on this topic is preliminary should be obvious to every intelligent person.

I appreciate reporting on the scientific discussion in such a case.

Is there any independent support of data which contradicts the claim?

Governments have taken the decision to pause vaccinations with AZ, on the basis of this emerging information.

It's only right that we, the people, can see what our elected representatives are basing this decision (to pause) on. It makes sense to me.

Based on all the information available about this vaccine, this vaccine is premature to administer.

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