UK finds 30 blood clot cases after AstraZeneca jab
dw.com
dw.com
Vaxzevira (the A-Z vaccine) has been in use for less than 3 months, ~2.2M doses have been given, resulting in 31 cases. So, worst case, you would have expected around 5 cases at this time.
(Edit: changed acronym to English version, instead of the German one)
Your natural incidence rate is whole-population but the vaccine rollout has been weighted to the oldest and least healthy. These may be the population that most of those cases happened in otherwise.
You can assuage some of these things by looking at other vaccines, assuming they're given to the same demographics.
[0] https://www.healthline.com/health/leading-causes-of-death
* 30 million have received the first
* 4 million have received the second
Let's assume that 80% of folk got the AZ vaccine and that there's an equal chance of clot after each vaccine. So we're stating that the chance is 42 / 34 * e6 * 0.8. That means that the chance of it happening (from just those numbers) is 0.000001544117647. Since there are some many zeros, 0.000_001_544_117647. These numbers are tiny.
Now compare that with the chance of death from Covid. For over 50 the chance of death is much higher (calculated by UK population number and deaths in population over over 50 from COVID). When I did the calcs yesterday on the Norwegian (iirc) numbers assuming about 30 per million (higher ratio than the UK numbers), it seemed that for the under 40's the chance of death from vaccine was slightly lower than dying from COVID.
In the UK, COVID deaths might be considered higher than other countries due to differences in the way in which deaths are recorded.
The next question to ask is what the likelihood of a similar blood clot within the general population if they'd not had the vaccine. From what I hear those chances are similarly low. From what I've read from doctors it sounds like the chances are higher than without the vaccine. Some joked that this could therefore be considered an anti-blood clotting medicine.
Next put this into comparison with other medications, such as the contraceptive pill where chance of blots clots is 1:1000.
The numbers at large matter.
The numbers at large only matter when you’re the one who lands on the other side of fence without harm.
Now, This wouldn’t be an issue if the world wasn’t moving to require a vaccination certificate since that person can make the choice themselves to balance the risk of the shot vs the adverse effects.
But it’s becoming increasingly real that they risk being a second class citizen. It’s just plain wrong and completely anti freedom.
No need to be snarky.
In 2017 there were almost 80k deaths in the US due to flu.
In 2018 around 40k.
Yes currently its being reported that there has been nearly 500k deaths due to covid only. Note the only part.
I smell number fuckery here...
More people have died from Covid-19 than in the past 5 flu seasons combined
And that was October
45s into this video shows icu admissions each year for flu and covid. Covid of course coming with stringent lockdowns.
https://www.ft.com/video/0cd6f9f9-664e-40f9-bad4-dde59d7c746...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHfOcGm5xiA
This shows overall deaths in a number of countries compared to the last 20 years for a number of countries.
https://oronu.wordpress.com/2021/01/29/mortality-statistics/
One thing is to bash the EU politicians because that's kind of what they are there for, other thing is to bash health authorities, regulators, doctors and scientists out of some sick sense of nationalism and superiority.
It's just sad.
Norway, Germany, Denmark and other countries regulator bodies worked together to identify the anomaly, what triggers it, and how to deal with it, and this will prevent unnecessary deaths of people that are committed to help stop this pandemic by taking a vaccine.
That's how these agencies should work, that's why everyone should be relieved about taking a vaccine - they didn't create new protocols, or closed their eyes, or bent over politics, just because this vaccine effort is important. They know what they are doing, and questioning them out of arrogance it's just an expression of ignorance.
https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/03/30/bl...
” A possible concern is what’s being called vaccine-induced prothrombotic immune thrombocytopenia (VIPIT) by Andreas Greinacher at Univ. Griefswald. This is a blood clotting syndrome that’s similar to what’s observed with the (already known) syndrome of heparin-induced thrombocytopenia. That problem, first over 40 years ago, is a paradoxical effect that occurs in a few people of administering heparin for blood clotting problems and actually making the situation worse.”
I don’t blame people, though. A friend of mine did the AZ shot recently. The next day he had chest pains and palpitations so severe he thought he was going to have a heart attack. He has a heart disease, but the doctor said the vaccine was safe, and he trusts doctors. Now he’s sh!t scared to take the second dose. The doctor says he’s gonna do fine, and he can’t get tested to see if it’s safe. The vaccine is the test. Should I tell him about statistics? I’d be heartless if I did. He’s well aware of the numbers, but the fear of death (or the desire to live) win against mathematics.
> It looks like a lottery nobody wants to play.
I would suggest you tell the people you are referring to here to stay in bed. And if they must get out of bed, at least never go downstairs.
https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/all-injuries/preventable-death-o...
People overwhelmingly don't the consider the probability of mortality in their daily lives, so why are they considering it now ?
My own thoughts about it (rational or not) is that mRNA is more KISS -just the key protein- which is favourable in complex systems. It’s not that AZ isn’t safe, Pfizer/Moderna just seem safer at this point.
Things that cause more blood clots than the Covid vaccine: covid itself, pregnancy, birth control, etc
But you prefer the virus, sure, go ahead. But a tube down your throat is not comfortable.
Having an AZ injection is probably the safest thing people will do that day and will then massively decrease risk of covid complications. That's how it should be framed, IMHO, instead of scaring people with the very small chance that something might possibly go wrong (which is lower than the chance of having an accident on the way to the injection).
That number also ignores effects of long covid
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/apr/01/long-covid-s...
It's simply not reasonable to worry about covid vaccines in general and AZ specifically. Unfortunately it seems that there is a lot of scaremongering in the EU.
I tried hard to debunk it but took me a lot of time and not sure if anyone reasoned with my explanation more than with it.
> Should I tell him about statistics? I’d be heartless if I did.
What?? That's the only actually truthful and objective information you can give to him. How is that "heartless"? You don't need to tell him that in a cold voice and never acknowledge his fears and feelings, you can discuss all that and make him feel better somehow.
But telling someone truthful information - is not heartless, it's one of the best things you can do for them.
- over 30 cases were observed, that is statistically higher than expected, that would have been less than 5.
- all cases were below 55, very few men
- due to the approval process in EU, AZ wasn't approved for people over 65 until very recently, as the initial approval didn't contain the necessary data in this age group. As a consequence, AZ was used for young people that qualified for a vaccination, e.g. health workers, teachers. Other than these groups, general vaccination only happened above 70 for the scarcity of vaccine.
- As AZ is now approved for any age group, last week the vaccination plan was altered, AZ is now used only for people over 60, everyone else gets other vaccines (mostly BioNTech)
- the UK always used AZ for all age groups, starting with the oldest. Currently people down to the age 50. So the majority of the vaccinated people in the UK was above the age group in which the cases had been observed in the EU.
No, the EMA was perfectly happy with giving it to people over 65, it was the local health authorities who wanted to "have their say" and nitpicked it.
Now look and behold, it seems it maybe was a better idea to keep it to the older cohorts.
And yes, the fact that the UK went to the older cohorts first might explain why they have seen fewer cases.
Why are you framing the event of AZ doing a bad job at their trails and submitted literally bad data, and tried to mix it up with different data, as being the authorities "having their say"? It wasn't just one local health authority, it was even health authorities that has no influence from EMA, like Switzerland. At best your critic would be... they are rigorous and extremely demanding about these subjects?
Maybe, just maybe, a large pharmaceutical that got hundreds of millions in funding simply shouldn't fuck up trials?
> they are rigorous and extremely demanding about these subjects?
While the older cohort is the one that suffers the most Covid causalities? MHRA thought it was a "risk" worth taking no? (because in the end it wasn't risky - maybe a slight smaller efficiency but that's it)
> Maybe, just maybe
Oh there's no maybe there, their trials were a mess, hence why the FDA asked for another trial.
How many deaths were caused by the AZ and other vaccines so far and how does that compare with the mortality rate of the disease?
Is there any website that is gathering and debunking these conspiracy theories?
By debunking I don't mean labeling them negatively but fact-checking the claims and showing reasonable people on the fence provable evidence to help them think for themselves based on facts and not just to blindly believe the sensationalist rumors.
Taxes are payments that a citizen is morally and legally obliged to pay the state for upkeep and services. Not paying taxes is essentially stealing from others.
There is no moral or legal obligation to have a vaccine. Choosing to not have a vaccine is not stealing from anyone else. It does not reduce the effectiveness of their vaccination.
In fact, a large chunk of people could choose not to be vaccinated and we will still crush COVID-19. They should have the choice - why should everyone be strong-armed into having it if it's not necessary and they're not comfortable with it?
But I do wonder how the vaccine requirement will play out, Texas for instance does not force the vaccine upon it's population, which i think is the right way to go about it.
The Malaria vaccine was one i skipped due to side effects and i think you should have a similar free choice for the Corona vaccine.
We need to encourage as many people to be vaccinated as possible in order to help protect this other group. And we need to avoid causing even more harm to this group by excluding them from society.
I don't know how I can make you see that it is precisely this kind of talk that's scaring regular people into being anti-vax.
It's against the Nuremberg code.
Just like with flu vaccines every year, once the high risk groups are vaccinated there is no need for the rest of society to take these vaccines.
You DO NOT have some right to impose yourself on the rest of us. We do not have any requirement to associate with you or to tolerate your presence. If you represent a risk then we have the right to exclude you if we think you are choosing this path to be a free rider rather than due to some medical necessity. I would say that the amount of self-declared selfishness here is shocking, but if we have learned anything over the past few years it is that a sizeable fraction of our society is composed of people who are best avoided if possible.
Vaccine 'passports' are nothing new. We kind of all have them already. If you travel to some parts of Africa you already need a proof of vaccination (yellow fever). How is Covid-19 any different? It's here now, there's little we can do apart from all of us getting vaccinated and slowly getting back to normal lives. I just wish the whole world would get vaccinated at the same time.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid...
It was linking AZ trial side effects with apocalyptic prophecies and DoD involvement in designing a virus targeting middle eastern religious fundamentalists.
My point was that there should be a way to debunk these with fact-based evidence for people willing to reason from facts or at least to raise a few question marks on their assumptions.