It's unclear what level of side effects or potentially deaths would have to be in order for the product to be removed from the market. If it was another class of drug, it would have been removed by now.
Lots of medications have risks. For example, a common birth control can cause or increase risk of pulmonary embolisms.
Unless there's reason to think the actual rate will become much higher than 1-in-200k people, it seems like you could make a decision on trade-offs. Covid has killed many many more people already. I'm sure we'll uncover risk factors that'll help us avoid higher risk populations too, further decreasing risk.
Quick google search:
> Out of every 10,000 women taking birth control pills, 3 to 9 of them will develop a blood clot.
Also, for scale:
> Out of every 10,000 women in the first 12 weeks after giving birth, 40 to 65 of them will develop a blood clot.
https://www.healthline.com/health/birth-control/pulmonary-em...
See also:
> Birth control pills can also cause thrombosis. So why is there all the fuss about the COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca?
> It is true that for birth control pills thromboses, even with fatal outcome, are known as a very rare side effect. They are listed in the Summary of Product Characteristics (SmPC). The birth control pill is available only on prescription. Every woman must be informed of this risk by the prescribing physician. For the COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca, there is currently a suspected very rare side effect of sinus vein thrombosis with accompanying platelet deficiency, sometimes fatal. It is not listed in the SmPC.
> The consideration of whether the vaccine can continue to be used even though it may cause this very rare side effect (if necessary, after this risk has been added to the SmPC) will be made at the European level by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and at the national level by politicians. The procedure has been initiated.
https://www.pei.de/EN/service/faq/coronavirus/faq-coronaviru...
Taking birth control pills is entirely a matter of personal choice. The COVID vaccines, even if not strictly compulsory, are certainly being pushed hard, with threats of curtailing freedom of movement if you choose to not get one.
The death rate for my age group where I'm located based on government data is 1.1 deaths per 1k cases, with less than 1000 deaths total. This seems statistically insignificant to me, I would wager half or more of these cases had a different leading cause of death.
Compared to 2018's flu death rate, based on CDC's wildly inflated 'assumed cases' number, the death rate of covid is 10x that of the flu, based on the reported cases of covid. Considering covid cases are likely extremely under reported as the vast majority of cases are asymptomatic, they're probably about the same.
At this point, there's not enough data to convince me it's safer than getting the wild virus.
The infection fatality rate of Covid for this age and gender is 0.01 % or 1 in 10k (based on seroprevalence data not test data [1]).
The fatality rate for the AZ vaccine in Germany is 1 in 200k, so you are 20 times more likely to die from Covid.
You are correct that there is (and always will be) some uncertainty around the risks of the vaccine, but the same is true for Covid. Interestingly the vaccine is only appr. 6 months older than Covid (Nov 2019 vs Apr 2020) but more people have had Covid than vaccines. Still, uncertainties around Covid remain, e.g. we don't know the prevalence and severity of long Covid.
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2918-0/figures/2
Which is not a good thing, especially on a societal level, when you have this one thing killing people at the rate of all other things combined.
In poor countries and some parts of Europe the vaccine availability is scarce. So everyone should decide for themselves
(I've received my first shot of AZ, not exactly young, not exactly old, but I'll take my chances vs Covid)
I'm not familiar with EMA procedure. But with the FDA, it's clear. Entire rule books about the risk ratios clear. Billions of dollars spent on tuning those risk ratios to every demographic clear.
44 reported out of 9.2 million. As many as Germany has Covid cases every 9 minutes [0]. Nearly half of Britain has received at least one shot [1], compared to the EU, which has struggled to get to a double-digit rate [2].
This is a low-frequency alleged side effect that should be investigated. But the matter's narrow impact, ambiguity and timing, right after the EU's inability to procure and distribute vaccines came to light, is convenient.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/world/europe/german... 44 / [6,855 cases on 5 April / (24 hours * 60 minutes per hour)]
[1] https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/vaccinations
[2] https://graphics.reuters.com/HEALTH-CORONAVIRUS/EU-VACCINES/...