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Surely more people will die from COVID than from blood clotting, due to this delay? Or perhaps not, given that 2020 deaths in Germany were 985,145, only 4.85%

Surely more people will die from COVID than from blood clotting, due to this delay? Or perhaps not, given that 2020 deaths in Germany were 985,145, only 4.85% higher than 2019, and only 3.2% higher than 2018 (and so basically in line with what we would expect from an aging society). https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Gesellschaft-Umwelt/Bevoelkerung/Sterbefaelle-Lebenserwartung/Tabellen/sonderauswertung-sterbefaelle.html?nn=23768 https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Gesellschaft-Umwelt/Bevoel...

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
libertine 6y ago
You're missing the point. This is an anomaly. It's not about the "oh it's worth the risk compared to COVID 19". If it's a side effect it wasn't spotted in the trials, why was that? It's not a side effect? It was a problem in production? What problem? Was is tampered with or was an accident? What failed in QA to let that batch come to the public? Was is a storage problem that compromised the batch quality? Was it while in transport or in the local hospital? You talk about this like background noise. It's not. It should be investigated. It's good that this is happening, because it shows regulators are doing their job. This is what builds trust in vaccines, not disregarding odd occurrences because they seem to have no "statistical relevance". That's just ignorance talking.
- freewilly1040 6y ago
  No one is saying side effects should not be investigated. The question is whether the vaccine administration should be halted in the meantime, and that would be determined by the risk/reward of preventing covid deaths.
  - libertine 6y ago
    Just like I trust the regulators for vaccine approval, I trust them in the decision of stopping the administration of a vaccine to further investigate the problem. This goes together. It's not a political decision no matter how many people try to spin this. This is the outcome of doctors reporting an anomaly to a regulator. The system is working, and this should give you reassurance, not doubt about the consequences of stopping a vaccine. I'm pretty sure they know the consequences of this setback, so for them to stop it it's because something is not right.
    - hntrader 6y ago
      "It's not a political decision" It likely is, though. From the perspective of the regulators, there are asymmetric personal consequences. If they make a decision that leads to 50 clotting deaths but saves 5000 people from COVID as a counterfactual, their head is on a chopping block because those 5000 foregone deaths are invisible but the 50 deaths are visible. If they make a decision to halt the vaccine distribution and this kills an extra 5000 people - well that's no problem because they were just being careful. Society has set up a political situation where there is literally only one choice that absolves the bureaucrats from a negative personal outcome. Of course they're going to go that route. Personal incentives are incredibly powerful drivers of behavior, whatever the publicly stated reasons for an action may happen to be. It may be the case that they've made the right decision, but we can't assume that it was for the right reasons.
      - Dma54rhs 6y ago
        You could use the same arguments and mindset when you're an antivaxx. Vaccines can't be a holy cow that gets defended no matter what. It's always interesting that people who claim to not trust big business big pharma somehow defend everything vaccine related to death. Regulators halted it snd wait for new information to come in, that is how it's supposed to be.
        incrudible 6y ago
        Perhaps individuals should have a say as to which risk is preferable to them. As it is, the antivaxxer gets to choose not get vaccinated, but the provaxxer must wait for someone elses approval.
        hntrader 6y ago
        I'm not necessarily disagreeing with the decision, I don't know enough about the clotting data to do so, and I can certainly see the necessity in preserving the public's faith in vaccines. I'm more saying that the incentives of regulators/politicians aren't always aligned with public health, since the decision that protects public health and the decision that protects careers aren't always the same thing.
- Broken_Hippo 6y ago
  And those last couple of sentences are really, really important: If forging ahead despite the blood clotting causes folks to lose trust in vaccines, it could be worse than Covid has. And realistically, we don't need more folks to be anti-vaccine.
  - libertine 6y ago
    Exactly. This subject can easily backfire and blow the trust of a population on vaccines, or worst, on the regulators. Imagine this is the outcome of a production problem, yet regulators refused to acknowledge this until it was out of proportions because the problem wasn't fixed. Not only people would lose trust on vaccines, they would lose trust on the regulator - this extends far beyond this vaccine, but all vaccines and medicines. People need to feel safe, and to know that regulators are not sleeping on their job. It's not a bureaucratic job, but that they are actively looking at data and reports from doctors.
    - ggreer 6y ago
      I think a lot of people (myself included) are more than willing to take a vaccine with these risks. As long as there is informed consent, what’s the problem? Banning everyone from getting this vaccine is typical bureaucratic ass-covering. Their incentives are not aligned with ours. They get in trouble if they’re directly responsible for a few deaths, but not if they’re indirectly responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths. To give a point of comparison: 250 miles of driving gives you a one in a million chance of death. This vaccine is safer than that.
      - libertine 6y ago
        The problem is that it's starting to look more and more like a production problem and a bad batch, and you shouldn't be vaccinated with a product that probably should have failed QA. It's not bureaucratic ass-covering, it's literally the protocol that's in place and has worked to keep populations safe. >250 miles of driving gives you a one in a million chance of death. This vaccine is safer than that. Again you're missing the point. The correct analogy would be: driving on a car that randomly combusts, or has faulty breaks, due to bad QA. And this actually happens/happened, that's why some cars are pulled from the market to be fixed when such things happen. Doesn't matter if it has happened on 1 or 2 cars, it shouldn't happen. Want another analogy? Want another example? The Boing 737 Max. You should only be allowed to use products that are working as expected, not faulty products. Specially not medicines and vaccines, that could blow up the trust on regulators and the vaccines.
- mytailorisrich 6y ago
  > This is an anomaly. This is not established at all. Overall the number of blood clots observed is actually less than expected, with an incidence lower than in the general population (i.e. without vaccine at all). My source is BBC News this evening.
  - incrudible 6y ago
    This is old news. As of today, there is a suspicious rise in a specific form of blood clotting in Germany, hence the suspension.
  - shafyy 6y ago
    Ah, random guy on HN has more data than the official governmental health agencies.
    - mytailorisrich 6y ago
      On the contrary, I'm just repeating the published data and opinions of experts and indeed health agencies from the WHO to the EMA (European Medical Agency). I think it is therefore those who are calling for who have suspended this vaccine to explain the reasons because they seem to baffle everyone. Bearing in mind the previous 'doubts' some in the EU had about the vaccine's effectiveness for people above 65 I am not convinced that this 'cautionary approach' is all in good faith... And the head of Italy's medicine authority has just said that this was politically motivated...
      - libertine 6y ago
        What published data are you referring to? Because the event that's causing this is in no way within the statistical references most of the British media is pumping out - which is what you're talking about when you say "blood cloths". It's not "just blood cloths", it's the type of cloths, where they are located, with low pallet count, with more incidence on a younger age group, localized in an hospital staff.
        6y ago
lm28469 6y ago
> Or perhaps not, given that 2020 deaths in Germany were 985,145, only 4.85% higher than 2019, and only 3.2% higher than 2018 (and so basically in line with what we would expect from an aging society). Are we still having this debate.... Of course the overall mortality didn't change much, people stayed at home for literally 75% of the year. Do you have the split stats for accidental deaths, road deaths, disease related deaths, &c. ? Because otherwise it's meaningless. We can put everyone in an artificial coma and get as little death per year as possible, it isn't a really interesting metric without the context.
- ArkanExplorer 6y ago
  https://www.statista.com/statistics/525353/sweden-number-of-deaths/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/525353/sweden-number-of-... Sweden, 2020 deaths only 6.2% higher than 2018, and following a weak 2019 flu season. These are entirely acceptable death figures within the context of aging European societies. COVID is basically a once-a-decade flu variant: like Swine Flu in 2009, which came and went without lockdown: https://swprs.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/sweden-monthly-deaths-1851.jpg https://swprs.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/sweden-monthly-... So COVID is dangerous enough to lock down entire societies, but not dangerous enough to justify continued vaccination when 1 in 166,666 have blood clotting? This is probably the background rate. It seems like Europe and its bureaucrats just can't let go of lockdown. Or alternatively, they wish to push the vaccines and end of lockdown into Spring/Summer, where natural seasonality will take care of COVID and give the appearance that lockdown and vaccines were a success.
  - mynameisvlad 6y ago
    > Or alternatively, they wish to push the vaccines and end of lockdown into Spring/Summer, where natural seasonality will take care of COVID and give the appearance that lockdown and vaccines were a success. Did you somehow forget that this is the second year of Covid? We've already gone through the whole "natural seasonality" cycle and the disease is very much still here.
    - leereeves 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

libertine 6y ago

You're missing the point. This is an anomaly. It's not about the "oh it's worth the risk compared to COVID 19". If it's a side effect it wasn't spotted in the trials, why was that? It's not a side effect? It was a problem in production? What problem? Was is tampered with or was an accident? What failed in QA to let that batch come to the public? Was is a storage problem that compromised the batch quality? Was it while in transport or in the local hospital? You talk about this like background noise. It's not. It should be investigated. It's good that this is happening, because it shows regulators are doing their job. This is what builds trust in vaccines, not disregarding odd occurrences because they seem to have no "statistical relevance". That's just ignorance talking.

freewilly1040 6y ago
No one is saying side effects should not be investigated. The question is whether the vaccine administration should be halted in the meantime, and that would be determined by the risk/reward of preventing covid deaths.
- libertine 6y ago
  Just like I trust the regulators for vaccine approval, I trust them in the decision of stopping the administration of a vaccine to further investigate the problem. This goes together. It's not a political decision no matter how many people try to spin this. This is the outcome of doctors reporting an anomaly to a regulator. The system is working, and this should give you reassurance, not doubt about the consequences of stopping a vaccine. I'm pretty sure they know the consequences of this setback, so for them to stop it it's because something is not right.
  - hntrader 6y ago
    "It's not a political decision" It likely is, though. From the perspective of the regulators, there are asymmetric personal consequences. If they make a decision that leads to 50 clotting deaths but saves 5000 people from COVID as a counterfactual, their head is on a chopping block because those 5000 foregone deaths are invisible but the 50 deaths are visible. If they make a decision to halt the vaccine distribution and this kills an extra 5000 people - well that's no problem because they were just being careful. Society has set up a political situation where there is literally only one choice that absolves the bureaucrats from a negative personal outcome. Of course they're going to go that route. Personal incentives are incredibly powerful drivers of behavior, whatever the publicly stated reasons for an action may happen to be. It may be the case that they've made the right decision, but we can't assume that it was for the right reasons.
    - Dma54rhs 6y ago
      You could use the same arguments and mindset when you're an antivaxx. Vaccines can't be a holy cow that gets defended no matter what. It's always interesting that people who claim to not trust big business big pharma somehow defend everything vaccine related to death. Regulators halted it snd wait for new information to come in, that is how it's supposed to be.
      - incrudible 6y ago
        Perhaps individuals should have a say as to which risk is preferable to them. As it is, the antivaxxer gets to choose not get vaccinated, but the provaxxer must wait for someone elses approval.
      - hntrader 6y ago
        I'm not necessarily disagreeing with the decision, I don't know enough about the clotting data to do so, and I can certainly see the necessity in preserving the public's faith in vaccines. I'm more saying that the incentives of regulators/politicians aren't always aligned with public health, since the decision that protects public health and the decision that protects careers aren't always the same thing.
Broken_Hippo 6y ago
And those last couple of sentences are really, really important: If forging ahead despite the blood clotting causes folks to lose trust in vaccines, it could be worse than Covid has. And realistically, we don't need more folks to be anti-vaccine.
- libertine 6y ago
  Exactly. This subject can easily backfire and blow the trust of a population on vaccines, or worst, on the regulators. Imagine this is the outcome of a production problem, yet regulators refused to acknowledge this until it was out of proportions because the problem wasn't fixed. Not only people would lose trust on vaccines, they would lose trust on the regulator - this extends far beyond this vaccine, but all vaccines and medicines. People need to feel safe, and to know that regulators are not sleeping on their job. It's not a bureaucratic job, but that they are actively looking at data and reports from doctors.
  - ggreer 6y ago
    I think a lot of people (myself included) are more than willing to take a vaccine with these risks. As long as there is informed consent, what’s the problem? Banning everyone from getting this vaccine is typical bureaucratic ass-covering. Their incentives are not aligned with ours. They get in trouble if they’re directly responsible for a few deaths, but not if they’re indirectly responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths. To give a point of comparison: 250 miles of driving gives you a one in a million chance of death. This vaccine is safer than that.
    - libertine 6y ago
      The problem is that it's starting to look more and more like a production problem and a bad batch, and you shouldn't be vaccinated with a product that probably should have failed QA. It's not bureaucratic ass-covering, it's literally the protocol that's in place and has worked to keep populations safe. >250 miles of driving gives you a one in a million chance of death. This vaccine is safer than that. Again you're missing the point. The correct analogy would be: driving on a car that randomly combusts, or has faulty breaks, due to bad QA. And this actually happens/happened, that's why some cars are pulled from the market to be fixed when such things happen. Doesn't matter if it has happened on 1 or 2 cars, it shouldn't happen. Want another analogy? Want another example? The Boing 737 Max. You should only be allowed to use products that are working as expected, not faulty products. Specially not medicines and vaccines, that could blow up the trust on regulators and the vaccines.
mytailorisrich 6y ago
> This is an anomaly. This is not established at all. Overall the number of blood clots observed is actually less than expected, with an incidence lower than in the general population (i.e. without vaccine at all). My source is BBC News this evening.
- incrudible 6y ago
  This is old news. As of today, there is a suspicious rise in a specific form of blood clotting in Germany, hence the suspension.
- shafyy 6y ago
  Ah, random guy on HN has more data than the official governmental health agencies.
  - mytailorisrich 6y ago
    On the contrary, I'm just repeating the published data and opinions of experts and indeed health agencies from the WHO to the EMA (European Medical Agency). I think it is therefore those who are calling for who have suspended this vaccine to explain the reasons because they seem to baffle everyone. Bearing in mind the previous 'doubts' some in the EU had about the vaccine's effectiveness for people above 65 I am not convinced that this 'cautionary approach' is all in good faith... And the head of Italy's medicine authority has just said that this was politically motivated...
    - libertine 6y ago
      What published data are you referring to? Because the event that's causing this is in no way within the statistical references most of the British media is pumping out - which is what you're talking about when you say "blood cloths". It's not "just blood cloths", it's the type of cloths, where they are located, with low pallet count, with more incidence on a younger age group, localized in an hospital staff.
      - 6y ago

lm28469 6y ago

> Or perhaps not, given that 2020 deaths in Germany were 985,145, only 4.85% higher than 2019, and only 3.2% higher than 2018 (and so basically in line with what we would expect from an aging society). Are we still having this debate.... Of course the overall mortality didn't change much, people stayed at home for literally 75% of the year. Do you have the split stats for accidental deaths, road deaths, disease related deaths, &c. ? Because otherwise it's meaningless. We can put everyone in an artificial coma and get as little death per year as possible, it isn't a really interesting metric without the context.

ArkanExplorer 6y ago
https://www.statista.com/statistics/525353/sweden-number-of-deaths/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/525353/sweden-number-of-... Sweden, 2020 deaths only 6.2% higher than 2018, and following a weak 2019 flu season. These are entirely acceptable death figures within the context of aging European societies. COVID is basically a once-a-decade flu variant: like Swine Flu in 2009, which came and went without lockdown: https://swprs.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/sweden-monthly-deaths-1851.jpg https://swprs.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/sweden-monthly-... So COVID is dangerous enough to lock down entire societies, but not dangerous enough to justify continued vaccination when 1 in 166,666 have blood clotting? This is probably the background rate. It seems like Europe and its bureaucrats just can't let go of lockdown. Or alternatively, they wish to push the vaccines and end of lockdown into Spring/Summer, where natural seasonality will take care of COVID and give the appearance that lockdown and vaccines were a success.
- mynameisvlad 6y ago
  > Or alternatively, they wish to push the vaccines and end of lockdown into Spring/Summer, where natural seasonality will take care of COVID and give the appearance that lockdown and vaccines were a success. Did you somehow forget that this is the second year of Covid? We've already gone through the whole "natural seasonality" cycle and the disease is very much still here.
  - leereeves 6y ago