8 ms·

The rate of blood clots as a side effect for the AZ covid jab is less than that of the combined contraceptive pill - does that mean that both need to be discont

The rate of blood clots as a side effect for the AZ covid jab is less than that of the combined contraceptive pill - does that mean that both need to be discontinued?

bennofs 6y ago
Maybe I've missed it, but I didn't find anything in the article about whether the vaccine does need to be discontinued or not. In any case, being clear about what side effects are possible and researching them to get a better understanding is a requirement in my opinion.
- kwhitefoot 6y ago
  You need to read the VG articles, they are much more thorough than the one linked on HN but they are in Norwegian. Google Translate does a fair job. https://www.vg.no/nyheter/innenriks/i/QmwR1V/professor-om-mistenkte-vaksinebivirkninger-aarsaken-er-funnet https://www.vg.no/nyheter/innenriks/i/QmwR1V/professor-om-mi... https://www.vg.no/nyheter/innenriks/i/KyWoy6/jakter-astrazeneca-svar-her-er-hypotesen-de-jobber-etter https://www.vg.no/nyheter/innenriks/i/KyWoy6/jakter-astrazen... A key quote from the second of those is this: Madsen har tidligere forklart at det er to nivåer å undersøke bivirkninger på: Gruppebasert, og individbasert. Ifølge Madsen det ikke er noe som tyder på at AstraZeneca-vaksinen er forbundet med en større risiko for blodpropp i statistikken – men det de undersøker, er om det kan finnes bivirkninger som er spesielle og rammer få personer. My translation: Madsen has earlier explained that there are two levels of investigation regarding side effects: group based and individual. Accoeding to Madsen there is nothing to indicate that the AstraZeneca vaccine is associated with a greater risk of blood clots in the statistics - but what they are investigating is whether there are side effects that are special and affect few people.
  - AnthonBerg 6y ago
    This comment should not be downvoted as it is both topical and helpful.
    - kwhitefoot 6y ago
      Thank you. I wish downvoting had to be accompanied by a reason!
    - unanswered 6y ago
      Downvotes have nothing to do with topicality and helpfulness. They are purely a mechanism for sharing and reinforcing social norms by promoting and protecting The Narrative.
  - dekhn 6y ago
    it doesn't make sense to stop a vaccination campaign if a small number of people have side effects, assuming the vaccination utility is high.
    - pessimizer 6y ago
      Utility is compared against other choices of vaccine and how much more time it would take to distribute those instead, or compared against not giving it to certain groups that are susceptible to the reaction (and the time it takes to find those groups), not against doing nothing.
hungryhobo 6y ago
You and a criminal both breath, does this mean you should also be arrested?
- BrianOnHN 6y ago
  Criminals aren't arrested for breathing. Next!
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - hungryhobo 6y ago
    Boeing 737 max has a lower crash rate than cars, do you think the ban was warranted?
    - jdavis703 6y ago
      Cars should also be banned and replaced with alternatives (be it safe self driving tech, public transit or biking). Car crashes are one of the top killers of young people in terms of crashes, and we’re just starting to understand the effects of air pollution on young lungs.
      - milkrocks 6y ago
        Or maybe stop banning things and let people make their own decisions.
        BrianOnHN 6y ago
        What about WMDs? Where do you suggest we draw the line?
        jdavis703 6y ago
        If drivers were the only ones impacted, I’d agree. For example professional race car drivers have all consented to the risks, so what they do on the race track is up to them. But when cars are used for general transportation there are all kinds of negative externalities that people can’t opt out of.
skeeter2020 6y ago
I heard a doctor comment yesterday that seems to summarize what's happening: "It's perceived as worse to actively kill someone than to kill them through inaction; the scale doesn't matter." So even if the vaccine is responsible for these deaths, the people making the administration decisions will choose having 10x or 100x the number of people die from not getting them vaccinated quickly. So much for "science-based decision-making"...
- sceadu 6y ago
  Trolley problem with a needle and some dice
  - tomjen3 6y ago
    Covid has a certain chance of killing any particular person (not the same chance for each person), the vaccine has a much lower chance than average COVID and prevents the COVID chance.
    - kspacewalk2 6y ago
      This vaccine has a much lower chance of killing you than COVID on average. From which you cannot draw the conclusion that vaccine has a much lower chance of killing any particular person - e.g. a healthy 20-something. That part is not at all clear.
      - Gibbon1 6y ago
        I'm bothered by two things. The first is multivariate studies are notorious for throwing false positives especially when positive cases are in the sigle digits. Comparing data sets collected under different surveillance regimes is difficult.
tpush 6y ago
The vaccination pause is not about the rate of general blood clots, but a specific kind of blood clot in the brain among a younger population that’s usually way more rare.
Daho0n 6y ago
One is voluntary, one is not (not really). There's a huge difference in a vaccine for everyone causing deaths and medication you can live without that you chose to take. There's nothing comparable between the two.
CookiesOnMyDesk 6y ago
The risk from pregnancy is way higher than the risk from covid. You'd accept a 5% risk to avoid a 10% risk, but you wouldn't accept a .5% risk to avoid a .001% risk. From the vaccine blood clot data it looks like ~.07 thousands of a percent die from blood clots, while for young people the risk of death from covid is around ~.7 thousands of a percent. Thus if a) the blood clots are caused by the AZ vaccine, and b) the risk of getting covid as an individual is <10%, taking the AZ vaccine carries a higher risk of death than not taking it does.
fab1an 6y ago
The clotting with AZ is very different and more serious than what the thrombosis associated with the pill - about half of those who get it die even with best medical care. It predominanctly affects folks who would have a miniscule risk of death by Covid19, so this absolutely needs to be investigated.
- Mauricebranagh 6y ago
  So why not prescribe aspirin until say a month after the second dose.
  - AnthonBerg 6y ago
    Because aspirin has no meaningful impact on as severe an autoimmune platelet implosion as is described in these cases.
    - Mauricebranagh 6y ago
      Ah so its not just thickening of the blood then fair enough.
      - jiofih 6y ago
        If only medicine was logical like that. Not a cake recipe.
    - raducu 6y ago
      Are the clots any different than the ones caused by COVID-19 itself? Do we know for sure it's just the AZ vaccine and not the body's reaction to the spike protein(that is, other vaccines should face the same issue).
- tyfon 6y ago
  I saw the description by the doctor who treated the person who died here in Norway. He called it a "catastrophe in the brain" [1] and the life just could not be saved. It sounds really nasty. Blood clots + low blood plate count at the same time. [1] https://www.nrk.no/norge/innlagt-helsearbeider-dode-_-undersoker-om-det-er-sammenheng-med-vaksinen-1.15418283 https://www.nrk.no/norge/innlagt-helsearbeider-dode-_-unders...
Dagonfly 6y ago
In addition to the severity of the clots, the difference is that the side-effect is not expected and not mentioned in the patient information. Quote from the German PEI institute [1]: > 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 whole statement is quite informative: [1] https://www.pei.de/EN/service/faq/coronavirus/faq-coronavirus-node.html;jsessionid=B3DBF50FFC88430B52DF246820E23E88.intranet241?cms_tabcounter=3 https://www.pei.de/EN/service/faq/coronavirus/faq-coronaviru...
Broken_Hippo 6y ago
Just because apples and oranges can both rot doesn't mean they are both bad. There are different things at play here. First, the vaccine: Allowing a vaccine that kills people can have very real consequences that go beyond Covid. Vaccines should be as safe as possible, and not doing so can push more folks into vaccine skepticism and anti-vaccine stances. The Covid vaccine making blood clots really can not only mean the pandemic lasts longer and folks stop taking MMR vaccines. That is enough of an issue as-is. The other thing with this particular issue is that it is just one of the vaccines that is doing it - there are other choices, and it just slows how quickly we can vaccinate folks. As far as contraceptive pills: First, doctors do look at risk factors. Some years back, when I still smoked, my doctor wouldn't give me a pill with estrogen in it because of my age plus smoking meant I had a bigger risk of blood clots. It's OK, like the covid jab, I had other options. The other thing that is really important is that the birth control pill, even with the risk of blood clots, severely cuts the risk of death for some folks. Some women bleed so severely that it risks their health each month. And more to the point, it does a decent job of preventing pregnancy. Being pregnant - and giving birth - is really, really dangerous, but we sometimes forget this because modern medicine has made death rates drop.

The rate of blood clots as a side effect for the AZ covid jab is less than that of the combined contraceptive pill - does that mean that both need to be discontinued?

bennofs 6y ago

Maybe I've missed it, but I didn't find anything in the article about whether the vaccine does need to be discontinued or not. In any case, being clear about what side effects are possible and researching them to get a better understanding is a requirement in my opinion.

kwhitefoot 6y ago
You need to read the VG articles, they are much more thorough than the one linked on HN but they are in Norwegian. Google Translate does a fair job. https://www.vg.no/nyheter/innenriks/i/QmwR1V/professor-om-mistenkte-vaksinebivirkninger-aarsaken-er-funnet https://www.vg.no/nyheter/innenriks/i/QmwR1V/professor-om-mi... https://www.vg.no/nyheter/innenriks/i/KyWoy6/jakter-astrazeneca-svar-her-er-hypotesen-de-jobber-etter https://www.vg.no/nyheter/innenriks/i/KyWoy6/jakter-astrazen... A key quote from the second of those is this: Madsen har tidligere forklart at det er to nivåer å undersøke bivirkninger på: Gruppebasert, og individbasert. Ifølge Madsen det ikke er noe som tyder på at AstraZeneca-vaksinen er forbundet med en større risiko for blodpropp i statistikken – men det de undersøker, er om det kan finnes bivirkninger som er spesielle og rammer få personer. My translation: Madsen has earlier explained that there are two levels of investigation regarding side effects: group based and individual. Accoeding to Madsen there is nothing to indicate that the AstraZeneca vaccine is associated with a greater risk of blood clots in the statistics - but what they are investigating is whether there are side effects that are special and affect few people.
- AnthonBerg 6y ago
  This comment should not be downvoted as it is both topical and helpful.
  - kwhitefoot 6y ago
    Thank you. I wish downvoting had to be accompanied by a reason!
  - unanswered 6y ago
    Downvotes have nothing to do with topicality and helpfulness. They are purely a mechanism for sharing and reinforcing social norms by promoting and protecting The Narrative.
- dekhn 6y ago
  it doesn't make sense to stop a vaccination campaign if a small number of people have side effects, assuming the vaccination utility is high.
  - pessimizer 6y ago
    Utility is compared against other choices of vaccine and how much more time it would take to distribute those instead, or compared against not giving it to certain groups that are susceptible to the reaction (and the time it takes to find those groups), not against doing nothing.

hungryhobo 6y ago

You and a criminal both breath, does this mean you should also be arrested?

BrianOnHN 6y ago
Criminals aren't arrested for breathing. Next!
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- hungryhobo 6y ago
  Boeing 737 max has a lower crash rate than cars, do you think the ban was warranted?
  - jdavis703 6y ago
    Cars should also be banned and replaced with alternatives (be it safe self driving tech, public transit or biking). Car crashes are one of the top killers of young people in terms of crashes, and we’re just starting to understand the effects of air pollution on young lungs.
    - milkrocks 6y ago
      Or maybe stop banning things and let people make their own decisions.
      - BrianOnHN 6y ago
        What about WMDs? Where do you suggest we draw the line?
      - jdavis703 6y ago
        If drivers were the only ones impacted, I’d agree. For example professional race car drivers have all consented to the risks, so what they do on the race track is up to them. But when cars are used for general transportation there are all kinds of negative externalities that people can’t opt out of.

skeeter2020 6y ago

I heard a doctor comment yesterday that seems to summarize what's happening: "It's perceived as worse to actively kill someone than to kill them through inaction; the scale doesn't matter." So even if the vaccine is responsible for these deaths, the people making the administration decisions will choose having 10x or 100x the number of people die from not getting them vaccinated quickly. So much for "science-based decision-making"...

sceadu 6y ago
Trolley problem with a needle and some dice
- tomjen3 6y ago
  Covid has a certain chance of killing any particular person (not the same chance for each person), the vaccine has a much lower chance than average COVID and prevents the COVID chance.
  - kspacewalk2 6y ago
    This vaccine has a much lower chance of killing you than COVID on average. From which you cannot draw the conclusion that vaccine has a much lower chance of killing any particular person - e.g. a healthy 20-something. That part is not at all clear.
    - Gibbon1 6y ago
      I'm bothered by two things. The first is multivariate studies are notorious for throwing false positives especially when positive cases are in the sigle digits. Comparing data sets collected under different surveillance regimes is difficult.

tpush 6y ago

The vaccination pause is not about the rate of general blood clots, but a specific kind of blood clot in the brain among a younger population that’s usually way more rare.

Daho0n 6y ago

One is voluntary, one is not (not really). There's a huge difference in a vaccine for everyone causing deaths and medication you can live without that you chose to take. There's nothing comparable between the two.

CookiesOnMyDesk 6y ago

The risk from pregnancy is way higher than the risk from covid. You'd accept a 5% risk to avoid a 10% risk, but you wouldn't accept a .5% risk to avoid a .001% risk. From the vaccine blood clot data it looks like ~.07 thousands of a percent die from blood clots, while for young people the risk of death from covid is around ~.7 thousands of a percent. Thus if a) the blood clots are caused by the AZ vaccine, and b) the risk of getting covid as an individual is <10%, taking the AZ vaccine carries a higher risk of death than not taking it does.

fab1an 6y ago

The clotting with AZ is very different and more serious than what the thrombosis associated with the pill - about half of those who get it die even with best medical care. It predominanctly affects folks who would have a miniscule risk of death by Covid19, so this absolutely needs to be investigated.

Mauricebranagh 6y ago
So why not prescribe aspirin until say a month after the second dose.
- AnthonBerg 6y ago
  Because aspirin has no meaningful impact on as severe an autoimmune platelet implosion as is described in these cases.
  - Mauricebranagh 6y ago
    Ah so its not just thickening of the blood then fair enough.
    - jiofih 6y ago
      If only medicine was logical like that. Not a cake recipe.
  - raducu 6y ago
    Are the clots any different than the ones caused by COVID-19 itself? Do we know for sure it's just the AZ vaccine and not the body's reaction to the spike protein(that is, other vaccines should face the same issue).
tyfon 6y ago
I saw the description by the doctor who treated the person who died here in Norway. He called it a "catastrophe in the brain" [1] and the life just could not be saved. It sounds really nasty. Blood clots + low blood plate count at the same time. [1] https://www.nrk.no/norge/innlagt-helsearbeider-dode-_-undersoker-om-det-er-sammenheng-med-vaksinen-1.15418283 https://www.nrk.no/norge/innlagt-helsearbeider-dode-_-unders...

Dagonfly 6y ago

In addition to the severity of the clots, the difference is that the side-effect is not expected and not mentioned in the patient information. Quote from the German PEI institute [1]: > 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 whole statement is quite informative: [1] https://www.pei.de/EN/service/faq/coronavirus/faq-coronavirus-node.html;jsessionid=B3DBF50FFC88430B52DF246820E23E88.intranet241?cms_tabcounter=3 https://www.pei.de/EN/service/faq/coronavirus/faq-coronaviru...

Broken_Hippo 6y ago

Just because apples and oranges can both rot doesn't mean they are both bad. There are different things at play here. First, the vaccine: Allowing a vaccine that kills people can have very real consequences that go beyond Covid. Vaccines should be as safe as possible, and not doing so can push more folks into vaccine skepticism and anti-vaccine stances. The Covid vaccine making blood clots really can not only mean the pandemic lasts longer and folks stop taking MMR vaccines. That is enough of an issue as-is. The other thing with this particular issue is that it is just one of the vaccines that is doing it - there are other choices, and it just slows how quickly we can vaccinate folks. As far as contraceptive pills: First, doctors do look at risk factors. Some years back, when I still smoked, my doctor wouldn't give me a pill with estrogen in it because of my age plus smoking meant I had a bigger risk of blood clots. It's OK, like the covid jab, I had other options. The other thing that is really important is that the birth control pill, even with the risk of blood clots, severely cuts the risk of death for some folks. Some women bleed so severely that it risks their health each month. And more to the point, it does a decent job of preventing pregnancy. Being pregnant - and giving birth - is really, really dangerous, but we sometimes forget this because modern medicine has made death rates drop.