8 ms·

France reports three new cases of thrombosis, more deaths after AstraZeneca jabs

70 points by reddotX 6y ago

easytiger 6y ago
That article is not very helpful is it. Explicitly, i believe knowingly, excludes information. For example > In a separate development, the UK medical regulator said on Saturday that out of 30 people who suffered blood clots after receiving the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, seven have died. Excluding that that population sample is in the region of 19 million people who have received at least one dose of ChAdOx in the UK and the incidence of the clot is likely lower than the incidence rate in the population in general, as I understand it.
- argvargc 6y ago
  Oh, so now it's ok to use this type of argument?
- logicchains 6y ago
  >the incidence of the clot is likely lower than the incidence rate in the population in general It's lower than the incidence rate of general blood clots, not than that specific type of blood clots. One of Norway's chief physicians (not just some quack) concluded that the clots are indeed due to the AstraZeneca vaccine: https://sciencenorway.no/covid19/norwegian-experts-say-deadly-blood-clots-were-caused-by-the-astrazeneca-covid-vaccine/1830510 https://sciencenorway.no/covid19/norwegian-experts-say-deadl... . At the time that occured, only 130,000 people had been vaccinated in Norway, and so the four deaths of people under age 50 resulting from the clots actually suggested the AstraZeneca might be more dangerous to young people than Covid (which has a less than 4/130,000 fatality rate for the young).
  - newacct583 6y ago
    I don't see how you can "conclude" that with N=30, though. If these numbers were the basis for a study about some unimportant thing submitted to a peer reviewed journal it would be thoroughly laughed at and rejected. AZ is safe. Get your shots, people.
    - smnrchrds 6y ago
      > AZ is safe. Get your shots, people. This attitude is what is causing people to distrust authorities.
      - newacct583 6y ago
        Rather, treating understanding of numbers and statistics as an "attitude" seems to be more of a problem to my eyes. AZ is safe. That's not a statement of opinion. Get. Your. Shot.
        mrlonglong 6y ago
        It's ONE in 600,000. Very safe. I got my AZ shot two weeks ago.
        strken 6y ago
        It's really not helpful to say "Get. Your. Shot." in a threatening way to someone who's on the fence about getting vaccinated. It's a lot better to try to understand them and walk through their decision, and (gently!) question whether why they've taken the advice of a Facebook post over that of their doctor, or how they're comparing the (huge) risks of COVID infection against the (tiny yet highly publicised) risks of getting vaccinated.
        newacct583 6y ago
        The upthread poster wasn't "on the fence". I read that comment as vaccine denialism, not indecision. And misinformation needs to be called out as such, not coddled.
        strken 6y ago
        "Denialism" runs the gamut from your undecided aunt who read a Facebook post and can be talked around in five minutes, through to actual strong opposition to vaccines based on years of conspiracy theories, and absolutely none of the people on that gamut respond well to unsourced claims that a vaccine is safe. If you want to feel smug and superior, make dogmatic statements. If you want to change opinions, then you have to treat denialists with respect for their humanity, and separate the person from the opinion.
  - LatteLazy 6y ago
    Is it a lot less? China and Spain both reported 0.2% death rate in the 20-29 range. 4/130,000 is 0.03% The worst case scenario for vaccine side effect seems to be almost 7 times better than the disease. https://ourworldindata.org/mortality-risk-covid https://ourworldindata.org/mortality-risk-covid
    - the_mitsuhiko 6y ago
      Careful with this comparison: you want to vaccinate 100% of the population but get as few as possible to contract coronavirus. This means that you cannot compare fatality rate of the infected vs fatality rate of the vaccinated and extrapolate to the entire population. In Norway if the trend of AZ fatalities were to continue they would quickly have more deaths of AZ below 55 than the virus claimed.
      - LatteLazy 6y ago
        Edit: ah, you're saying if we vaccinate 100% that's but only 50% were ever going to get covid then we need to allow for twice the vaccine side effects compared to covid issues? Original comment: I'm not sure I follow your logic? Haven't we already allowed for that by comparing via percentages? Unless we expect younger people to have a higher rate of side effects? Sorry if I'm being dull...
  - DangerousPie 6y ago
    Where are you getting those numbers from? Based on Figure 2 of this paper the IFR for people 35-39 is between 0.01 and 0.1%. So in 130,000 infected people you would still expect between 13 and 130 to die from covid. And that's ignoring all sorts of other issues, like the amount of people that will need to be hospitalised, long covid, etc. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2918-0 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2918-0
  - tonfa 6y ago
    https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/03/astrazeneca-vaccine-blood-clot-issue-wont-go-away/618451/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/03/astrazene... Was a pretty good overview of the issues
kjakm 6y ago
"In total, 30 people out of 18 million vaccinated by 24 March had these clots. [in the UK]" "There have been two cases of CVSTs after Pfizer in the UK, out of more than 10 million vaccinated, but these did not have the low platelet levels."[0] So currently a one in half a million chance of being effected. For comparison 1 in 1000 women per year taking the contraceptive pill have a chance of a blood clot. Obviously this is a new drug and should be scrutinised, better understood, and if possible fixed - but at what point do we consider the daily articles scaremongering by people with an agenda? [0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-56620646 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-56620646
- GhostVII 6y ago
  Important to note that the blood clots from birth control are completely different than the ones from the vaccine, and are an order of magnitude or two less dangerous.
  - krisoft 6y ago
    Which one is the more dangerous kind?
    - the_mitsuhiko 6y ago
      It doesn’t matter. People should know side effects if they can be deadly. Plenty if women don’t take the pill because of side effects and opt to use alternatives.
- fabatka 6y ago
  I think the age distribution is important. The claim is that AZ vaccine causes this rare blood clotting in people below 55 years old. Unfortunately I don't see information about this in the article.
- quickthrowman 6y ago
  The risk is quite low for the AZ vaccine (1 death per 2 million), but the 3 that have FDA emergency authorization are even safer (zero known side effect deaths). I wouldn’t take the AZ vaccine unless I was in a high-risk group. Use the AZ vaccine on older people and the others on younger people, the risk calculus changes as you get older.
the_mitsuhiko 6y ago
In small countries that have the pandemic under control like Norway there are worries that AZ could kill more people in the affected age ranges than the virus has done so far.
- DangerousPie 6y ago
  Are those worries supported by any data? As far as I can tell the rate of deaths after vaccinations is still incredibly low if you take into account how many people have been vaccinated. The fatality rate from Covid is much higher, even for young people. And that's not even taking into account the fact that a non-vaccinated person is also a potential carrier that can infect others.
  - the_mitsuhiko 6y ago
    > Are those worries supported by any data? Yes. The incidence is as of a week or two ago significantly above what one would expect. Additionally this effect can be shown in all countries where AZ was given to people below the age of 55 and no such cases happened to people given other vaccines. You can quickly google for the numbers and days if you want.
    - DangerousPie 6y ago
      I don't doubt that there have been cases of thrombosis, and that those may have been caused by the vaccine. But I haven't seen any proof that the rate of deaths caused by this is anywhere near as high as the IFR of covid. Even for young people. Do you have any data to support this? Just because people "are worried" doesn't mean they have any reason to be worried.
      - bryanwb 6y ago
        The IFR for young people from Covid is less than 0.03%. that is very, very low.
        6y ago
BurningFrog 6y ago
If this leads to the rich world refusing the AZ vaccine, and it all ends up being used in Brazil, that would actually be great!
- rini17 6y ago
  If we simply extrapolate current trend, half of it will rot unused in US warehouse.
  - ErikVandeWater 6y ago
    Maybe I'm mistaken, but I thought Johnson and Johnson was the one with the distribution issues?
    - detaro 6y ago
      The US has bought and taken delivery of AZ vaccine, but isn't permitting its use. so it's in storage (although they recently announced to give some of it to Canada, and I'd expect they'd give it all away before actually letting it expire, because why wouldn't you?)
      - akmarinov 6y ago
        Canada will only use AZ for people above 60, so hopefully Mexico takes that AZ
  - InTheArena 6y ago
    The USA is already “lending” to Canada and Mexico.
- EGreg 6y ago
  But somehow the rich world refused the Russian vaccine for months... what is this preference for US for-profit pharma companies even at the expense of their own population? The Russian vaccine is already shown to be more effective. Honestly, political sanctions are one thing, but refusing help for political reasons? https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/04/03/europe/europe-russia-vaccines-analysis-intl-cmd/index.html https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/04/03/europe/europe-russia-vacc...
perardi 6y ago
I am dubious that these incidents are anything but statistical noise. But. This AstraZeneca trial has been a bit of a gong show. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-vaccine-oxford-exc/exclusive-oxford-kept-covid-19-vaccine-trial-volunteers-in-dark-about-dosing-error-letter-shows-idUSKBN2A1263 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-vaccin... “About 1,500 of the initial volunteers in a late-stage clinical trial of the Oxford/AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine were given the wrong dose, but weren’t informed that a mistake had been made after the blunder was discovered” They’ve had a series of data issues, and they have not be super transparent about them. Is it safe? I think so, given the results from the deployment we’ve seen, but they didn’t inspire perfect confidence as they rolled this out.
unanswered 6y ago
Yeah yeah get this antivax bullshit outta here!
xutopia 6y ago
What is so different with AstraZeneca? Should we expect similar side effects with other vaccines?
- InTheArena 6y ago
  Different type of vaccine. No.
- mancerayder 6y ago
  There aren't known blood clot side effects from Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and J&J. These vaccines are intended to have effects, since that's how your immune system is stimulated to produce a reaction, hence reactive vaccines, but there aren't blood clot stories hitting the headlines. The blood clot stories hitting the headlines are doing a disservice. If one out of a million of something happens, the human cognitive bias will make it feel like it's likelier than it is. .. or do Europeans prefer to be locked down for the rest of their lives? People should ignore the news media and take the vaccine for God's sake, it hasn't killed 40% of the UK, has it ?
  - mancerayder 6y ago
    Downvote all you want, it does seem to me that people are simultaneously anti-vax and pro-lockdown. To wit, here is an article showing how rare the clots are: "German regulators said they had received 31 reports of rare blood clots in the head in recipients of the AstraZeneca vaccine and nine deaths up to March 29, roughly doubling Cooke said the EMA will include the Germany cases in its review "and they will form part of the ongoing evaluation that the committee is undertaking, as will any additional cases that are reported from other countries and regions.” Based on the numbers reported to the agency so far, there have been 4.8 cases of the rare blood clots per million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine administered, she said." (https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20210331-eu-says-no-evidence-to-restrict-astrazeneca-jab-use https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20210331-eu-says-no-evide...)
    - tonfa 6y ago
      "Based on the numbers reported to the agency so far" The key word is "so far", the article explains that Germany saw the number double since the reporting. https://www.ft.com/content/d5cd63c6-af01-4d29-a5e5-b69ade4f3803 https://www.ft.com/content/d5cd63c6-af01-4d29-a5e5-b69ade4f3... Reports it as 10x the normal occurence of 3 per 100k. (and I assume that's before doing further slicing, probably slicing for younger women would show even more impact?). I'm all for vaccine but it's a tight rope to have a successful rollout in EU: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/03/astrazeneca-vaccine-blood-clot-issue-wont-go-away/618451/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/03/astrazene... Maybe they could consider reserving the non-AZ doses to the most likely to be affected demographic. (personally I'm lucky enough to be in a country that's not planning on using the AZ vaccine so there's no question, but rest of EU is different)
mancerayder 6y ago
A handful of blood clots from millions of vaccinations ... or 10's of thousands of deaths out of millions of covid infections. or forever lockdown. The choices are grim but after a year of lockdown... I'm worried about what happens in the next elections.
- boromi 6y ago
  I'm curious why are people down voting this?
  - tinus_hn 6y ago
    Because it names and opposes the forever lockdown solution preferred by the HackerNews hivemind.
  - mancerayder 6y ago
    I don't know either, but there's a strong anti-vax vibe in this thread. For reasons that are somewhat unclear to me, France has one of the highest anti-vax sentiment rates in the developed world, so that can have something to do with it. https://www.connexionfrance.com/French-news/Covid-anti-vax-sentiment-rises-above-50-in-France-with-new-poll https://www.connexionfrance.com/French-news/Covid-anti-vax-s... My retort is, for those who don't like vaccines, if you don't want a vaccine what IS the solution to the problem of covid?
    - the_mitsuhiko 6y ago
      Being skeptical of one particular vaccine does not make someone an antivaxer.
      - mancerayder 6y ago
        But it's the most available one, since Pfizer's low on availability in the EU. Also, France, the country in the subject here, has a high vaccine skepticism rate (separate from Astra) ranging from 50-60 pct.. source being France24 report from December.
raphlinus 6y ago
I personally think these "news reporting" style articles aren't all that helpful in understanding the issues. Context matters a lot. Here's an article I strongly recommend: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/03/astrazeneca-vaccine-blood-clot-issue-wont-go-away/618451/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/03/astrazene... This is not a simple issue. The implications are serious in Europe in the short and medium term, as they're quite far behind in vaccinations compared to the US and UK. Then the implications for global health equity are even more worrisome.
calltrak 6y ago
⁣⁣⁣Two rats are having an argument about whether to get the vaccine or not. covid rats comic strip: https://picc.io/tq2sFHU.png https://picc.io/tq2sFHU.png

70 points by reddotX 6y ago

That article is not very helpful is it. Explicitly, i believe knowingly, excludes information. For example > In a separate development, the UK medical regulator said on Saturday that out of 30 people who suffered blood clots after receiving the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, seven have died. Excluding that that population sample is in the region of 19 million people who have received at least one dose of ChAdOx in the UK and the incidence of the clot is likely lower than the incidence rate in the population in general, as I understand it.

argvargc 6y ago
Oh, so now it's ok to use this type of argument?
logicchains 6y ago
>the incidence of the clot is likely lower than the incidence rate in the population in general It's lower than the incidence rate of general blood clots, not than that specific type of blood clots. One of Norway's chief physicians (not just some quack) concluded that the clots are indeed due to the AstraZeneca vaccine: https://sciencenorway.no/covid19/norwegian-experts-say-deadly-blood-clots-were-caused-by-the-astrazeneca-covid-vaccine/1830510 https://sciencenorway.no/covid19/norwegian-experts-say-deadl... . At the time that occured, only 130,000 people had been vaccinated in Norway, and so the four deaths of people under age 50 resulting from the clots actually suggested the AstraZeneca might be more dangerous to young people than Covid (which has a less than 4/130,000 fatality rate for the young).
- newacct583 6y ago
  I don't see how you can "conclude" that with N=30, though. If these numbers were the basis for a study about some unimportant thing submitted to a peer reviewed journal it would be thoroughly laughed at and rejected. AZ is safe. Get your shots, people.
  - smnrchrds 6y ago
    > AZ is safe. Get your shots, people. This attitude is what is causing people to distrust authorities.
    - newacct583 6y ago
      Rather, treating understanding of numbers and statistics as an "attitude" seems to be more of a problem to my eyes. AZ is safe. That's not a statement of opinion. Get. Your. Shot.
      - mrlonglong 6y ago
        It's ONE in 600,000. Very safe. I got my AZ shot two weeks ago.
      - strken 6y ago
        It's really not helpful to say "Get. Your. Shot." in a threatening way to someone who's on the fence about getting vaccinated. It's a lot better to try to understand them and walk through their decision, and (gently!) question whether why they've taken the advice of a Facebook post over that of their doctor, or how they're comparing the (huge) risks of COVID infection against the (tiny yet highly publicised) risks of getting vaccinated.
        newacct583 6y ago
        The upthread poster wasn't "on the fence". I read that comment as vaccine denialism, not indecision. And misinformation needs to be called out as such, not coddled.
        strken 6y ago
        "Denialism" runs the gamut from your undecided aunt who read a Facebook post and can be talked around in five minutes, through to actual strong opposition to vaccines based on years of conspiracy theories, and absolutely none of the people on that gamut respond well to unsourced claims that a vaccine is safe. If you want to feel smug and superior, make dogmatic statements. If you want to change opinions, then you have to treat denialists with respect for their humanity, and separate the person from the opinion.
- LatteLazy 6y ago
  Is it a lot less? China and Spain both reported 0.2% death rate in the 20-29 range. 4/130,000 is 0.03% The worst case scenario for vaccine side effect seems to be almost 7 times better than the disease. https://ourworldindata.org/mortality-risk-covid https://ourworldindata.org/mortality-risk-covid
  - the_mitsuhiko 6y ago
    Careful with this comparison: you want to vaccinate 100% of the population but get as few as possible to contract coronavirus. This means that you cannot compare fatality rate of the infected vs fatality rate of the vaccinated and extrapolate to the entire population. In Norway if the trend of AZ fatalities were to continue they would quickly have more deaths of AZ below 55 than the virus claimed.
    - LatteLazy 6y ago
      Edit: ah, you're saying if we vaccinate 100% that's but only 50% were ever going to get covid then we need to allow for twice the vaccine side effects compared to covid issues? Original comment: I'm not sure I follow your logic? Haven't we already allowed for that by comparing via percentages? Unless we expect younger people to have a higher rate of side effects? Sorry if I'm being dull...
- DangerousPie 6y ago
  Where are you getting those numbers from? Based on Figure 2 of this paper the IFR for people 35-39 is between 0.01 and 0.1%. So in 130,000 infected people you would still expect between 13 and 130 to die from covid. And that's ignoring all sorts of other issues, like the amount of people that will need to be hospitalised, long covid, etc. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2918-0 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2918-0
- tonfa 6y ago
  https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/03/astrazeneca-vaccine-blood-clot-issue-wont-go-away/618451/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/03/astrazene... Was a pretty good overview of the issues

kjakm 6y ago

"In total, 30 people out of 18 million vaccinated by 24 March had these clots. [in the UK]" "There have been two cases of CVSTs after Pfizer in the UK, out of more than 10 million vaccinated, but these did not have the low platelet levels."[0] So currently a one in half a million chance of being effected. For comparison 1 in 1000 women per year taking the contraceptive pill have a chance of a blood clot. Obviously this is a new drug and should be scrutinised, better understood, and if possible fixed - but at what point do we consider the daily articles scaremongering by people with an agenda? [0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-56620646 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-56620646

GhostVII 6y ago
Important to note that the blood clots from birth control are completely different than the ones from the vaccine, and are an order of magnitude or two less dangerous.
- krisoft 6y ago
  Which one is the more dangerous kind?
  - the_mitsuhiko 6y ago
    It doesn’t matter. People should know side effects if they can be deadly. Plenty if women don’t take the pill because of side effects and opt to use alternatives.
fabatka 6y ago
I think the age distribution is important. The claim is that AZ vaccine causes this rare blood clotting in people below 55 years old. Unfortunately I don't see information about this in the article.
quickthrowman 6y ago
The risk is quite low for the AZ vaccine (1 death per 2 million), but the 3 that have FDA emergency authorization are even safer (zero known side effect deaths). I wouldn’t take the AZ vaccine unless I was in a high-risk group. Use the AZ vaccine on older people and the others on younger people, the risk calculus changes as you get older.

the_mitsuhiko 6y ago

In small countries that have the pandemic under control like Norway there are worries that AZ could kill more people in the affected age ranges than the virus has done so far.

DangerousPie 6y ago
Are those worries supported by any data? As far as I can tell the rate of deaths after vaccinations is still incredibly low if you take into account how many people have been vaccinated. The fatality rate from Covid is much higher, even for young people. And that's not even taking into account the fact that a non-vaccinated person is also a potential carrier that can infect others.
- the_mitsuhiko 6y ago
  > Are those worries supported by any data? Yes. The incidence is as of a week or two ago significantly above what one would expect. Additionally this effect can be shown in all countries where AZ was given to people below the age of 55 and no such cases happened to people given other vaccines. You can quickly google for the numbers and days if you want.
  - DangerousPie 6y ago
    I don't doubt that there have been cases of thrombosis, and that those may have been caused by the vaccine. But I haven't seen any proof that the rate of deaths caused by this is anywhere near as high as the IFR of covid. Even for young people. Do you have any data to support this? Just because people "are worried" doesn't mean they have any reason to be worried.
    - bryanwb 6y ago
      The IFR for young people from Covid is less than 0.03%. that is very, very low.
      - 6y ago

BurningFrog 6y ago

If this leads to the rich world refusing the AZ vaccine, and it all ends up being used in Brazil, that would actually be great!

rini17 6y ago
If we simply extrapolate current trend, half of it will rot unused in US warehouse.
- ErikVandeWater 6y ago
  Maybe I'm mistaken, but I thought Johnson and Johnson was the one with the distribution issues?
  - detaro 6y ago
    The US has bought and taken delivery of AZ vaccine, but isn't permitting its use. so it's in storage (although they recently announced to give some of it to Canada, and I'd expect they'd give it all away before actually letting it expire, because why wouldn't you?)
    - akmarinov 6y ago
      Canada will only use AZ for people above 60, so hopefully Mexico takes that AZ
- InTheArena 6y ago
  The USA is already “lending” to Canada and Mexico.
EGreg 6y ago
But somehow the rich world refused the Russian vaccine for months... what is this preference for US for-profit pharma companies even at the expense of their own population? The Russian vaccine is already shown to be more effective. Honestly, political sanctions are one thing, but refusing help for political reasons? https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/04/03/europe/europe-russia-vaccines-analysis-intl-cmd/index.html https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/04/03/europe/europe-russia-vacc...

perardi 6y ago

I am dubious that these incidents are anything but statistical noise. But. This AstraZeneca trial has been a bit of a gong show. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-vaccine-oxford-exc/exclusive-oxford-kept-covid-19-vaccine-trial-volunteers-in-dark-about-dosing-error-letter-shows-idUSKBN2A1263 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-vaccin... “About 1,500 of the initial volunteers in a late-stage clinical trial of the Oxford/AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine were given the wrong dose, but weren’t informed that a mistake had been made after the blunder was discovered” They’ve had a series of data issues, and they have not be super transparent about them. Is it safe? I think so, given the results from the deployment we’ve seen, but they didn’t inspire perfect confidence as they rolled this out.

unanswered 6y ago

Yeah yeah get this antivax bullshit outta here!

xutopia 6y ago

What is so different with AstraZeneca? Should we expect similar side effects with other vaccines?

InTheArena 6y ago
Different type of vaccine. No.
mancerayder 6y ago
There aren't known blood clot side effects from Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and J&J. These vaccines are intended to have effects, since that's how your immune system is stimulated to produce a reaction, hence reactive vaccines, but there aren't blood clot stories hitting the headlines. The blood clot stories hitting the headlines are doing a disservice. If one out of a million of something happens, the human cognitive bias will make it feel like it's likelier than it is. .. or do Europeans prefer to be locked down for the rest of their lives? People should ignore the news media and take the vaccine for God's sake, it hasn't killed 40% of the UK, has it ?
- mancerayder 6y ago
  Downvote all you want, it does seem to me that people are simultaneously anti-vax and pro-lockdown. To wit, here is an article showing how rare the clots are: "German regulators said they had received 31 reports of rare blood clots in the head in recipients of the AstraZeneca vaccine and nine deaths up to March 29, roughly doubling Cooke said the EMA will include the Germany cases in its review "and they will form part of the ongoing evaluation that the committee is undertaking, as will any additional cases that are reported from other countries and regions.” Based on the numbers reported to the agency so far, there have been 4.8 cases of the rare blood clots per million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine administered, she said." (https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20210331-eu-says-no-evidence-to-restrict-astrazeneca-jab-use https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20210331-eu-says-no-evide...)
  - tonfa 6y ago
    "Based on the numbers reported to the agency so far" The key word is "so far", the article explains that Germany saw the number double since the reporting. https://www.ft.com/content/d5cd63c6-af01-4d29-a5e5-b69ade4f3803 https://www.ft.com/content/d5cd63c6-af01-4d29-a5e5-b69ade4f3... Reports it as 10x the normal occurence of 3 per 100k. (and I assume that's before doing further slicing, probably slicing for younger women would show even more impact?). I'm all for vaccine but it's a tight rope to have a successful rollout in EU: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/03/astrazeneca-vaccine-blood-clot-issue-wont-go-away/618451/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/03/astrazene... Maybe they could consider reserving the non-AZ doses to the most likely to be affected demographic. (personally I'm lucky enough to be in a country that's not planning on using the AZ vaccine so there's no question, but rest of EU is different)

mancerayder 6y ago

A handful of blood clots from millions of vaccinations ... or 10's of thousands of deaths out of millions of covid infections. or forever lockdown. The choices are grim but after a year of lockdown... I'm worried about what happens in the next elections.

boromi 6y ago
I'm curious why are people down voting this?
- tinus_hn 6y ago
  Because it names and opposes the forever lockdown solution preferred by the HackerNews hivemind.
- mancerayder 6y ago
  I don't know either, but there's a strong anti-vax vibe in this thread. For reasons that are somewhat unclear to me, France has one of the highest anti-vax sentiment rates in the developed world, so that can have something to do with it. https://www.connexionfrance.com/French-news/Covid-anti-vax-sentiment-rises-above-50-in-France-with-new-poll https://www.connexionfrance.com/French-news/Covid-anti-vax-s... My retort is, for those who don't like vaccines, if you don't want a vaccine what IS the solution to the problem of covid?
  - the_mitsuhiko 6y ago
    Being skeptical of one particular vaccine does not make someone an antivaxer.
    - mancerayder 6y ago
      But it's the most available one, since Pfizer's low on availability in the EU. Also, France, the country in the subject here, has a high vaccine skepticism rate (separate from Astra) ranging from 50-60 pct.. source being France24 report from December.

raphlinus 6y ago

I personally think these "news reporting" style articles aren't all that helpful in understanding the issues. Context matters a lot. Here's an article I strongly recommend: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/03/astrazeneca-vaccine-blood-clot-issue-wont-go-away/618451/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/03/astrazene... This is not a simple issue. The implications are serious in Europe in the short and medium term, as they're quite far behind in vaccinations compared to the US and UK. Then the implications for global health equity are even more worrisome.

calltrak 6y ago

⁣⁣⁣Two rats are having an argument about whether to get the vaccine or not. covid rats comic strip: https://picc.io/tq2sFHU.png https://picc.io/tq2sFHU.png