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Side effect worry grows for AstraZeneca vaccine

56 points by reddotX 6y ago

calltrak 6y ago
Two rats where having a chat about about whether or not to get the vaccine. One rat says to the other rat, hey are you going to get the vax? And the other rat says are you fecking mad? sure they have not yet finished testing it on the humans yet. If you want a heads sup about whats really going on outside of the lame street media. Check out https://brandnewtube.com/ https://brandnewtube.com/ original cartoon strip: https://picc.io/tq2sFHU.png https://picc.io/tq2sFHU.png
chrisseaton 6y ago
> “We do not have just one vaccine. We have several.” I thought their problem was they didn't have access to vaccines over in Europe, not that they had a large stock to pick and choose from.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- Daho0n 6y ago
  In Denmark the halt of the AstraZeneca will delay vaccinations by approximately two weeks.
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    That seems like a really long time to me. Did you post this comment thinking it sounds short?
    - throwawayboise 6y ago
      We've been dealing with the pandemic for over a year (it was originally going to be a few weeks to "flatten the curve"). What's 2 more weeks?
      - chrisseaton 6y ago
        > What's 2 more weeks? A few thousand dead bodies at the current rate.
        alanfranz 6y ago
        Denmark has ~2500 deaths since the beginning of the pandemics. Your numbers are off.
        chrisseaton 6y ago
        Context is across the whole of Europe. Still a couple of thousand of people dying every week in Europe.
        cinntaile 6y ago
        Yes your original reply was, but this specific childthread is talking about Denmark and how stopping the AZ vaccine pushes back their estimates by two weeks. This will likely cause preventable death in Denmark but those numbers are not in the thousands.
        morsch 6y ago
        AZ is not suspended in all of Europe. Most countries continue to use it, some of them -- France and Germany among then -- limiting the vaccine to people beyond a certain age (France: 55, Germany: 60), who are at a greater risk from Covid and who are also the next large group to be vaccinated.
        chrisseaton 6y ago
        > limiting the vaccine to people beyond a certain age (France: 55 Wait - I thought France said AztraZeneca wasn't effective for people over 65? Are they just giving it to people 55-65 therefore? And shouldn't those people have already been vaccinated by now anyway?
    - henrikeh 6y ago
      For what it is worth, I read it as a neutral statement: it is literally just the official estimate of the impact in terms of time.
- morsch 6y ago
  Today? Yes. Expected vaccine deliveries for Germany (pop. 80m): Q1: Biontech 12.4m, Moderna 1.8m, AZ 5.7m Q2: Biontech 40.2m, Moderna 6.4m, AZ 12.4-15.m, JJ: 10.1m, Curevac 1.4m 2021 (total): Biontech 100.7m, Moderna 78m, AZ: 56.3m, JJ: 36.7m, Curevac: 24.5m, Sanofi: 27.5 Source: https://www.bundesgesundheitsministerium.de/fileadmin/Dateien/3_Downloads/C/Coronavirus/Impfstoff/Lieferprognosen_verschiedene_Hersteller_2021.pdf https://www.bundesgesundheitsministerium.de/fileadmin/Dateie...
- RobertoG 6y ago
  That was a temporary problem, they have started to arrive in big numbers this week. Hopefully it will keep increasing.
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    > That was a temporary problem I guess it's a permanent problem if you're dead because of it.
    - akmarinov 6y ago
      Not really, it’s likely that you don’t care anymore.
    - RobertoG 6y ago
      Well, yes, I can confirm you that death people will stay that way, but you asked if the problem was that there was not enough vaccines so, I answered.
- _Microft 6y ago
  I think in the first quarter, BioNTech/Pfizer delivered almost 2.5 to 3 times as many doses to the EU as AZ did. Temporarily not having AZ until it is clear how to proceed is bad but not a total disaster. Encountering problems with the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine would have been much, much worse. Moderna isn’t in widespread use here yet.
zuppy 6y ago
the title is clickbait. yes, there are side effects but there are a few orders of magnitude greater chances of the combo getting covid + dying than being affected by the vaccine and dying. i am not saying we should not talk about them, but should we exercise caution with the way we formulate it. there are a lot of antivaxers out there and they don’t read beyond the title. if their number increases it will be bad for the entire society.
- josteink 6y ago
  Every time an antivaxxer can point at science or a scientist and say “Look! They’re lying to you!” that’s a real loss of credibility it will take years to win back. There might be problems with this one particular COVID-19 vaccine. Let’s not play that straight into the antivaxxers hands by being obviously dishonest about it. If there’s causes for concern, we obviously need to investigate those concerns and be open about it.
- TheBlight 6y ago
  I don't think being apprehensive about these particular vaccines makes one an "anti-vaxxer". I know a few people who don't want them right now who are otherwise fully vaccinated.
  - luckylion 6y ago
    Is that because they're well-informed on the topic and have reason to believe that these vaccines are especially dangerous, or is it that they usually don't know (and think) a lot about rare side-effects? I wonder what the threshold is. You want people to make informed decisions, but you don't want them to panic about tiny risks, because otherwise you'll get a lot less vaccinations. Anti-vaccination is reasonable if one says "any potential side effect means I won't take it". But that seems neither individually wise nor collectively desired, though we don't really talk about the individual's responsibility as a carrier/spreader of something like influenza. Maybe we will in the future, now that it has been on everyone's mind with Covid.
    - TheBlight 5y ago
anon_tor_12345 6y ago
i got the pfizer vaccine 2 days ago and already i'm hearing advertisements for windows over the radio. weird thing is i don't own a radio...
lettergram 6y ago
All the mRNA vaccines being deployed in the U.S. appear to also have an increased risk: https://wonder.cdc.gov/controller/saved/D8/D137F981 https://wonder.cdc.gov/controller/saved/D8/D137F981 I think it would be better to be honest about the risks, rather than hide them. Sure, less people may take the vaccine, but covid19 is an easily transmissible airborne illness (per the cdc and who). Given that, herd immunity is unlikely to be achieved and regular vaccines would be suggested (like the flu). Of course, that means we need to trust the vaccines... lying about risks isn’t a good start.
- cm2187 6y ago
  Making a big deal about a one in a million risk isn’t helpful either (and borderline dishonest). Most people suck at dealing with small probabilities (otherwise lotteries would be out of business).
- TheBlight 6y ago
  We were already lied to at least about masks and required threshold for herd immunity. I feel like our public health officials have done serious damage to their credibility. Perhaps irreversibly so as far as many are concerned.
  - injidup 6y ago
    You were not lied to. The CDC and WHO originally said that masks were not needed. That advice was wrong. That doesn't mean the people giving that advice were being malicious. They just got it badly wrong and eventually they corrected it and changed their position. A leader who can say they screwed up and then try and fix it is better than one who won't admit they are wrong and keeps to the wrong position just to save face. Bolsanaro in Brazil comes to mind.
    - Rule35 6y ago
      > [someone] originally said that masks were not needed. That advice was wrong. That doesn't mean the people giving that advice were being malicious. They just got it badly wrong and eventually they corrected it and changed their position. It shouldn't be that hard to not say things you can't support. Fauci should have told the truth, which is that however effective masks are they were in short supply and would do more good for doctors/etc. At some point, being more concerned with controlling people than educating them is maliciousness. He wanted masks for doctors but was willing to give bad advice to citizens to make it happen. We deserve honest scientists, not politicians, making policy.
stingraycharles 6y ago
The question to me is: how much is the risk of the potential side effects of the AZ vaccine compared to the risks associated with COVID? To me it strikes me that, even considering these rare side effects, the odds are still very much in favor for getting vaccinated. Am I wrong here? If not, wouldn’t it then be irrational to be shutting down these vaccination programs?
- sudosysgen 6y ago
  Definitely for some age groups. For other age groups, it makes more sense to delay vaccination until an alternate vaccine can be used. That's why some countries are only allowing it for older people.
  - mmmrtl 6y ago
    Show your work, please.
    - y7r4m 6y ago
      Not parent; just throwing this out there; but in Canada, the local provinces have been doing a relatively ok job of keeping track of covid statistics. In Alberta [0] we have a fairly diverse population, and should somewhat generalize to other regions. It would certainly appear that if we assume the risk of vaccination is relatively constant, (The risk actually appears to be greater for younger, <55 y/o people), then it makes a lot of sense to prioritize the older populations. https://www.alberta.ca/stats/covid-19-alberta-statistics.htm#severe-outcomes https://www.alberta.ca/stats/covid-19-alberta-statistics.htm... -- scroll to the bottom for age distributions. Edit: FWIW, I don't particularly support delaying vaccination for any age group, however it should be recognized that the risk is apparently non-zero. I for one will be getting mine as soon as it is available to me.
      - mmmrtl 6y ago
        Thanks. Agreed that vaccinating the elderly first is a reasonable strategy, though it would also be smart to hit the people that spread the most (the "hubs" in a graph of physical interactions). I'm trying to go through the rough numbers of risk/reward: Consider the potentially affected group with the lowest COVID death rate - women 20-29 years old. If all get the AZ vaccine, ~10 per million would have a CVST , and 3 would die, using the German numbers, which are higher than other countries. [1] (double these numbers to assume the side effect only affects women, and doses have been evenly distributed. Double them again to assume that this side effect only affects <65 years old, and doses have been split between the elderly and younger medical workers [2]). If the COVID IFR is for 20-29 year olds is 0.01% [3], that's 100 per million that would die if infected. Maybe the IFR is lower for women, and with some effective treatments (dexamethasone, early recombinant antibodies) becoming available, but maybe it will be ~50% higher with prevailing variants. So this vaccine may kill 12 per million women but save 100 per million. But the 100 per million is an unfair comparison - presumably less than the entire population will be infected while waiting for a different vaccine. Assuming 1/4 of infections are detected, there are 1000 new infections per million in Germany each day. It would take 120 days to infect 12% of the population and kill as many with this side effect as would have been saved by the vaccine, so if it will be a delay of less than four months to switch vaccines for this group, stop giving AZ and wait for another vaccine! Huh, I didn't really expect this result, and for older age groups, the crossover point will come much sooner. Germany has decided that it only makes sense to only for 60+ year-olds, and maybe that's the right call, but I really wish they would be transparent about the reasoning. [1] https://www.pei.de/EN/newsroom/hp-news/2021/210319-covid-19-vaccine-astrazeneca-safety-assessment-result-vaccine-safe-and-effective.html https://www.pei.de/EN/newsroom/hp-news/2021/210319-covid-19-... [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1195611/coronavirus-covid-19-vaccinations-number-indicator-federal-state-germany/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1195611/coronavirus-covi... [3] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33289900/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33289900/
rado 6y ago
Have the affected been taking precautionary medicine against clots, like the ones prescribed post covid?
- fab1an 6y ago
  It doesn't work like that alas - the AZ thrombosis is a pretty serious condition and the best theory we have right now suggests it can't be just treated with an aspirin.
  - olliej 6y ago
    Didn’t the numbers come out that the AZ thrombosis numbers were below average for the general population?
    - alkonaut 6y ago
      I believe it’s not a lot higher than for the population but it’s a lot higher than the expected risk is for the group that gets the side effects now: young women. That, together with the fact that this group has minimal risk from the disease means it’s concerning. You don’t want to give someone a vaccine with risks of the same order as the disease. Giving AZ to 60+ is still almost no concern even with this rate of adverse effects because they show a lower thrombosis risk and of course a massively higher risk of severe illness or death from the disease. Countries with a mix of AZ and mRNA vaccines like many EU countries can probably use AZ for 60+ and since AZ underdelivers, the rest can take mRNA. Countries that have only or mostly AZ are in a more difficult situation.
josteink 6y ago
> He stresses, however, that clear, transparent communication about possible risks is crucial for maintaining public trust in all COVID-19 vaccines. “It is very important that we do not lose the war because we are too eager to win the short-term battle,” he says. This guy gets it. You won’t win over sceptics by trying to brush seemingly real problems under the rug. Hopefully the EMA will follow his example.
londons_explore 6y ago
I would like to see: * Estimates of death or serious complications of COVID, divided by age group. * Estimates of death or serious complications of this vaccine, again by age group. Then it should be easy for anyone to see that the benefits outweigh the risks (if they do!)
- krzyk 6y ago
  Multiply the first one probability of getting infected with COVID.
- Daho0n 6y ago
  Your local version of the CDC should have lots of numbers. I just had a quick look (at the Danish health department) and the numbers of reported side effects (all, not just adverse side effects) are approx. 1/36 in Pfizer and moderna and 1/7 AstraZeneca. That's.... quite the difference. Note this doesn't look at which group gets which vaccine etc. but only the reported numbers!
  - captainmuon 6y ago
    We have to be careful when comparing the raw numbers. The AstraZeneca vaccine is a vector vaccine and part of it's expected mechanism of action is triggering an (unpleasant) immune response. I'm not sure where the official definition draws the line between side effect and just normal unpleasantness, but I've heard that most people experience symptoms like a mild flu, and pain at the injection site. OTOH I've heard anecdotically that the Pfizer/Biontech vaccine has much less reactions. Anyway I think we should not lump the mild/expected side effects and the serious and life threatening ones together. Unfortunately it's quite difficult to find reliable numbers for probability of e.g. blood clots after vaccine compared to the general population. As a physicist, I'd also like to see the probability in the general population, but this population reweighted to match the population that has been given the vaccine. (E.g. if 0.1% of the population are nurses and 2% of the vaccinated are, then multiply their frequency by 20). When I just see a number, I never know how much they take this kind of confounding factors into account.
- fab1an 6y ago
detaro 6y ago
Please don't submit multiple stories about pretty much the same thing within hours: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26689526 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26689526
temptemptemp111 6y ago
Amazing how brainwashed this entire community is... Ya go inject aluminum that could hit the smallest capilaries in your brain within a second, causing ischemia... Aka Bell's palsy. In fact, this whole thing is a Godsend to wipe out the porn-addicted normie overgrowth.
ourcat 6y ago
I've had the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine and had no side-effects at all. I did actually expect to, since I used to always react badly as a child to the flu vaccine we had at school. Also, I've heard of friends and colleagues who felt pretty rough for a couple of days. But one thing I don't hear enough of, is the comparison with all the long lists of potential side-effects stated on normal, over-the-counter medicines. Paracetamol, Aspirin etc. Have you listened to the fast-talking voices at the end of medicine adverts, disclaiming a litany of possible side-effects? It's quite amazing. (Some disclaimers at the end of pharmaceutical ads on US TV particularly, have always shocked me.) "Take this. It'll help your problem" (* warning: may cause ... )
- ourcat 6y ago
  IIRC this was also brought up by Jonathan Van-Tam MBE, the UK Chief Medical Officer, a specialist in viral transmissions, antiviral drugs and pandemic preparedness.
- stcredzero 6y ago
  Vitamin D levels have been shown to be negatively correlated with the really bad effects of the Covid-19 disease. In one study, there was a stark difference between those who had less than 20 ng/mL serum levels, and those who had more. There are many studies which corroborate this, generally. There was another study that showed that taking 5000 IU or 10000 IU would result in levels well below 210 ng/ml in average people, which is around the level where we'd expect side effects. This is not medical advice. I am not a doctor, just a random guy on the Internet. However, I take 5000 IU daily, and I intend to raise this to 10000 IU when I get vaccine doses. Again, this is not medical advice. Look up the studies yourself, and do your own research. EDIT: negatively correlated
  - yread 6y ago
    You mean this retracted one? https://retractionwatch.com/2021/02/19/widely-shared-vitamin-d-covid-19-preprint-removed-from-lancet-server/ https://retractionwatch.com/2021/02/19/widely-shared-vitamin...
stcredzero 6y ago
Since I joined this website almost 1 and 1/2 decades ago, I have never seen science so politicized. In 2021, if you ask a perfectly reasonable scientific question, there's a good chance that it's somehow gotten associated with political party X or political party Y, and this question is treated with the same semantics as an armband, a bumper sticker, or a flag. This is madness! This is not how it's supposed to work, if we are supposed to be reasoning, thinking beings. Ideas are supposed to be ideas not tokens of affiliation! I brought up Lysenkoism here a few years back. One notable reaction, upon hearing of this for the first time, was for that commenter to declare that "Lysenkoism" was then to be pattern matched as a talking point of political party W. No intellectual curiosity. No discussion on the philosophical or practical implications. Just knee-jerk us versus them. I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain. In 2021, we're taught to fear each other. We're taught to fear the "wrong" questions. We're taught to fear the "wrong" affiliation, the "wrong" ideas. Fear is the mind-killer. That is what certain manipulators want -- for people to react, instead of listening and then truly thinking.
- phreeza 6y ago
  The saddest phase of the pandemic for me was watch the descent of the debate from initial phase in which people seemed genuinely interested in understanding what was going on to sad polarized tribal squabbling.
  - stcredzero 6y ago
    As an exercise, go and look up the mainstream news coverage of Hydroxychloroquine, then go and look up many dozens of research papers. Here's what you'll find: - Mainstream news on the topic is inaccurate, *highly sensationalized*, and is often pointedly emotionally manipulative - The evidence is not one sided, and there is considerable signal in the politically unpopular direction. - Mainstream news dotes on just a few studies which support their narrative and often don't talk about the problems with those studies, or even when those studies are retracted This is straight out of the western version of the "propaganda model" in Manufacturing Consent -- as a playbook. It turns out that Hydroxychloroquine isn't that great. However, Ivermectin seems to hold a lot of promise, last I checked in on research. What's more, ask yourself this: Many people expected governments and organizations to react to the pandemic by combing through huge amounts of data, to see if existing drugs might have some effect. This is what a lot of medical professionals expected would happen. This isn't what happened. Instead, independent parties and agencies in 3rd world countries had to push things like that through, seemingly despite opposition. Go and look up the underwhelming numbers from studies for Remdesivir, and then ask yourself why that drug was so pushed for awhile, when others with far better study numbers were seemingly ignored or talked down. (Could it be the price?) My conclusion, is that even the intellectualism of our society and its science has been corrupted. The liberal values of the philosophe have been replaced with "us versus them" jingoism, dressed up in flowery language. This flowery language turns out to be all surface. It has no historical and practical substantive support, but instead has its basis on emotional appeal.
pityJuke 6y ago
It's just disappointing. I know the likelihood is seriously low, but I hope some sort of fix or preventative measure can be found, because the AZ vaccine has become such a major part of the world's vaccination drive (especially when the worlds' largest vaccine manufacturer is currently (to my belief) only manufacturing AZ). And the last thing anybody wants is vaccination falling back any further.
thaumaturgy 6y ago
We're still in a very early part of this developing story, and it's hard to predict yet how things will turn out. Here are some of the main points: - The recent development that might have spurred this sciencemag article is a proposed mechanism for the AZ vaccine to be causing blood clotting in some individuals. This was previously covered a couple of weeks ago. [1] - The number of people who have suffered serious effects as a result of the AZ vaccine are still much lower than the number of people who could have suffered serious Covid symptoms in the same population. [1] - However, the demographics don't line up perfectly. The blood clotting seems to be a greater risk for younger individuals, whereas serious Covid symptoms are more of a problem for older individuals, on average. - It's entirely reasonable for people who are at low risk of Covid symptoms to have concerns at this point about taking the AZ vaccine. - However, governments are facing the broader issue of stopping the pandemic as quickly as possible and reducing vaccine hesitancy, especially with the vast amounts of misinformation that have been washing through social media. For that reason, while research continues on this potential clotting issue, most governments have resumed AZ vaccinations [2]. - This is arguably not the most intersting AstraZeneca-related thing happening right now. They have also botched several other aspects of their vaccine development and roll-out [3] [4]. - Clotting issues have not been observed in the mRNA vaccines. Those vaccines use a different mechanism to trigger an immune response, and so far all of the indicators for these vaccines have been overwhelmingly positive. Almost one-third of Americans have received at least one dose of a vaccine so far and there are good reasons to be optimistic that the pandemic will soon start coming to an end for some of us. - Vaccinating the rest of the world is still a large and very important problem. If we don't do that, then vaccine-resistant variants may develop in other countries. From that standpoint, the AZ vaccine, despite its flaws, is still better than no vaccine at all. [1]: https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2021/03/21/979781065/european-scientists-zero-in-on-astrazeneca-blood-clot-link https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2021/0... [2] https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/03/european-countries-resume-use-astrazenecas-covid-19-vaccine-hoping-pause-has-not-dented https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/03/european-countries-r... [3]: https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/1374349620533411840?lang=en https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/1374349620533411840?lang=e... [4]: https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN2BR00Q https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN2BR00Q

56 points by reddotX 6y ago

Two rats where having a chat about about whether or not to get the vaccine. One rat says to the other rat, hey are you going to get the vax? And the other rat says are you fecking mad? sure they have not yet finished testing it on the humans yet. If you want a heads sup about whats really going on outside of the lame street media. Check out https://brandnewtube.com/ https://brandnewtube.com/ original cartoon strip: https://picc.io/tq2sFHU.png https://picc.io/tq2sFHU.png

chrisseaton 6y ago

> “We do not have just one vaccine. We have several.” I thought their problem was they didn't have access to vaccines over in Europe, not that they had a large stock to pick and choose from.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Daho0n 6y ago
In Denmark the halt of the AstraZeneca will delay vaccinations by approximately two weeks.
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  That seems like a really long time to me. Did you post this comment thinking it sounds short?
  - throwawayboise 6y ago
    We've been dealing with the pandemic for over a year (it was originally going to be a few weeks to "flatten the curve"). What's 2 more weeks?
    - chrisseaton 6y ago
      > What's 2 more weeks? A few thousand dead bodies at the current rate.
      - alanfranz 6y ago
        Denmark has ~2500 deaths since the beginning of the pandemics. Your numbers are off.
        chrisseaton 6y ago
        Context is across the whole of Europe. Still a couple of thousand of people dying every week in Europe.
        cinntaile 6y ago
        Yes your original reply was, but this specific childthread is talking about Denmark and how stopping the AZ vaccine pushes back their estimates by two weeks. This will likely cause preventable death in Denmark but those numbers are not in the thousands.
        morsch 6y ago
        AZ is not suspended in all of Europe. Most countries continue to use it, some of them -- France and Germany among then -- limiting the vaccine to people beyond a certain age (France: 55, Germany: 60), who are at a greater risk from Covid and who are also the next large group to be vaccinated.
        chrisseaton 6y ago
        > limiting the vaccine to people beyond a certain age (France: 55 Wait - I thought France said AztraZeneca wasn't effective for people over 65? Are they just giving it to people 55-65 therefore? And shouldn't those people have already been vaccinated by now anyway?
  - henrikeh 6y ago
    For what it is worth, I read it as a neutral statement: it is literally just the official estimate of the impact in terms of time.
morsch 6y ago
Today? Yes. Expected vaccine deliveries for Germany (pop. 80m): Q1: Biontech 12.4m, Moderna 1.8m, AZ 5.7m Q2: Biontech 40.2m, Moderna 6.4m, AZ 12.4-15.m, JJ: 10.1m, Curevac 1.4m 2021 (total): Biontech 100.7m, Moderna 78m, AZ: 56.3m, JJ: 36.7m, Curevac: 24.5m, Sanofi: 27.5 Source: https://www.bundesgesundheitsministerium.de/fileadmin/Dateien/3_Downloads/C/Coronavirus/Impfstoff/Lieferprognosen_verschiedene_Hersteller_2021.pdf https://www.bundesgesundheitsministerium.de/fileadmin/Dateie...
RobertoG 6y ago
That was a temporary problem, they have started to arrive in big numbers this week. Hopefully it will keep increasing.
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  > That was a temporary problem I guess it's a permanent problem if you're dead because of it.
  - akmarinov 6y ago
    Not really, it’s likely that you don’t care anymore.
  - RobertoG 6y ago
    Well, yes, I can confirm you that death people will stay that way, but you asked if the problem was that there was not enough vaccines so, I answered.
_Microft 6y ago
I think in the first quarter, BioNTech/Pfizer delivered almost 2.5 to 3 times as many doses to the EU as AZ did. Temporarily not having AZ until it is clear how to proceed is bad but not a total disaster. Encountering problems with the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine would have been much, much worse. Moderna isn’t in widespread use here yet.

zuppy 6y ago

the title is clickbait. yes, there are side effects but there are a few orders of magnitude greater chances of the combo getting covid + dying than being affected by the vaccine and dying. i am not saying we should not talk about them, but should we exercise caution with the way we formulate it. there are a lot of antivaxers out there and they don’t read beyond the title. if their number increases it will be bad for the entire society.

josteink 6y ago
Every time an antivaxxer can point at science or a scientist and say “Look! They’re lying to you!” that’s a real loss of credibility it will take years to win back. There might be problems with this one particular COVID-19 vaccine. Let’s not play that straight into the antivaxxers hands by being obviously dishonest about it. If there’s causes for concern, we obviously need to investigate those concerns and be open about it.
TheBlight 6y ago
I don't think being apprehensive about these particular vaccines makes one an "anti-vaxxer". I know a few people who don't want them right now who are otherwise fully vaccinated.
- luckylion 6y ago
  Is that because they're well-informed on the topic and have reason to believe that these vaccines are especially dangerous, or is it that they usually don't know (and think) a lot about rare side-effects? I wonder what the threshold is. You want people to make informed decisions, but you don't want them to panic about tiny risks, because otherwise you'll get a lot less vaccinations. Anti-vaccination is reasonable if one says "any potential side effect means I won't take it". But that seems neither individually wise nor collectively desired, though we don't really talk about the individual's responsibility as a carrier/spreader of something like influenza. Maybe we will in the future, now that it has been on everyone's mind with Covid.
  - TheBlight 5y ago

anon_tor_12345 6y ago

i got the pfizer vaccine 2 days ago and already i'm hearing advertisements for windows over the radio. weird thing is i don't own a radio...

lettergram 6y ago

All the mRNA vaccines being deployed in the U.S. appear to also have an increased risk: https://wonder.cdc.gov/controller/saved/D8/D137F981 https://wonder.cdc.gov/controller/saved/D8/D137F981 I think it would be better to be honest about the risks, rather than hide them. Sure, less people may take the vaccine, but covid19 is an easily transmissible airborne illness (per the cdc and who). Given that, herd immunity is unlikely to be achieved and regular vaccines would be suggested (like the flu). Of course, that means we need to trust the vaccines... lying about risks isn’t a good start.

cm2187 6y ago
Making a big deal about a one in a million risk isn’t helpful either (and borderline dishonest). Most people suck at dealing with small probabilities (otherwise lotteries would be out of business).
TheBlight 6y ago
We were already lied to at least about masks and required threshold for herd immunity. I feel like our public health officials have done serious damage to their credibility. Perhaps irreversibly so as far as many are concerned.
- injidup 6y ago
  You were not lied to. The CDC and WHO originally said that masks were not needed. That advice was wrong. That doesn't mean the people giving that advice were being malicious. They just got it badly wrong and eventually they corrected it and changed their position. A leader who can say they screwed up and then try and fix it is better than one who won't admit they are wrong and keeps to the wrong position just to save face. Bolsanaro in Brazil comes to mind.
  - Rule35 6y ago
    > [someone] originally said that masks were not needed. That advice was wrong. That doesn't mean the people giving that advice were being malicious. They just got it badly wrong and eventually they corrected it and changed their position. It shouldn't be that hard to not say things you can't support. Fauci should have told the truth, which is that however effective masks are they were in short supply and would do more good for doctors/etc. At some point, being more concerned with controlling people than educating them is maliciousness. He wanted masks for doctors but was willing to give bad advice to citizens to make it happen. We deserve honest scientists, not politicians, making policy.

stingraycharles 6y ago

The question to me is: how much is the risk of the potential side effects of the AZ vaccine compared to the risks associated with COVID? To me it strikes me that, even considering these rare side effects, the odds are still very much in favor for getting vaccinated. Am I wrong here? If not, wouldn’t it then be irrational to be shutting down these vaccination programs?

sudosysgen 6y ago
Definitely for some age groups. For other age groups, it makes more sense to delay vaccination until an alternate vaccine can be used. That's why some countries are only allowing it for older people.
- mmmrtl 6y ago
  Show your work, please.
  - y7r4m 6y ago
    Not parent; just throwing this out there; but in Canada, the local provinces have been doing a relatively ok job of keeping track of covid statistics. In Alberta [0] we have a fairly diverse population, and should somewhat generalize to other regions. It would certainly appear that if we assume the risk of vaccination is relatively constant, (The risk actually appears to be greater for younger, <55 y/o people), then it makes a lot of sense to prioritize the older populations. https://www.alberta.ca/stats/covid-19-alberta-statistics.htm#severe-outcomes https://www.alberta.ca/stats/covid-19-alberta-statistics.htm... -- scroll to the bottom for age distributions. Edit: FWIW, I don't particularly support delaying vaccination for any age group, however it should be recognized that the risk is apparently non-zero. I for one will be getting mine as soon as it is available to me.
    - mmmrtl 6y ago
      Thanks. Agreed that vaccinating the elderly first is a reasonable strategy, though it would also be smart to hit the people that spread the most (the "hubs" in a graph of physical interactions). I'm trying to go through the rough numbers of risk/reward: Consider the potentially affected group with the lowest COVID death rate - women 20-29 years old. If all get the AZ vaccine, ~10 per million would have a CVST , and 3 would die, using the German numbers, which are higher than other countries. [1] (double these numbers to assume the side effect only affects women, and doses have been evenly distributed. Double them again to assume that this side effect only affects <65 years old, and doses have been split between the elderly and younger medical workers [2]). If the COVID IFR is for 20-29 year olds is 0.01% [3], that's 100 per million that would die if infected. Maybe the IFR is lower for women, and with some effective treatments (dexamethasone, early recombinant antibodies) becoming available, but maybe it will be ~50% higher with prevailing variants. So this vaccine may kill 12 per million women but save 100 per million. But the 100 per million is an unfair comparison - presumably less than the entire population will be infected while waiting for a different vaccine. Assuming 1/4 of infections are detected, there are 1000 new infections per million in Germany each day. It would take 120 days to infect 12% of the population and kill as many with this side effect as would have been saved by the vaccine, so if it will be a delay of less than four months to switch vaccines for this group, stop giving AZ and wait for another vaccine! Huh, I didn't really expect this result, and for older age groups, the crossover point will come much sooner. Germany has decided that it only makes sense to only for 60+ year-olds, and maybe that's the right call, but I really wish they would be transparent about the reasoning. [1] https://www.pei.de/EN/newsroom/hp-news/2021/210319-covid-19-vaccine-astrazeneca-safety-assessment-result-vaccine-safe-and-effective.html https://www.pei.de/EN/newsroom/hp-news/2021/210319-covid-19-... [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1195611/coronavirus-covid-19-vaccinations-number-indicator-federal-state-germany/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1195611/coronavirus-covi... [3] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33289900/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33289900/

rado 6y ago

Have the affected been taking precautionary medicine against clots, like the ones prescribed post covid?

fab1an 6y ago
It doesn't work like that alas - the AZ thrombosis is a pretty serious condition and the best theory we have right now suggests it can't be just treated with an aspirin.
- olliej 6y ago
  Didn’t the numbers come out that the AZ thrombosis numbers were below average for the general population?
  - alkonaut 6y ago
    I believe it’s not a lot higher than for the population but it’s a lot higher than the expected risk is for the group that gets the side effects now: young women. That, together with the fact that this group has minimal risk from the disease means it’s concerning. You don’t want to give someone a vaccine with risks of the same order as the disease. Giving AZ to 60+ is still almost no concern even with this rate of adverse effects because they show a lower thrombosis risk and of course a massively higher risk of severe illness or death from the disease. Countries with a mix of AZ and mRNA vaccines like many EU countries can probably use AZ for 60+ and since AZ underdelivers, the rest can take mRNA. Countries that have only or mostly AZ are in a more difficult situation.

josteink 6y ago

> He stresses, however, that clear, transparent communication about possible risks is crucial for maintaining public trust in all COVID-19 vaccines. “It is very important that we do not lose the war because we are too eager to win the short-term battle,” he says. This guy gets it. You won’t win over sceptics by trying to brush seemingly real problems under the rug. Hopefully the EMA will follow his example.

londons_explore 6y ago

I would like to see: * Estimates of death or serious complications of COVID, divided by age group. * Estimates of death or serious complications of this vaccine, again by age group. Then it should be easy for anyone to see that the benefits outweigh the risks (if they do!)

krzyk 6y ago
Multiply the first one probability of getting infected with COVID.
Daho0n 6y ago
Your local version of the CDC should have lots of numbers. I just had a quick look (at the Danish health department) and the numbers of reported side effects (all, not just adverse side effects) are approx. 1/36 in Pfizer and moderna and 1/7 AstraZeneca. That's.... quite the difference. Note this doesn't look at which group gets which vaccine etc. but only the reported numbers!
- captainmuon 6y ago
  We have to be careful when comparing the raw numbers. The AstraZeneca vaccine is a vector vaccine and part of it's expected mechanism of action is triggering an (unpleasant) immune response. I'm not sure where the official definition draws the line between side effect and just normal unpleasantness, but I've heard that most people experience symptoms like a mild flu, and pain at the injection site. OTOH I've heard anecdotically that the Pfizer/Biontech vaccine has much less reactions. Anyway I think we should not lump the mild/expected side effects and the serious and life threatening ones together. Unfortunately it's quite difficult to find reliable numbers for probability of e.g. blood clots after vaccine compared to the general population. As a physicist, I'd also like to see the probability in the general population, but this population reweighted to match the population that has been given the vaccine. (E.g. if 0.1% of the population are nurses and 2% of the vaccinated are, then multiply their frequency by 20). When I just see a number, I never know how much they take this kind of confounding factors into account.
fab1an 6y ago

detaro 6y ago

Please don't submit multiple stories about pretty much the same thing within hours: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26689526 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26689526

temptemptemp111 6y ago

Amazing how brainwashed this entire community is... Ya go inject aluminum that could hit the smallest capilaries in your brain within a second, causing ischemia... Aka Bell's palsy. In fact, this whole thing is a Godsend to wipe out the porn-addicted normie overgrowth.

ourcat 6y ago

I've had the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine and had no side-effects at all. I did actually expect to, since I used to always react badly as a child to the flu vaccine we had at school. Also, I've heard of friends and colleagues who felt pretty rough for a couple of days. But one thing I don't hear enough of, is the comparison with all the long lists of potential side-effects stated on normal, over-the-counter medicines. Paracetamol, Aspirin etc. Have you listened to the fast-talking voices at the end of medicine adverts, disclaiming a litany of possible side-effects? It's quite amazing. (Some disclaimers at the end of pharmaceutical ads on US TV particularly, have always shocked me.) "Take this. It'll help your problem" (* warning: may cause ... )

ourcat 6y ago
IIRC this was also brought up by Jonathan Van-Tam MBE, the UK Chief Medical Officer, a specialist in viral transmissions, antiviral drugs and pandemic preparedness.
stcredzero 6y ago
Vitamin D levels have been shown to be negatively correlated with the really bad effects of the Covid-19 disease. In one study, there was a stark difference between those who had less than 20 ng/mL serum levels, and those who had more. There are many studies which corroborate this, generally. There was another study that showed that taking 5000 IU or 10000 IU would result in levels well below 210 ng/ml in average people, which is around the level where we'd expect side effects. This is not medical advice. I am not a doctor, just a random guy on the Internet. However, I take 5000 IU daily, and I intend to raise this to 10000 IU when I get vaccine doses. Again, this is not medical advice. Look up the studies yourself, and do your own research. EDIT: negatively correlated
- yread 6y ago
  You mean this retracted one? https://retractionwatch.com/2021/02/19/widely-shared-vitamin-d-covid-19-preprint-removed-from-lancet-server/ https://retractionwatch.com/2021/02/19/widely-shared-vitamin...

stcredzero 6y ago

Since I joined this website almost 1 and 1/2 decades ago, I have never seen science so politicized. In 2021, if you ask a perfectly reasonable scientific question, there's a good chance that it's somehow gotten associated with political party X or political party Y, and this question is treated with the same semantics as an armband, a bumper sticker, or a flag. This is madness! This is not how it's supposed to work, if we are supposed to be reasoning, thinking beings. Ideas are supposed to be ideas not tokens of affiliation! I brought up Lysenkoism here a few years back. One notable reaction, upon hearing of this for the first time, was for that commenter to declare that "Lysenkoism" was then to be pattern matched as a talking point of political party W. No intellectual curiosity. No discussion on the philosophical or practical implications. Just knee-jerk us versus them. I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain. In 2021, we're taught to fear each other. We're taught to fear the "wrong" questions. We're taught to fear the "wrong" affiliation, the "wrong" ideas. Fear is the mind-killer. That is what certain manipulators want -- for people to react, instead of listening and then truly thinking.

phreeza 6y ago
The saddest phase of the pandemic for me was watch the descent of the debate from initial phase in which people seemed genuinely interested in understanding what was going on to sad polarized tribal squabbling.
- stcredzero 6y ago
  As an exercise, go and look up the mainstream news coverage of Hydroxychloroquine, then go and look up many dozens of research papers. Here's what you'll find: - Mainstream news on the topic is inaccurate, *highly sensationalized*, and is often pointedly emotionally manipulative - The evidence is not one sided, and there is considerable signal in the politically unpopular direction. - Mainstream news dotes on just a few studies which support their narrative and often don't talk about the problems with those studies, or even when those studies are retracted This is straight out of the western version of the "propaganda model" in Manufacturing Consent -- as a playbook. It turns out that Hydroxychloroquine isn't that great. However, Ivermectin seems to hold a lot of promise, last I checked in on research. What's more, ask yourself this: Many people expected governments and organizations to react to the pandemic by combing through huge amounts of data, to see if existing drugs might have some effect. This is what a lot of medical professionals expected would happen. This isn't what happened. Instead, independent parties and agencies in 3rd world countries had to push things like that through, seemingly despite opposition. Go and look up the underwhelming numbers from studies for Remdesivir, and then ask yourself why that drug was so pushed for awhile, when others with far better study numbers were seemingly ignored or talked down. (Could it be the price?) My conclusion, is that even the intellectualism of our society and its science has been corrupted. The liberal values of the philosophe have been replaced with "us versus them" jingoism, dressed up in flowery language. This flowery language turns out to be all surface. It has no historical and practical substantive support, but instead has its basis on emotional appeal.

pityJuke 6y ago

It's just disappointing. I know the likelihood is seriously low, but I hope some sort of fix or preventative measure can be found, because the AZ vaccine has become such a major part of the world's vaccination drive (especially when the worlds' largest vaccine manufacturer is currently (to my belief) only manufacturing AZ). And the last thing anybody wants is vaccination falling back any further.

thaumaturgy 6y ago

We're still in a very early part of this developing story, and it's hard to predict yet how things will turn out. Here are some of the main points: - The recent development that might have spurred this sciencemag article is a proposed mechanism for the AZ vaccine to be causing blood clotting in some individuals. This was previously covered a couple of weeks ago. [1] - The number of people who have suffered serious effects as a result of the AZ vaccine are still much lower than the number of people who could have suffered serious Covid symptoms in the same population. [1] - However, the demographics don't line up perfectly. The blood clotting seems to be a greater risk for younger individuals, whereas serious Covid symptoms are more of a problem for older individuals, on average. - It's entirely reasonable for people who are at low risk of Covid symptoms to have concerns at this point about taking the AZ vaccine. - However, governments are facing the broader issue of stopping the pandemic as quickly as possible and reducing vaccine hesitancy, especially with the vast amounts of misinformation that have been washing through social media. For that reason, while research continues on this potential clotting issue, most governments have resumed AZ vaccinations [2]. - This is arguably not the most intersting AstraZeneca-related thing happening right now. They have also botched several other aspects of their vaccine development and roll-out [3] [4]. - Clotting issues have not been observed in the mRNA vaccines. Those vaccines use a different mechanism to trigger an immune response, and so far all of the indicators for these vaccines have been overwhelmingly positive. Almost one-third of Americans have received at least one dose of a vaccine so far and there are good reasons to be optimistic that the pandemic will soon start coming to an end for some of us. - Vaccinating the rest of the world is still a large and very important problem. If we don't do that, then vaccine-resistant variants may develop in other countries. From that standpoint, the AZ vaccine, despite its flaws, is still better than no vaccine at all. [1]: https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2021/03/21/979781065/european-scientists-zero-in-on-astrazeneca-blood-clot-link https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2021/0... [2] https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/03/european-countries-resume-use-astrazenecas-covid-19-vaccine-hoping-pause-has-not-dented https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/03/european-countries-r... [3]: https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/1374349620533411840?lang=en https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/1374349620533411840?lang=e... [4]: https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN2BR00Q https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN2BR00Q