> I'm surprised they still bother. I think with all the concerns surrounding it it's better to just agree to cancel the contracts and move to better vaccines.

> I'm surprised they still bother. I think with all the concerns surrounding it it's better to just agree to cancel the contracts and move to better vaccines. I agree with the surprise and the concerns (though most are FUD, misunderstanding, and politics). The point about better vaccines is a little unfair though. Initially regulators were hopeful for 50% efficacy for any vaccine. Depending upon the various studies and permutations the vaccines all fall within a few % of each other and at a rate far higher than hoped for. The variance is small enough to not be a concern. The blood clot incident rates are tiny and whilst unfortunately people do experience them the MHRA (UK) reports 38 per 11.5 million for Pfizer and 30 per 9.7 million for AZ, making them virtually identical (Pfizer slightly worse but with such small numbers that really isn't significant so I'm not claiming Pfizer is worse just that neither is AZ). We'd expect 3,000 clots per month in the UK in normal times anyway. And even if we say that these are unusual clots, the numbers remain small and AZ is not unusual in this regard. AZ isn't perfect - but it's beyond good enough and not particularly poorer than its peers.