14 ms·

Rogue antibody and mystery pathogen behind AstraZeneca blood clots: study

180 points by Jimmc414 4y ago

troysk 4y ago
If you have taken AstraZeneca, try and get some blood and hypertension tests done. Blood clots can be managed with anti-coagulants like rivaroxaban, your doctor will advice based on the tests. Post AZ, mini strokes start occurring for some. Mini strokes are hard to notice if you aren't post 60. Many strokes don't kill, but they kill the life of you. Based on the sample set of 1 personally known and 8 indirect. In a world where Science has become like religion which can't be questioned; use Science and the limited data you have.
joecool1029 4y ago
It's likely I got to this thread too late, but does the incidence rate of AZ vaccine blood clots match the J&J one? Very few sources report on J&J even though it's a similar (but not identical) vaccine.
Slava_Propanei 4y ago
[dead]
laborat 4y ago
I thought (but don't have a source for this right now) that an additional factor was that the vaccine must accidentally have entered the bloodstream, as opposed to only the muscle (i.e. incorrect administration). This isn't mentioned by the article, so was this not the case?
- lamontcg 4y ago
  That was only ever speculation, it was not the case. The association with middle aged women was not due to smaller muscles, but due to autoimmunity.
- andrewflnr 4y ago
  For AstraZeneca? I think I've heard that for the mRNA ones...
  - tsimionescu 4y ago
    It can and should happen for any intra-muscular vaccination in similar (very low) rates - it's a medical error when the vaccine is administered (accidentally hitting a small vein inside the muscle), not some property of the vaccine itself.
    - andrewflnr 4y ago
      Sure, the question isn't so much whether it happens but whether it's associated with severe side effects.
- sendfoods 4y ago
  Are you referring to aspiration vs intravenous injection? I am not a medical doctor, but John Campbell and his presentation of data from Denmark convinced me to ask for aspirated admission of my dose(s). Can't find the presentation rn, unfortunately, but some similar considerations are mentioned here [1] [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35320581/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35320581/
  - johnchristopher 4y ago
    Oh, I saw a video in 2021 in which a retired doctor/uni. prof. explained AZ complications (it was someone from the UK) were most likely/could be related to how nurses handled the needle and where they stung it. Like, he was concerned about the lack of instructions given to vaccinating squad. I blacked this info out because it was too much of a yet another thing I had to watch for at the time on top of others but for my first booster I had a chat with the nurse about the dosage of the booster and... yeah... better check these kind of things out yourselves, things can go wrong really fast (and mark your legs and operation instructions on your body before going under the scalpel :). Edit: not sure if it's the video I watched but it's definitely the guy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBaIRm4610o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBaIRm4610o
    - readthenotes1 4y ago
      very old dr told me he noticed the techs who gave him his shots failed to follow the best practice he was taught, which is to withdraw the plunger to see if you pull out any blood. If you draw any blood you have hit an artery and need to start over. His vax people just stuck it in and plunged, no testing.
      - jamiek88 4y ago
        Your very old doctor needs to know that hasn’t been done for twenty years. It’s silly theater. Like a lot of medicine was and is.
        Slava_Propanei 4y ago
- BaculumMeumEst 4y ago
  when you start asking online commenters to disprove a theory you probably read from another online commenter you may want to re-evaluate how you're consuming information
  - jjulius 4y ago
    >... you probably read from another online commenter... You are criticizing OP based on an evidence-less assumption that you have made about them.
    - chrisan 4y ago
      It is not a criticism that is so far off. You could take out the "probably" and replace with "maybe" - just have a look at this very page of comments and it shouldn't take you long to find wildly inaccurate statements or anecdotal -> conclusion type theories.
      - jjulius 4y ago
        You could do that, but HN guidelines ask us to assume, and post in, good faith. Blindly assuming/implying someone didn't get their source from some kind of trustworthy place and then giving them grief for it is not a good faith comment. And it discourages people from asking questions in the future. OP seems genuinely curious and open to whatever answers they might get. Why be a dick to them?
  - headsoup 4y ago
    This of course assumes that other online commenters (or sources) apparently have no experience or credentials in providing the information. Way too much credentialism of late.
- maxboone 4y ago
  PF4 was already considered the culprit for a while, but formerly it was thought that negatively loaded DNA activated it. Incorrect administration is still a risk, but not systemic / wide enough for the clotting cases I guess. And, you'd (1) expect cases to go down over time and (2) see them in mRNA vaccines as well. So, no, PF4's been consensus for a while, this study gives a probable theory on why PF4 gets activated.
  - krisoft 4y ago
    > negatively loaded DNA activated it What is a negatively loaded DNA?
- fabian2k 4y ago
  That's a theory that I've seen quite often online, but as far as I could tell there is no evidence at all for it. I also haven't seen this argued from any official sources. It's a plausible-sounding explanation, that has no data behind it as far as I can tell.
  - z7 4y ago
    Detection of mRNA COVID-19 Vaccines in Human Breast Milk: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32998268 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32998268 Detection of spike protein in brain and heart (single case study): https://www.mdpi.com/2076-393X/10/10/1651 https://www.mdpi.com/2076-393X/10/10/1651 The larger question seems to be the biodistribution of the vaccine in general, not necessarily via bloodstream. From the first study: "We speculate that, following the vaccine administration, lipid nanoparticles containing the vaccine mRNA are carried to mammary glands via hematogenous and/or lymphatic routes."
    - briandon 4y ago
      Have you seen the Japanese Pfizer biodistribution study, which looked at where LNPs ended up in mice? https://www.docdroid.net/xq0Z8B0/pfizer-report-japanese-government-pdf https://www.docdroid.net/xq0Z8B0/pfizer-report-japanese-gove...
      - z7 4y ago
        No, hadn't seen that one! The 2021 consensus seems to be that the amounts detected are so minuscule that there is no cause for concern. I wonder if that's the whole story. I also wonder why there aren't more studies on this.
        briandon 4y ago
        In the linked report, the organ distribution of the LNPs is given in a table that spans two pages (pages 16-17 of the PDF corresponding to pages 6-7 in the report's internal numbering). After 48 hours, only 24.6% of the lipids from the LNPs in the rodents' doses had remained at the injection site. The liver ended up with 16.2% and the spleen with slightly in excess of 1%. The remainder (nearly 60%) was widely distributed. The table has values for specific organs and tissues.
tw1984 4y ago
my hat off to the scientists behind this very remarkable work. so you can't get the clotting without that IGLV3-21*02 gene. now the interesting question here is that, with current tech, is it possible to manufacture very affordable (e.g. cost comparable to those COVID antigen test kits) rapid test kits that can detect such positive IGLV3-21*02 gene. some false positive level is fine, false negative must be very low. surely people in low income countries who only have access to the AZ vaccine can benefit from such tests if affordable test kits can be made available to local healthcare workers administrating the vaccination.
- lamontcg 4y ago
  Better thing to do is to fix the adenovirus capsid used in the vaccines to prevent the issue entirely.
- ben_w 4y ago
  Might even be easier than that. You'd want to test for the specific antibody, far too many people have the gene: > About four people in every 100 have IGLV3-21*02
- hansel_der 4y ago
  > surely people in low income countries who only have access to the AZ vaccine can benefit from such tests if affordable test kits can be made available to local healthcare workers administrating the vaccination. sounds suspiciously like the cost of the additional testing would more than ofset the savings on the vaccine itself
- chrisco255 4y ago
  This vaccine isn't even effective any more against modern forms of Covid. Covid mutates multiple times per year. And by and large, low income countries have not been "overwhelmed" by Covid. I'll add, this study is not comprehensive, there could be other risk factors as well, the other vaccines could have issues, majority of the general population has already contracted Covid at least once, etc etc but some people insist on quadrupling down on dubious mRNA treatments with unknown compounding risks for unknown numbers of people. It's the definition of insanity. It might be worth revisiting alternative therapeutic treatments including monoclonal antibodies and antiviral drugs, rather than continue on this ignorant path. Just a thought.
anonymous344 4y ago
[flagged]
- iamacyborg 4y ago
  The problem is that you feel that the number is wrong, not that you know it is.
  - the_only_law 4y ago
    The problem is they’re using phrases like “brain 500 errors” and expecting people to take anything they say seriously.
  - malandrew 4y ago
    At the same time, there’s more than enough signal that we’ve done an intentionally terrible job looking into adverse effects, intentionally so because if the data isn’t there, it’s hard to demonstrate liability. On top of that there have been numerous examples of anyone trying to apply the null hypothesis being intentionally smeared or discredited because applying the null hypothesis was essentially against public policy for the vaccines. The way things have been handled have been less than honest. I know several people who have had issues after taking the vaccine. My father died like 2 months after his second Pfizer vaccine shot and at the time we didn’t do an autopsy because he had a bad ticker and it didn’t seem necessary. In the time since, I’ve learned enough to regret not requesting an autopsy to check if side effects from the vaccine had not been a contributing factor to him passing away sooner.
    - Tycho 4y ago
      [flagged]
  - ladeaf 4y ago
    [flagged]
  - mav88 4y ago
    Or you could, you know, start with the excess mortality rate as measured by actuaries and then find out how many are clots and sudden deaths.
yieldcrv 4y ago
The kind of thing that often would come up in clinical trials I’m glad people are researching this and other peculiarities from all angles, I got a lot of dismissive comments in 2021 about an opportunistic pathogen being a culprit for some issues but the dismissiveness was paradoxical “scientists didn't study that so they must have ruled it out, stop fearmongering” people didn't like the idea that there could be a parallel infection going around annoying
- lamontcg 4y ago
  > people didn't like the idea that there could be a parallel infection going around That sounds like fearmongering though. This is a combination of at least two (if not more) unlikely factors happening in the same person. One of the is prior exposure to a pathogen, one of them is having the right kind of gene, and this study can't rule out other additional factors. The pathogen is likely to be something which has been with the human race for thousands of years, not anything novel to the human race like SARS-CoV-2. There's no point in trying to change your behavior to avoid trying to contact this other pathogen. The pathogen may also be something incredibly common, but other accidental factors conspire to produce this exact antibody.
- maxboone 4y ago
  It wouldn't though, as it didn't pop up in the exceptionally large phase 3 trials. Probably because the clotting risk of COVID is higher.
- tsimionescu 4y ago
  Note that the study didn't find any opportunistic infection. It found that the immune response in people who had the blood clot problem suggests that they have previously been infected with some pathogen that happens to resemble the adenovirus vector used by AZ: > That [the very quick progression of the blood clotting issue] suggested, Gordon said, their immune systems had already experienced this strange combination of adenovirus and PF4 – or something that looked a lot like it.
- kaba0 4y ago
  The probability of having that particular gene AND having been exposed to a specific pathogen before is quite unlikely
the_mitsuhiko 4y ago
> AstraZeneca’s vaccine remains in use in Australia, but official health advice is to opt for Pfizer or Moderna if you’re under 60. But AstraZeneca continues to be distributed, particularly in low-income countries. Interesting thing of note here: I keep reading this. Even the Wikipedia page on AstraZeneca suggests that it’s still used in many European countries. In Austria (where I live) while if’s technically possible to vaccinate with it, you absolutely will not be able to get it. It hasn’t been stocked for more than a year and a half. It has been effectively suspended since and everyone who got it, was boosted with one of the MRNA vaccines instead. I would like to understand why the reporting on in (including the Wikipedia page) is so reluctant to mention the effective suspension of it. I’m not familiar with the situation in Australia but I would be quite surprised if it’s still in use.
- Traubenfuchs 4y ago
  In Australia, everyone 18 years and above can book an AstraZeneca vaccination appointment: https://covid-vaccine.healthdirect.gov.au/booking/ https://covid-vaccine.healthdirect.gov.au/booking/ Meanwhile they rolled the dice and decided that Moderna is no longer available for 6 years and up, but remains available for children aged 6 months to <6 years.
  - the_mitsuhiko 4y ago
    Ah. That makes more sense then. The European numbers on the manufacturers are on ourworldindata and you can see there that it's effectively unused beyond July/December of 2021 (some refreshes were still made with it in December): https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/covid-vaccine-doses-by-manufacturer https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/covid-vaccine-doses-by-ma...
    - bratwurst3000 4y ago
      I think you read the data wrong. If I choose the time from July 22 to now astrazeneka is the third most used vaccine and that with a certain constant
thesaintlives 4y ago
[flagged]
- dutchCourage 4y ago
  Anecdotes don't add much to the discussion, I could truthfully write the exact opposite, I have no medical expertise whatsoever though: I would say the vaccine injection wasn't behind the blood clots. I choose to have it. Guess what? Life went on just the same as before. Who would have thought it?
- kolinko 4y ago
  "I keep driving without seatbelts and nothing bad happened - who would have thought it?" "I chose to not buy insurance and nothing bad happened" Despite not wearing seatbelts or having insurance, nothing negative occurred in these situations. However, this does not mean that these were good decisions. Even if nothing bad happens, it is still a risky choice. The same goes for not getting vaccinated. Just because nothing negative happens does not mean it was a wise decision.
  - kaba0 4y ago
    Yep, people fail to understand that life is not a zero sum game. You not risking the vaccine doesn’t give you 0 risk, it exposes you to the multiple orders of magnitude bigger risk of a severe COVID infection. Going for lower risk is the vaccine.
    - geraldwhen 4y ago
      You overstate the risk for a healthy, in shape individual who is not overweight.
      - kaba0 4y ago
        Compared to the vaccine’s? No, I’m not.
  - yucky 4y ago
keepquestioning 4y ago
How is the pathogen still a mystery?
- tsimionescu 4y ago
  Their theory is "the AZ vaccine causes clotting problems in people who (a) have some particular relatively common gene, and (b) have previously been exposed to a pathogen that is similar from their immune system's point of view to the adeno-virus that was used a vector". Point b means that the pathogen is something these people have been exposed to in the past: the only trace is the immune response that got reactivated, so identifying which particular pathogen it was is not easy.
- PaulKeeble 4y ago
  Viral pathogens are extremely hard to find. When we test for viruses in the human body we look for the antibodies because to get enough virus material to recognise it is extremely hard. Viruses hide inside our cells and stay there dormant slowly creeping and expanding throughout the body when they aren't in an acute phase of infection. You need tissue samples and then RNA testing to find them, its expensive and extremely invasive and has a high chance of finding nothing unless you are testing the right place. This has been a big problem with chronic illnesses. Even now despite the US military having great indicative data that EBV causes MS there hasn't been much luck in finding the virus in sufferers bodies, just the antibodies and the usual profile of cytokines associated with the viruses presence. Only recently Dr Bhupesh Prusty found EVB and HHV6 in the autopsy of 3 ME/CFS patients brains and none in controls strongly suggesting a viral cause for the disease but its not a test we could do on a live person and they never found these viruses in the patients fluids when they were alive.
Ziyo321 4y ago
[flagged]
lizardactivist 4y ago
It seems myocarditis from the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines are a much, much bigger problem.
- tsimionescu 4y ago
  Everything I've read suggests that the myocarditis associated with the vaccines is rarely more than a passing nuisance, and that the rate of myocarditis associated with catching the virus without being vaccinated is higher in the same age groups. Do you have any evidence to base your statement on?
  - headsoup 4y ago
    Before covid vaccines came around, if a doctor said to you "don't worry, that myocarditis is just a passing nuisance," what would your response have been? Or put another way, if you had this from covid itself and someone said to you "oh myocarditis is just a passing nuisance side effect of covid," how would you respond?
    - gjm11 4y ago
      I would say "Thank you for reassuring me that even though this is a problem affecting my heart, which on the face of it sounds super-scary, it actually isn't all that threatening". (Well, probably I wouldn't be so explicit, and probably I would first ask some questions about what they meant by "passing nuisance". And I might be annoyed that a medical professional treating me was using dismissive-sounding language about something I found distressing, but obviously that particular annoyance isn't relevant when it's Some Guy On The Internet talking about it in the abstract.)
      - headsoup 4y ago
        What if you knew myocarditis could have a risk of complications and your doctor said that? Wouldn't you prefer the doctor said 'generally it's temporary and will go away, but there are some potential complications and you should monitor for the following...' You shouldn't have to ask questions for that. The way people are now happily accepting hand-waving away heart damage because someone said 'hey it's fine' is astonishing. I do truly hope it is a mostly transient issue, because we haven't done the long term studies yet.
amluto 4y ago
A preprint of the actual paper is here: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.03.28.22272975v1.full.pdf https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.03.28.22272975v...
23B1 4y ago
What will be forgotten in this discussion (and in history) is how awful humans are at predicting and reacting to risk. It's hard to peer through the layers of emerging science and virology, psychology and sociology, policymaking and politics, media and information theory... to find the truth of a thing like COVID.
- globalreset 4y ago
  What's forgotten is that people were forced to take it, continuously lied to, had lifehood destroyed and their options suppressed just to over time get to hear "oh, yeah, your were right but you're bad at assessing risk so no one should care". And this is just a first of more bad reactions to vaccines that are happening, which should be added up. And then mortality comparison for kids will be much different. All that was required to avoid this madness was being honest and make jabs voluntary. People gauge the trust they should put in the medical government complex actually quite well.
  - krainboltgreene 4y ago
    > What's forgotten is that people were forced to take it, continuously lied to, had lifehood destroyed and their options suppressed just to over time get to hear "oh, yeah, your were right but you're bad at assessing risk so no one should care". It's really weird to see 5K people die from COVID-19 in the last 14 days and then come to HN and read someone describing a fantasy reality. Really cool place.
- thenerdhead 4y ago
  I find it interesting that certain books on personal risk (stoicism, antifragile, etc) have become must-reads over the last few years. At least to help you see the signal through all the noise of neomania(obsession of what's new).
- blub 4y ago
  Fortunately there were a couple of heuristics one could use: 1. If one of the vaccines causes horrible blood clots in the brain, get the other one. 2. If a bunch of self-important dilettantes claim that said vaccine is safe, but can’t comprehend how sex and age affects the risk profile… ignore them.

180 points by Jimmc414 4y ago

If you have taken AstraZeneca, try and get some blood and hypertension tests done. Blood clots can be managed with anti-coagulants like rivaroxaban, your doctor will advice based on the tests. Post AZ, mini strokes start occurring for some. Mini strokes are hard to notice if you aren't post 60. Many strokes don't kill, but they kill the life of you. Based on the sample set of 1 personally known and 8 indirect. In a world where Science has become like religion which can't be questioned; use Science and the limited data you have.

joecool1029 4y ago

It's likely I got to this thread too late, but does the incidence rate of AZ vaccine blood clots match the J&J one? Very few sources report on J&J even though it's a similar (but not identical) vaccine.

Slava_Propanei 4y ago

[dead]

laborat 4y ago

I thought (but don't have a source for this right now) that an additional factor was that the vaccine must accidentally have entered the bloodstream, as opposed to only the muscle (i.e. incorrect administration). This isn't mentioned by the article, so was this not the case?

lamontcg 4y ago
That was only ever speculation, it was not the case. The association with middle aged women was not due to smaller muscles, but due to autoimmunity.
andrewflnr 4y ago
For AstraZeneca? I think I've heard that for the mRNA ones...
- tsimionescu 4y ago
  It can and should happen for any intra-muscular vaccination in similar (very low) rates - it's a medical error when the vaccine is administered (accidentally hitting a small vein inside the muscle), not some property of the vaccine itself.
  - andrewflnr 4y ago
    Sure, the question isn't so much whether it happens but whether it's associated with severe side effects.
sendfoods 4y ago
Are you referring to aspiration vs intravenous injection? I am not a medical doctor, but John Campbell and his presentation of data from Denmark convinced me to ask for aspirated admission of my dose(s). Can't find the presentation rn, unfortunately, but some similar considerations are mentioned here [1] [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35320581/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35320581/
- johnchristopher 4y ago
  Oh, I saw a video in 2021 in which a retired doctor/uni. prof. explained AZ complications (it was someone from the UK) were most likely/could be related to how nurses handled the needle and where they stung it. Like, he was concerned about the lack of instructions given to vaccinating squad. I blacked this info out because it was too much of a yet another thing I had to watch for at the time on top of others but for my first booster I had a chat with the nurse about the dosage of the booster and... yeah... better check these kind of things out yourselves, things can go wrong really fast (and mark your legs and operation instructions on your body before going under the scalpel :). Edit: not sure if it's the video I watched but it's definitely the guy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBaIRm4610o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBaIRm4610o
  - readthenotes1 4y ago
    very old dr told me he noticed the techs who gave him his shots failed to follow the best practice he was taught, which is to withdraw the plunger to see if you pull out any blood. If you draw any blood you have hit an artery and need to start over. His vax people just stuck it in and plunged, no testing.
    - jamiek88 4y ago
      Your very old doctor needs to know that hasn’t been done for twenty years. It’s silly theater. Like a lot of medicine was and is.
      - Slava_Propanei 4y ago
BaculumMeumEst 4y ago
when you start asking online commenters to disprove a theory you probably read from another online commenter you may want to re-evaluate how you're consuming information
- jjulius 4y ago
  >... you probably read from another online commenter... You are criticizing OP based on an evidence-less assumption that you have made about them.
  - chrisan 4y ago
    It is not a criticism that is so far off. You could take out the "probably" and replace with "maybe" - just have a look at this very page of comments and it shouldn't take you long to find wildly inaccurate statements or anecdotal -> conclusion type theories.
    - jjulius 4y ago
      You could do that, but HN guidelines ask us to assume, and post in, good faith. Blindly assuming/implying someone didn't get their source from some kind of trustworthy place and then giving them grief for it is not a good faith comment. And it discourages people from asking questions in the future. OP seems genuinely curious and open to whatever answers they might get. Why be a dick to them?
- headsoup 4y ago
  This of course assumes that other online commenters (or sources) apparently have no experience or credentials in providing the information. Way too much credentialism of late.
maxboone 4y ago
PF4 was already considered the culprit for a while, but formerly it was thought that negatively loaded DNA activated it. Incorrect administration is still a risk, but not systemic / wide enough for the clotting cases I guess. And, you'd (1) expect cases to go down over time and (2) see them in mRNA vaccines as well. So, no, PF4's been consensus for a while, this study gives a probable theory on why PF4 gets activated.
- krisoft 4y ago
  > negatively loaded DNA activated it What is a negatively loaded DNA?
fabian2k 4y ago
That's a theory that I've seen quite often online, but as far as I could tell there is no evidence at all for it. I also haven't seen this argued from any official sources. It's a plausible-sounding explanation, that has no data behind it as far as I can tell.
- z7 4y ago
  Detection of mRNA COVID-19 Vaccines in Human Breast Milk: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32998268 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32998268 Detection of spike protein in brain and heart (single case study): https://www.mdpi.com/2076-393X/10/10/1651 https://www.mdpi.com/2076-393X/10/10/1651 The larger question seems to be the biodistribution of the vaccine in general, not necessarily via bloodstream. From the first study: "We speculate that, following the vaccine administration, lipid nanoparticles containing the vaccine mRNA are carried to mammary glands via hematogenous and/or lymphatic routes."
  - briandon 4y ago
    Have you seen the Japanese Pfizer biodistribution study, which looked at where LNPs ended up in mice? https://www.docdroid.net/xq0Z8B0/pfizer-report-japanese-government-pdf https://www.docdroid.net/xq0Z8B0/pfizer-report-japanese-gove...
    - z7 4y ago
      No, hadn't seen that one! The 2021 consensus seems to be that the amounts detected are so minuscule that there is no cause for concern. I wonder if that's the whole story. I also wonder why there aren't more studies on this.
      - briandon 4y ago
        In the linked report, the organ distribution of the LNPs is given in a table that spans two pages (pages 16-17 of the PDF corresponding to pages 6-7 in the report's internal numbering). After 48 hours, only 24.6% of the lipids from the LNPs in the rodents' doses had remained at the injection site. The liver ended up with 16.2% and the spleen with slightly in excess of 1%. The remainder (nearly 60%) was widely distributed. The table has values for specific organs and tissues.

tw1984 4y ago

my hat off to the scientists behind this very remarkable work. so you can't get the clotting without that IGLV3-21*02 gene. now the interesting question here is that, with current tech, is it possible to manufacture very affordable (e.g. cost comparable to those COVID antigen test kits) rapid test kits that can detect such positive IGLV3-21*02 gene. some false positive level is fine, false negative must be very low. surely people in low income countries who only have access to the AZ vaccine can benefit from such tests if affordable test kits can be made available to local healthcare workers administrating the vaccination.

lamontcg 4y ago
Better thing to do is to fix the adenovirus capsid used in the vaccines to prevent the issue entirely.
ben_w 4y ago
Might even be easier than that. You'd want to test for the specific antibody, far too many people have the gene: > About four people in every 100 have IGLV3-21*02
hansel_der 4y ago
> surely people in low income countries who only have access to the AZ vaccine can benefit from such tests if affordable test kits can be made available to local healthcare workers administrating the vaccination. sounds suspiciously like the cost of the additional testing would more than ofset the savings on the vaccine itself
chrisco255 4y ago
This vaccine isn't even effective any more against modern forms of Covid. Covid mutates multiple times per year. And by and large, low income countries have not been "overwhelmed" by Covid. I'll add, this study is not comprehensive, there could be other risk factors as well, the other vaccines could have issues, majority of the general population has already contracted Covid at least once, etc etc but some people insist on quadrupling down on dubious mRNA treatments with unknown compounding risks for unknown numbers of people. It's the definition of insanity. It might be worth revisiting alternative therapeutic treatments including monoclonal antibodies and antiviral drugs, rather than continue on this ignorant path. Just a thought.

anonymous344 4y ago

[flagged]

iamacyborg 4y ago
The problem is that you feel that the number is wrong, not that you know it is.
- the_only_law 4y ago
  The problem is they’re using phrases like “brain 500 errors” and expecting people to take anything they say seriously.
- malandrew 4y ago
  At the same time, there’s more than enough signal that we’ve done an intentionally terrible job looking into adverse effects, intentionally so because if the data isn’t there, it’s hard to demonstrate liability. On top of that there have been numerous examples of anyone trying to apply the null hypothesis being intentionally smeared or discredited because applying the null hypothesis was essentially against public policy for the vaccines. The way things have been handled have been less than honest. I know several people who have had issues after taking the vaccine. My father died like 2 months after his second Pfizer vaccine shot and at the time we didn’t do an autopsy because he had a bad ticker and it didn’t seem necessary. In the time since, I’ve learned enough to regret not requesting an autopsy to check if side effects from the vaccine had not been a contributing factor to him passing away sooner.
  - Tycho 4y ago
    [flagged]
- ladeaf 4y ago
  [flagged]
- mav88 4y ago
  Or you could, you know, start with the excess mortality rate as measured by actuaries and then find out how many are clots and sudden deaths.

yieldcrv 4y ago

The kind of thing that often would come up in clinical trials I’m glad people are researching this and other peculiarities from all angles, I got a lot of dismissive comments in 2021 about an opportunistic pathogen being a culprit for some issues but the dismissiveness was paradoxical “scientists didn't study that so they must have ruled it out, stop fearmongering” people didn't like the idea that there could be a parallel infection going around annoying

lamontcg 4y ago
> people didn't like the idea that there could be a parallel infection going around That sounds like fearmongering though. This is a combination of at least two (if not more) unlikely factors happening in the same person. One of the is prior exposure to a pathogen, one of them is having the right kind of gene, and this study can't rule out other additional factors. The pathogen is likely to be something which has been with the human race for thousands of years, not anything novel to the human race like SARS-CoV-2. There's no point in trying to change your behavior to avoid trying to contact this other pathogen. The pathogen may also be something incredibly common, but other accidental factors conspire to produce this exact antibody.
maxboone 4y ago
It wouldn't though, as it didn't pop up in the exceptionally large phase 3 trials. Probably because the clotting risk of COVID is higher.
tsimionescu 4y ago
Note that the study didn't find any opportunistic infection. It found that the immune response in people who had the blood clot problem suggests that they have previously been infected with some pathogen that happens to resemble the adenovirus vector used by AZ: > That [the very quick progression of the blood clotting issue] suggested, Gordon said, their immune systems had already experienced this strange combination of adenovirus and PF4 – or something that looked a lot like it.
kaba0 4y ago
The probability of having that particular gene AND having been exposed to a specific pathogen before is quite unlikely

the_mitsuhiko 4y ago

> AstraZeneca’s vaccine remains in use in Australia, but official health advice is to opt for Pfizer or Moderna if you’re under 60. But AstraZeneca continues to be distributed, particularly in low-income countries. Interesting thing of note here: I keep reading this. Even the Wikipedia page on AstraZeneca suggests that it’s still used in many European countries. In Austria (where I live) while if’s technically possible to vaccinate with it, you absolutely will not be able to get it. It hasn’t been stocked for more than a year and a half. It has been effectively suspended since and everyone who got it, was boosted with one of the MRNA vaccines instead. I would like to understand why the reporting on in (including the Wikipedia page) is so reluctant to mention the effective suspension of it. I’m not familiar with the situation in Australia but I would be quite surprised if it’s still in use.

Traubenfuchs 4y ago
In Australia, everyone 18 years and above can book an AstraZeneca vaccination appointment: https://covid-vaccine.healthdirect.gov.au/booking/ https://covid-vaccine.healthdirect.gov.au/booking/ Meanwhile they rolled the dice and decided that Moderna is no longer available for 6 years and up, but remains available for children aged 6 months to <6 years.
- the_mitsuhiko 4y ago
  Ah. That makes more sense then. The European numbers on the manufacturers are on ourworldindata and you can see there that it's effectively unused beyond July/December of 2021 (some refreshes were still made with it in December): https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/covid-vaccine-doses-by-manufacturer https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/covid-vaccine-doses-by-ma...
  - bratwurst3000 4y ago
    I think you read the data wrong. If I choose the time from July 22 to now astrazeneka is the third most used vaccine and that with a certain constant

thesaintlives 4y ago

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dutchCourage 4y ago
Anecdotes don't add much to the discussion, I could truthfully write the exact opposite, I have no medical expertise whatsoever though: I would say the vaccine injection wasn't behind the blood clots. I choose to have it. Guess what? Life went on just the same as before. Who would have thought it?
kolinko 4y ago
"I keep driving without seatbelts and nothing bad happened - who would have thought it?" "I chose to not buy insurance and nothing bad happened" Despite not wearing seatbelts or having insurance, nothing negative occurred in these situations. However, this does not mean that these were good decisions. Even if nothing bad happens, it is still a risky choice. The same goes for not getting vaccinated. Just because nothing negative happens does not mean it was a wise decision.
- kaba0 4y ago
  Yep, people fail to understand that life is not a zero sum game. You not risking the vaccine doesn’t give you 0 risk, it exposes you to the multiple orders of magnitude bigger risk of a severe COVID infection. Going for lower risk is the vaccine.
  - geraldwhen 4y ago
    You overstate the risk for a healthy, in shape individual who is not overweight.
    - kaba0 4y ago
      Compared to the vaccine’s? No, I’m not.
- yucky 4y ago

keepquestioning 4y ago

How is the pathogen still a mystery?

tsimionescu 4y ago
Their theory is "the AZ vaccine causes clotting problems in people who (a) have some particular relatively common gene, and (b) have previously been exposed to a pathogen that is similar from their immune system's point of view to the adeno-virus that was used a vector". Point b means that the pathogen is something these people have been exposed to in the past: the only trace is the immune response that got reactivated, so identifying which particular pathogen it was is not easy.
PaulKeeble 4y ago
Viral pathogens are extremely hard to find. When we test for viruses in the human body we look for the antibodies because to get enough virus material to recognise it is extremely hard. Viruses hide inside our cells and stay there dormant slowly creeping and expanding throughout the body when they aren't in an acute phase of infection. You need tissue samples and then RNA testing to find them, its expensive and extremely invasive and has a high chance of finding nothing unless you are testing the right place. This has been a big problem with chronic illnesses. Even now despite the US military having great indicative data that EBV causes MS there hasn't been much luck in finding the virus in sufferers bodies, just the antibodies and the usual profile of cytokines associated with the viruses presence. Only recently Dr Bhupesh Prusty found EVB and HHV6 in the autopsy of 3 ME/CFS patients brains and none in controls strongly suggesting a viral cause for the disease but its not a test we could do on a live person and they never found these viruses in the patients fluids when they were alive.

Ziyo321 4y ago

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lizardactivist 4y ago

It seems myocarditis from the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines are a much, much bigger problem.

tsimionescu 4y ago
Everything I've read suggests that the myocarditis associated with the vaccines is rarely more than a passing nuisance, and that the rate of myocarditis associated with catching the virus without being vaccinated is higher in the same age groups. Do you have any evidence to base your statement on?
- headsoup 4y ago
  Before covid vaccines came around, if a doctor said to you "don't worry, that myocarditis is just a passing nuisance," what would your response have been? Or put another way, if you had this from covid itself and someone said to you "oh myocarditis is just a passing nuisance side effect of covid," how would you respond?
  - gjm11 4y ago
    I would say "Thank you for reassuring me that even though this is a problem affecting my heart, which on the face of it sounds super-scary, it actually isn't all that threatening". (Well, probably I wouldn't be so explicit, and probably I would first ask some questions about what they meant by "passing nuisance". And I might be annoyed that a medical professional treating me was using dismissive-sounding language about something I found distressing, but obviously that particular annoyance isn't relevant when it's Some Guy On The Internet talking about it in the abstract.)
    - headsoup 4y ago
      What if you knew myocarditis could have a risk of complications and your doctor said that? Wouldn't you prefer the doctor said 'generally it's temporary and will go away, but there are some potential complications and you should monitor for the following...' You shouldn't have to ask questions for that. The way people are now happily accepting hand-waving away heart damage because someone said 'hey it's fine' is astonishing. I do truly hope it is a mostly transient issue, because we haven't done the long term studies yet.

amluto 4y ago

A preprint of the actual paper is here: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.03.28.22272975v1.full.pdf https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.03.28.22272975v...

23B1 4y ago

What will be forgotten in this discussion (and in history) is how awful humans are at predicting and reacting to risk. It's hard to peer through the layers of emerging science and virology, psychology and sociology, policymaking and politics, media and information theory... to find the truth of a thing like COVID.

globalreset 4y ago
What's forgotten is that people were forced to take it, continuously lied to, had lifehood destroyed and their options suppressed just to over time get to hear "oh, yeah, your were right but you're bad at assessing risk so no one should care". And this is just a first of more bad reactions to vaccines that are happening, which should be added up. And then mortality comparison for kids will be much different. All that was required to avoid this madness was being honest and make jabs voluntary. People gauge the trust they should put in the medical government complex actually quite well.
- krainboltgreene 4y ago
  > What's forgotten is that people were forced to take it, continuously lied to, had lifehood destroyed and their options suppressed just to over time get to hear "oh, yeah, your were right but you're bad at assessing risk so no one should care". It's really weird to see 5K people die from COVID-19 in the last 14 days and then come to HN and read someone describing a fantasy reality. Really cool place.
thenerdhead 4y ago
I find it interesting that certain books on personal risk (stoicism, antifragile, etc) have become must-reads over the last few years. At least to help you see the signal through all the noise of neomania(obsession of what's new).
blub 4y ago
Fortunately there were a couple of heuristics one could use: 1. If one of the vaccines causes horrible blood clots in the brain, get the other one. 2. If a bunch of self-important dilettantes claim that said vaccine is safe, but can’t comprehend how sex and age affects the risk profile… ignore them.