German Scientists Identify Possible Cause of Vaccine Blood Clots (telegraph.co.uk) 95
Hmmmmmm shares a report from The Telegraph: Scientists in Germany believe they have discovered why the Oxford-AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccines cause potentially fatal blood clots in rare cases, and claim the issue can be fixed with a minor adjustment. The authors of a new study claim their findings show that it is not the key component of the vaccines that cause the clotting, but a separate vector virus that is used to deliver them to the body (Warning: source paywalled; alternative source). Both the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson jabs use a modified adenovirus, similar to the common cold virus, to deliver the spike protein of SarsCov2, the virus that causes Covid-19. The scientists claim the delivery mechanism means the spike protein is sent into the cell nucleus rather than the cellular fluid, where the virus usually generates proteins. In rare cases, they argue, parts of the spike protein can splice inside the nucleus, creating mutant versions which do not bind to the cell membrane where immunization takes place, but are secreted into the body, where they can cause blood clots.
These claims are only one of a number of hypotheses currently being explored on why the jabs cause blood clots in some people. A rival German study led by Prof Andreas Greinacher of Greifswald University Hospital claimed the clots were being caused by EDTA, a chemical used as a preservative in the AstraZeneca vaccine. In a two-step process, the vaccine can cause an overreaction by the immune system in some people which causes too many platelets to form in the blood, Prof Greinacher argues. EDTA can cause the cells in blood vessels to become "leaky," causing platelets and proteins to flood through the body, triggering a massive immune reaction that can cause the blood clots.
A third German study released in preprint this week by scientists at Ulm University Medical Centre claims to have found unusually high levels of proteins in the AstraZeneca vaccine which it is theorized could be behind the clots. "The often-observed strong clinical reaction one or two days after vaccination is likely associated with the detected protein impurities," the authors of the study wrote. The type of proteins involved "are known to affect innate and acquired immune responses and to intensify existing inflammatory reactions," Prof Stefan Kochanek, the study leader, said. "They have also been linked to autoimmune reactions."
These claims are only one of a number of hypotheses currently being explored on why the jabs cause blood clots in some people. A rival German study led by Prof Andreas Greinacher of Greifswald University Hospital claimed the clots were being caused by EDTA, a chemical used as a preservative in the AstraZeneca vaccine. In a two-step process, the vaccine can cause an overreaction by the immune system in some people which causes too many platelets to form in the blood, Prof Greinacher argues. EDTA can cause the cells in blood vessels to become "leaky," causing platelets and proteins to flood through the body, triggering a massive immune reaction that can cause the blood clots.
A third German study released in preprint this week by scientists at Ulm University Medical Centre claims to have found unusually high levels of proteins in the AstraZeneca vaccine which it is theorized could be behind the clots. "The often-observed strong clinical reaction one or two days after vaccination is likely associated with the detected protein impurities," the authors of the study wrote. The type of proteins involved "are known to affect innate and acquired immune responses and to intensify existing inflammatory reactions," Prof Stefan Kochanek, the study leader, said. "They have also been linked to autoimmune reactions."
Re:COVID-19 vaccines and blood clots (Score:4, Insightful)
Then go get polio and die already. Simple solution to the idiot problem. Thank you very much.
Re:COVID-19 vaccines and blood clots (Score:5, Insightful)
Wrong, It would have flared up again in the future had the vaccine not locked it out.
Re:COVID-19 vaccines and blood clots (Score:5, Interesting)
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Same for me.
Growing up in Egypt in the 60s and 70s, we had few cases of severely disabled kids in our schools, as well in older generations.
To visualize how debilitating polio is, see violinist Itzhak Perlman [youtu.be] walk. Having to use two crutches means that he can't carry his hand luggage at airports and someone has to wait for him to carry that for
Re:COVID-19 vaccines and blood clots (Score:4)
Why is it that people who start their posts with a fragmented sentence consisting of Fact [full stop] then proceed to demonstrate an overwhelming amount of ignorance about the data they are using to support their claims.
Now here are some actual facts for you:
1952: 57000 polio cases. The peak for the USA after it had been steadily rising.
Why was it a peak? Because at the end of 1952 a mass test campaign for the vaccine started, and the tests were conducted on the most vulnerable groups. Over the next year the number of cases dropped to the low 30000 and stayed there while vaccine data was reviewed and in 1955 (a year with 30000 deaths) a mass vaccination campaign started which caused cases to plummet and we know it was a direct result from the vaccination campaign because it was only in the country of the campaign that the cases plummeted.
By 1957 the numbers were down to 5000 with the large majority of the vulnerable vaccinated.
Sorry that your "Fact." doesn't agree with actual facts https://ourworldindata.org/pol... [ourworldindata.org] and if you feel like scrolling down on that page you'll note that the global map of vaccination rate by country looks almost identical to global map of recorded cases in the past decade.
I'm sorry, I'm sure you didn't expect someone to actually look it up and no doubt you expected us to just believe you random internet anti-vaxxer.
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My parents were kids during Polio and the stories they told me about it are terrifying. I lost my sense of taste for 3 weeks because of Wuflu. They had friends spend the rest of their lives in wheelchairs (or worse) because of Polio. That is scary AF. And here we are whining about face masks.
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Re:COVID-19 vaccines and blood clots (Score:5, Insightful)
0.5%-2% are devastating numbers. Would you fly an airline where 2% of passengers are killed? The indifference to the loss of human life is really disgusting. Such numbers are considered a severe threat to public health on a high contagion because it can add up to large numbers of people. Even considering the blood clots, the vaccines are far, far safer. With COVID having an IFR of 1/150, the vaccines blood clot is something like 1/20,000,000
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I like that metaphor.
Would you sign up for a lottery where you get a 1 in 50 chance of being handed a gun to point at your head and pull the trigger. But don't worry, only 1 in 200 of those guns is loaded and will blow your brains out. While we're at it, the pistol grips are coated with varying amounts of a toxin that will damage your circulatory system. You might get none at all!
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you have about a 1% chance of dying in a motor vehicle accident at some point, but society isn't terribly concerned about it.
Over your lifetime? That is not the same as over a course of two years.
And: dying in a car accident is not as easy to prevented as taking a vaccine.
No idea why idiots bring up such idiotic examples for comparing.
(Also: 1% sounds absurd high)
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the vaccines blood clot is something like 1/20,000,000 ... if everyone had gotten it 8 dead would be already 1/10,000,000)
That is wrong.
It is more 1/2,000,000, probably 1/1,000,000 - to lazy to dig it out. But Germany had ~10 dead, and roughly ~100 affected, and the AZ vaccine was only given to a very small amount of people. (Germany has 80,000,000 inhabitants
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0.5%-2% are devastating numbers. Would you fly an airline where 2% of passengers are killed? The indifference to the loss of human life is really disgusting. Such numbers are considered a severe threat to public health on a high contagion because it can add up to large numbers of people. Even considering the blood clots, the vaccines are far, far safer. With COVID having an IFR of 1/150, the vaccines blood clot is something like 1/20,000,000
I had the vaccine (shot 1) and developed small droplets (like the head of a pin) over my stomach, back, and the soft skin at the bottom of my arms. These were not larger than mentioned, and after a month, they had disappeared. Was it a coincidence, or a consequence? I also have CLL (28000 count), and I am not sure if that had a bearing on minimizing my reaction to the vaccine. I will be taking my scheduled shot in three weeks from this posting.
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Vaccines are good (but lets's skip the idiots) (Score:2)
Arguing with an idiot never works. You were tricked, and that time the trick worked.
Even though the Subject wasn't as idiotic as usual for an idiot, I still recommend changing it.
I actually knew and worked with a fellow who was badly damaged by polio. He only missed the vaccine by a few years.
That was many years ago. Before the anti-vax idiots even appeared. My theory is that the anti-vax BS is now being deliberately propagated by adversaries. I just have trouble believing in such sincere stupidity or proud
Re:COVID-19 vaccines and blood clots (Score:5, Informative)
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But that "factor of more than 6 chance of never getting covid" is because more than 60% will or did get vaccinated.
So, your argument becomes: I don't need to get vaccinated because everybody else did.
In other words, go fcc yourself, freeloader.
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An article I've read about AstraZeneca vaccination resulting in blood clots had the early results of almost 70 cases of blood clots instead of the expected 33 (for the immunized population, in the time range).
I don't have the article, and the results were "early" (a sample size of millions but with varying time after vaccination).
The issue with the blood clots is not actually the numbers (on the order of 1 in a 100,000), but the fact that they seem to affect people not considered otherwise at risk (you can'
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not to someone already having thrombophilia
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Different kinds of blood clots, though.
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Username checks out
Re:Scary (Score:5, Informative)
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I mean, yes, that would be safest in theory, but actually avoiding a pandemic virus is pretty hard and you'll likely have to *keep* avoiding it for a few years. Hopefully in another year or so there will only be a few hotspots / outbreaks, but it's hard to say and some places are likely to be hard to vaccinate (thank the CIA for the mess in Pakistan, for example...).
So in reality, you have to weigh whether you *can* avoid it for the next few years vs. the rare risks from the vaccine. For most people, the
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> If we were talking about run of the mill protein subunit vaccines, your assessment that long term consequences are likely to be there from covid as well, would be a fairly rational position,
Such vaccines exist, see, e.g. Sinovac. They're utter crap at effectivity (~60% last I heard vs. 90% for the mRNA vaccines), but they exist and do have fewer side-effects. I don't know how available they are in the USA, but it may be possible to source one.
And we do have good reason to believe the long term effect
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I'm vaccinated. ...).
Even before, I was not really afraid of the COVID-19 sickness - what I was (intellectually) really afraid was having one of those cases that basically never go away (shortness of breath, dizziness, loss of pulmonary capacity basically for ever,
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They also used powerful adjudivants to really trigger the immune system in this one because they were going for high effectivity at the cost of more side-effects (like the sore arms) given the scope of Covid. So yeah, no immune system is perfect, but the mRNA vaccines give you a lot more protection and appear to give longer-lasting protection than something like Sinovac or natural exposure.
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No it would not have caught it. Because the risk is in the order of one in a million, so you would need a clinical study of millions of people to pick it up. No clinical study is that large for a new drug or vaccine.
Re: Human are bad at risk assessment. (Score:2)
I agree with the removal of the âoeTrollâ tag button. Or at least let people mod out the âoeTrollâ tag if it has been applied.
I am genuinely curious to know how you define âoeriskâ, though. The way that the user used the term seems pretty accurate to me.
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Sometimes the fear of the unlikely is not irrational at all. The problem with being young is that you simply don't have the life experience necessary to rationally evaluate risk. We've all heard the stories of teen drivers doing reckless things, which in hindsight are not rational at all.
But there's a larger issue here, and that is that this is not simply about the science. Science does not have a large amount of data concerning the risk of the disease, because it's new. There are still a large numbe
Re: Human are bad at risk assessment. (Score:2)
This is why I don't comment here as much as I used to. The Slashdot culture has changed. There are too many people happy to abuse the system and mod down something they don't agree with.
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Unfortunately there is no mod option: "factually wrong".
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The problem is most people are appallingly bad at making rational decision when it comes to risk.
So yes I will berate 99.999% of people not taking a vaccine because they are concerned at the risk. because the with COVID-19 the risk from the virus itself is way higher than the vaccine *EVEN* for younger people. That is also not taking into account the risks of long COVID which could be extremely life limiting. Certainly fit healthy people 12 months on can barely function without support.
To put it in perspect
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You are mixing up risk with chance.
Must be an american thing.
You spent $10 for a lottery ticket: your chance of winning a million is probably about 1 : 20,000,000.
You climb a rock without a rope, your chance to fall down is probably also 1 : 20,000,000.
In the first case you RISK $10.
In the second case you RISK injury or death.
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Even though I disagree with some of the things you said, I don't think you deserve a flamebait mod. Times like these remind me of why we have a first amendment. As for those who modded him troll, you're holding back human progress. One of the distinguishing features of western civilization is that we can arrive at solutions to common problems through public discourse, even when people disagree. Take that away, and we all go back to tribalism.
So wait... (Score:1)
..are they saying this wasn't Bill Gates testing the 'kill switch' in the microchips?
As far as risks go (Score:3)
Meanwhile the mRNA vaccines (Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna) have none of these disadvantages. Yes, there's the myocarditis side-effect that's serious, and quite a few people develop a skin rash, but that's on a different level from having a blood clot or hundred forming in your body and ending up in places where they can kill.
Along with the much higher efficacy of the mRNA vaccines, it seems that the AZ and J&J vaccines are a stop-gap measure at most. With the B1.617.2 variant currently surging in the (mostly AZ vaccinated) UK, we'll find out soon enough whether they'll be rushing to get an mRNA booster in people's arms before long.
Re:As far as risks go (Score:4, Informative)
Couple of things. In the trials Pfizer and Moderna only tested patents that showed symptoms, where AZ tested everyone weekly. As such AZ was bound to show lower efficacy because Pfizer and Moderna where missing all the asymptomatic cases which AZ was picking up. In the real world studies show similar levels of efficacy between the vaccines to the point where it's really a toss up which is better.
Second the areas with the surging case in the UK are by and large areas with the greatest vaccine hesitancy. There was a very stark map shown of the Bolton area last week where the correlation was abundantly obvious to anyone with functioning vision it was that stark.
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This is an important point - "efficacy" is not measured the same way. It's actually a self-reported figure passed
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Adenovirus is used as it doesn't normally infect humans
That is wrong. They do.
And the fact that they do, is the reason that so called "vector vaccines" only can be used a few times on humans (aka ca. 5 Adenovirus are used as vectors). Before the next vaccine gets wiped out by the immune system before it can "deliver its message".
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That's not quite true. We are see very very small numbers of people having had two shots being hospitalised here in the UK. However they apparently all have comorbidities, and even then they are at very very low levels so it won't overwhelm the health system.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-... [bbc.co.uk]
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The AZ vaccine seems to offer very little protection against the South African variant and highly reduced (~50%) against the Indian B1.617.2 variant according to an early UK study.
Meanwhile the mRNA vaccines (Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna) have none of these disadvantages.
Complete nonsense.
All those vaccines make the body develop the exact same antibodies against the exact same spike proteins of the COVID virus.
No idea why you are so stupid to believe otherwise.
THE theory of blood clots, you read it here first. (Score:1)
My theory postulates that it is the influx of iron into cells generating the spike protein, and subsequent drops in serum iron levels that is the actual mechanism that increases the risk of blood clots.
Buried the lead! (Score:2)
Yes they identified issue but the real story is that they fixed the vaccine. No need to worry anymore with these vaccines which is kind of a big deal for poor and smaller nations that didn't invent their own.
Awesome work (Score:2)
This is awesome that there is such good foundational work going on to solve some of these problems and make this safer.
Some people will say the AZ vac is not effective/just skip it, etc, but what happens in 20-50 years where there is a different problem. Or its be weaponised by a green peace nut? (If its not been weaponised by the red country already).
You Want It So Bad (Score:1)