US Health Officials Question AstraZeneca Vaccine Data and Efficacy (thehill.com) 171
whh3 writes: The NIAID issued a statement early Tuesday saying that they had concerns about the data that AstraZeneca included in their Monday-morning release touting the effectiveness of their Covid-19 vaccine. Slashdot reader phalse phace has shared additional information via The Hill. They write: U.S. health officials from the Data and Safety Monitoring Board issued an unusual statement that it was "concerned by information released by AstraZeneca on initial data from its COVID-19 vaccine clinical trial." This comes less than 24 hours after AstraZeneca said its vaccine had an "efficacy of 79% at preventing symptomatic COVID-19 and 100% efficacy at preventing severe disease and hospitalization" and a week after several countries suspended dosing of the vaccine due to concerns of dangerous blood clots.
The Data and Safety Monitoring Board "expressed concern that AstraZeneca may have included outdated information from that trial, which may have provided an incomplete view of the efficacy data." As an oversight committee, the Data and Safety Monitoring Board helps regulate and evaluate clinical trials of new medicines to ensure accuracy and adherence to protocols. In a statement released early Tuesday morning, AstraZeneca said the interim results it announced on Monday were current as of Feb. 17. The latest development could throw a wrench in AstraZeneca's plan to seek the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's emergency use authorization for its vaccine. Additional coverage: The New York Times
The Data and Safety Monitoring Board "expressed concern that AstraZeneca may have included outdated information from that trial, which may have provided an incomplete view of the efficacy data." As an oversight committee, the Data and Safety Monitoring Board helps regulate and evaluate clinical trials of new medicines to ensure accuracy and adherence to protocols. In a statement released early Tuesday morning, AstraZeneca said the interim results it announced on Monday were current as of Feb. 17. The latest development could throw a wrench in AstraZeneca's plan to seek the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's emergency use authorization for its vaccine. Additional coverage: The New York Times
Glorious Peoples Republic of Google (Score:4, Funny)
Citizens of the Kingdom of Twitter already knew! (Score:2)
Any scientist could see that the lack of cat-related pictures in the WaPo or WSJ was a good indicator that such media could not be trusted.
I wonder if the people of the Democracy of Facebook already know?
Re: I'm not getting it. (Score:2)
Re: I'm not getting it. (Score:5, Informative)
Health authorities across Europe have stopped dispensing the Astra-Zenica vaccine for weeks now due to indications that people are suffering from strokes due to the vaccine. In Denmark we have two suspected deaths of young people possibly due to the vaccine (142,000 have received their first jab of that vaccine). And to put that in context a total of 13 people below the age of 50 have died with Covid-19 in Denmark (none below 30 years) of out a population of around 6 million.
So until it is settled whether there are indeed problems with the Astra-Zenica vaccine I can fully understand why people below maybe 30, 40 or 50 years old will delay taking that vaccine and possibly also wait for better data on the other vaccines. It is a simple balance between the risks involved in taking the vaccine now or waiting a while. And this balance is very different depending on especially your age.
In our neighboring countries Norway and Sweden a rollout of the swine flu vaccine to large proportions of the population in 2009 resulted in hundreds of children being debilitated by narcolepsy: https://www.huffpost.com/entry... [huffpost.com]
So vaccines can definitely have very serious side effects that are not discovered in trials. Especially if the trials are very short. Personally I am getting the vaccine (although not the Astra-Zenica one until the science is settled in a few months). But I do fully understand if some younger people want to delay taking the vaccine in order to more data about potential adverse effects to become available.
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Yup, and not a week ago I was downvoted for carefully suggesting that if a dozen European countries decide to stop using that vaccine pretty independently of each other, maybe they had some plausible reason to.
I guess slashdot's anti-antivaxxer antibodies can trigger an autoimmune reaction too.
Forget about it, Vintermann (Score:2)
it's Slashdot.
Re: I'm not getting it. (Score:4, Informative)
They stopped to assess what could have been unusual blood clotting events. The analysis said that they were presenting at the same rate you would expect in the unvaccinated population so they resumed use.
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They paused the AZ vaccine because they want to distract their population from the borked vaccine procurement program run by the EU, that has lead to a slow roll out of their vaccine procurement program.
If they delay any doses of anything to the UK which they are threatening then I hope de Pfeffel sticks it to them and prevents export of critical components to make the Pfizer vaccine to the EU.
Generally I am *very* pro EU and think de Pfeffel is an unmitigated falsifier of veracties, but frankly the EU's at
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This. The whole thing feels like a "UK bad, Brexit bad, payback's a B****" reply.
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They stopped to assess what could have been unusual blood clotting events. The analysis said that they were presenting at the same rate you would expect in the unvaccinated population so they resumed use.
You are oversimplifying what they stated. They are worried about the blood clotting in young people but not worried enough that it should stop or delay the vaccination program - and that this should be investigated more closely. The number of people that may be affected is simply too small to outweigh the benefits of the vaccination (for the groups currently getting the vaccination - see the UK health authorities statement). And you do realize that an important action has been taken: People are now advised
Re: I'm not getting it. (Score:5, Insightful)
So you got me curious about the nacrolepsy statement, so I went and looked for (and found) a more recent studies [bmj.com], that have the benefit of time and retrospection. The results:
* The correlation appears real - not between any antigen and narcolepsy, but between one specific adjuvant (chemical to induce an immune reaction) called AS03, and narcolepsy (AS03 is no longer used)
* The attributable risk factor as per the above study is 1 in 57500 and 52000
* The effect is not limited to populations in Scandinavia, as was initially speculated
* It is possible that the adjuvant doesn't actually cause narcolepsy, but rather, just accelerates the onset of latent narcolepsy; further studies are required.
* Another possible conflating factor that requires further study is the possibility that the clinical features of the vaccine associated cases prompted earlier referral
* In both of the two above cases, the increase in narcolepsy would be followed in the data by a subsequent decline.
But yes, I agree with your point. The point of a vaccine is to train the immune system to attack something. You want to make sure that even in rare cases it never attacks the wrong thing. Note that viruses themselves quite readily can train the immune system to attack the wrong thing, and they don't give a rat's arse whether it's rare or not. For a case where you have a severe pandemic (unlike with the H1N1 outbreak), the risk from severe effects with a vaccine will generally be numerous orders of magnitude lower than the risk of the disease itself. But that doesn't mean that all risk should be ignored.
As time goes on, we get better and better at this. We've gone from live attenuated diseases to attenuated to killed on and on, to the point where today we're focused on presenting just a single antigen to the immune system, in a "please attack this and nothing else" manner. But when you're giving doses to billions of people, if you want to maintain public confidence, you have to track and evaluate even rare possible side effects. I fully support professionals doing their job with the AstraZeneca vaccine.
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"And to put that in context a total of 13 people below the age of 50 have died with Covid-19 in Denmark (none below 30 years) of out a population of around 6 million."
You're comparing Apples to Oranges here...
The correct comparison would be:
"Only two people out of 6 million died because of possible/alleged AstraZeneca vaccine inflicted problems, while 13 died of COVID".
Or maybe:
"Two people out of 142,000 died of alleged AstraZeneca vaccine problems. Meanwhile, 2,407 of those proven infected died and 215,000
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That still ignores the sometimes severe long-term health issues COVID causes.
There is also quite a real possibility that the vaccine did not kill these people, but just accelerated something that was going to happen to them anyways a few weeks or months later.
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That still ignores the sometimes severe long-term health issues COVID causes.
There is also quite a real possibility that the vaccine did not kill these people, but just accelerated something that was going to happen to them anyways a few weeks or months later.
There are definitely potential long-term health issues from COVID. But there seems to be little doubt (according to the two research teams in Norway and Germany) that the vaccine did in fact kill those patients and I know that the two fatalities we had in Denmark were young women with no underlying health conditions. What is your documentation for the "quite a real possibility" that the vaccine did not kill them?
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You also have to factor in what treatment was given to the affected people. The condition appears in other contexts and treatment works.
Re: I'm not getting it. (Score:4, Informative)
The correct comparison would be:
"Only two people out of 6 million died because of possible/alleged AstraZeneca vaccine inflicted problems, while 13 died of COVID".
Or maybe:
"Two people out of 142,000 died of alleged AstraZeneca vaccine problems. Meanwhile, 2,407 of those proven infected died and 215,000 recovered (12,000 are still sick)."
But I don't actually have better numbers (the ones related to age mainly).
Anyway, lets not compare percentages related to different user bases
Well the actual numbers per age group from a Nature study by O'Driscoll et al can be seen here: https://videnskab.dk/files/art... [videnskab.dk]
Two out of 142,000 AS vaccinated (only first jab - only a small portion of those have gotten the second jab) seem to have died from the vaccine. And as far as I understand the risk is theoretically greater with the second jab. That is 0,0014% mortality due to blood clogs so far. This is comparable to the mortality from Covid-19 itself for roughly (order of magnitude) the age range 0-24 years old. It seems obvious to me that we should not vaccinate people with a vaccine which has roughly the same mortality (if this turns out to be the case - there are many unknowns here and two persons is a somewhat small sample;-) - but rather wait with those age groups (and some above) until we know more. We should of course also consider that there is a risk of other long term health effects from Covid-19.
Re: I'm not getting it. (Score:2)
If there's similar mortality, you'd want to vaccinate for herd immunity. If the vaccine mortality is higher, then you stop administering it.
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If there's similar mortality, you'd want to vaccinate for herd immunity. If the vaccine mortality is higher, then you stop administering it.
No, that is not true. If waiting a few months means that you can administer a safer alternative that option is preferable.
But fortunately I have learned something during this debate. It seems like potential bad side-effects of the AZ vaccine can to a large degree be mitigated by treatment if precursor symptoms to strokes occur. This changes the balance since it will most likely reduce the potential (since it is still uncertain) risk associated with the vaccine significantly.
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More like five days.
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More like five days.
In Denmark it was put on hold on the 12th of March: https://www.sst.dk/en/English/... [www.sst.dk] - so maybe not weeks yet but close.
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However, a couple of batches of AstraZeneca vaccine (the first ones with problems in EU) were pulled from vaccination centers, and for them the "kept in storage" duration certainly measured in weeks.
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Health authorities across Europe have stopped dispensing the Astra-Zenica vaccine for weeks now due to indications that people are suffering from strokes due to the vaccine.
The stupidest decision since the start of this pandemic.
There is absolutely no data to back this up. There isn't any significant increase in blood clots with those vaccinated using the AstraZeneca vaccine. But even if there was, the benefits far outweigh the risks.
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Health authorities across Europe have stopped dispensing the Astra-Zenica vaccine for weeks now due to indications that people are suffering from strokes due to the vaccine.
The stupidest decision since the start of this pandemic.
There is absolutely no data to back this up. There isn't any significant increase in blood clots with those vaccinated using the AstraZeneca vaccine. But even if there was, the benefits far outweigh the risks.
I don't think anyone argues that there is a big risk of getting killed by blood clots due to the Astra-Zenica vaccine. But what risk do you consider acceptable? Because as far as I know the US study had 20,000 participants taking the vaccine (and 10,000 who did not). But if the risk is say 0.001% then we would only expect 0.2 of these to die from a blood clot due to this. In other words the sample size is too small to detect it. If you think 0.001% is too small to consider then compare it to the fatality ra
Re: I'm not getting it. (Score:4, Informative)
There has been over 17 million people vaccinated using the AZ vaccine only in Europe. Even more worldwide. If 0.001% were dying, that would been at least 170 excess deaths.
So, I would say that it is perfectly sensible to pause the vaccination, possibly only for younger people, while this is being investigated.
The investigation is already done. The EMA made the statement. Vaccination resumed in most countries. There was no reason to stop it to begin with. The UK didn't stop and nothing wrong happened.
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The problem is they had 2 deaths from suspected blood clots so far, with most people only having one dose of the vaccine. Cumulative effects of two doses and long term effects were unknown.
So they paused and waited for the data. There are arguments either way as to if that was the right thing to do, but that's normally how these things work outside of a pandemic and changing them hastily is also probably a bad idea. What really needs to happen is a special pandemic strategy be formulated well in advance.
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We are in a pandemic and most countries didn't pause (and those who did mostly did for a couple days). Outside of a pandemic, most countries also wouldn't pause because there is no data to back this up. 2 deaths out of 17 million is nothing. More people die from other causes. But yes, it's even more stupid during a pandemic as the pause will cost lives.
Re: I'm not getting it. (Score:5, Interesting)
The comparison you are making, between vaccine deaths and non-vaccine deaths, while important, hides a much larger issue. Vaccinated individuals are far, far less likely to moderate-to-suffer severe COVID-19 disease with its high chance of long-term health effects. That observation is a strong argument to support wide distribution of vaccine, even under the counterfactual conditions of not affecting the overall death rate. Managing COVID-19 at the societal level is not just about managing death, it's also about preventing long-term disease and its impact both on the individual and society. We should be taking measures to mitigate individual suffering as well as the burdens on our health care system that come with preventable, widespread chronic illness. Looking only at deaths is like looking through a very narrow slit and missing the bigger picture.
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The comparison you are making, between vaccine deaths and non-vaccine deaths, while important, hides a much larger issue. Vaccinated individuals are far, far less likely to moderate-to-suffer severe COVID-19 disease with its high chance of long-term health effects. That observation is a strong argument to support wide distribution of vaccine, even under the counterfactual conditions of not affecting the overall death rate. Managing COVID-19 at the societal level is not just about managing death, it's also about preventing long-term disease and its impact both on the individual and society. We should be taking measures to mitigate individual suffering as well as the burdens on our health care system that come with preventable, widespread chronic illness. Looking only at deaths is like looking through a very narrow slit and missing the bigger picture.
I agree on the first part. But you should also realize that if a vaccine (and that is a big if) causes a significant number of deaths then it is probably also causing a lot of non-lethal damage. If you consider blood clots such as the Astra-Zenica vaccine is suspected of causing I think there is little doubt that a much larger proportion than the ones who die of it have suffered non-lethal damage ranging from brain injury to scars in the veins. And this does of course also need to be considered.
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Except the rate of blood clot incidents from the AZ vaccine are the rate of blood clot incidents you would expect if you asked the same number of people to come to a vaccination centre and just sit on a chair for 15 minutes. Ask enough people to come in and sit on a chair and some are going to die sitting on the chair. Others are going to die getting up from the chair. Are you saying sitting on a chair is dangerous and we should suspend use of all chairs?
I would also note that there have been blood clot inc
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Health authorities across Europe have stopped dispensing the Astra-Zenica vaccine for weeks now due to indications that people are suffering from strokes due to the vaccine.
False. Health authorities across Europe put in place a temporary deferral while the EMA investigated. That investigation was concluded and all EU countries who suspended the jabs are in the process of resuming them, explicitly except for your Denmark.
They also didn't stop dispensing for weeks. 2 countries fall under the category of "weeks" that's Denmark and Austria. The majority of the *few* EU countries who stopped did so for less than a week.
Denmark along with Norway and Sweden are the only countries who
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They also didn't stop dispensing for weeks. 2 countries fall under the category of "weeks" that's Denmark and Austria.
Uh, Austria never stopped vaccinating with AZ - we only stopped using the one batch with which the clotting incidents that had happened here occurred, but continued with others.
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Re: I'm not getting it. (Score:2)
Wow. You know that you just said, "because you don't like bananas then you are anti-fruit".
Extremism is idiotic. No matter which side you are on.
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If he's been vaccinated for other things, and decides he's not sure what exactly he is putting into his body is safe (not enough time to test), he has that right, and frankly, I think it's wise, if you're not in a high risk category. Just stay masked.
Since when is a good thing to verbally abuse someone (or odx, cancel etc.) into doing something that isn't harming you or anyone else? On this and other things you'd life to have in l
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Sure, everybody has the right to refuse a vaccine. Similarly, I have the right to call them assholes for doing so. I want the pandemic to be over, there's a clear path to getting there, and the people who are standing in the way of that are doing so because they are pussies, crybabies, or selfish fucking pricks.
So, I assume you took part in every trial? Take a few pricks for the team, or are you just a hypocritical prick?
We all want the pandemic to be over, but I sure as shit don't want to be courtrooms with vaccine victims and lawsuits as an additional side effect. The world will be crippled financially bad enough after this, and plenty of citizens are already suspect of corrupt amounts of greed in pharma and government, so a bad vaccine result based on rushed development and warp speed trials would be very bad
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Re: I'm not getting it. (Score:4, Insightful)
Where I go to resolve ethics question (Score:2)
If I want to resolve a medical ethics question, I ask a group of teen-aged (or at least persons who act that way) anonymous computer geeks.
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Honor his sacrifice by taking the vaccine. Protect the people around you by ending the pandemic.
I certainly will.
Right after you honor Common F. Sense, and stop labeling people "anti-vaxxer", "pussies" or "crazy" who even question THIS vaccine and the safety of it, as evidence starts to present itself.
You know what the most expensive statement in the known universe is? I fucking told you so.
And since you like to equate a warp-speed vaccine with fighting on a battlefield, tell me many lives would have been saved had we took the time to question the activities in the Gulf of Tonkin? Or the validity o
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What is "the COVID vaccine"?
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Look at the news of the past year: Fifteen days to flatten the curve... only until the current surge has ended... only until we have a vaccine... only when we have herd immunity... it never ends.
And people like you are the reason it's been extended every time.
You still want to delay herd immunity so you can complain for longer. You'd rather be outraged than cured.
Re:I'm not getting it. (Score:5, Informative)
Nearly everything in your post is factually incorrect. I don't have time to correct all of the mistakes, but I'll correct a few.
Stay home to prevent spread of the disease, but BLM can riot 450 times (actual number) and burn our city centers with impunity, causing a summer surge in Covid deaths.
Except that the surges weren't in cities that had masked, physically distanced protests. They were in areas where Trump had mass rallies with no masks and no physical distancing.
CDC guidelines prioritize younger blacks (rather than old people of all races, which would save the most lives) to promote racial equity. Their stated reason (!) is that it would cause more whites to die than blacks, which would tend to promote the equity.
Citation needed. To the best of my understanding the guidelines prioritize younger members of minorities that are disproportionately killed by the virus.
Fauci literally lied to us about masks,
Did not.
... the WHO says it didn't originate in China anyway!
They said nothing of the sort. The investigation to determine its origin is still ongoing.
The press is milking the pandemic for all its worth, trying to squeeze every last ounce of misery from the situation. Wear masks until the end of 2022, social distance to 6 feet, and you can't celebrate July 4th with family.
Maybe you haven't heard, but the virus is mutating in ways that dramatically reduce the effectiveness of the vaccine. Why? Because too many people got infected. Why? Because people didn't keep their distance and didn't wear masks. People who aren't willing to sacrifice a little bit of temporary comfort for the good of society are the main reason that the vaccine has a real chance of not ending the d**n pandemic.
With no information available, I have to fall back on common-sense knowledge about how viruses operate. The pandemic is over [worldometers.info] (viz: final graph on page). The R-value is now much less than 1
This is not the first time that R0 has been less than 1 in the United States. The first time was about a year ago, from early April through mid-June. Then a few states decided that the lockdown was too much trouble and started opening up, and what do you know, we got a second surge. Rinse, repeat. With every lessening of restrictions, the virus has surged. So you know what? We're not going to listen to idiots who have watched that happen twice in a row and are still saying, "Yeah, but this third time, it won't cause a surge." Screw that.
about 2/5 of the country has received at least 1 dose of the vaccine, an unknown proportion of the population has had it, and it'll be gone in a week or two regardless.
In what fantasy land does 60k cases per day turn to zero in two weeks?
I'm against it because I'm against the political manipulation. Censorship, cancel culture, doxxings and firings, insults and disinformation do not sway me to your point of view. Stop makine everyone live in fear - if you wanted everyone vaccinated, you should have been honest about it up front.
They were honest about it up front. You just weren't listening.
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Thank you for taking the time to debunk that wall of shit, no mod points at the moment so you'll have to make do with this comment.
Eventually, one of two things will happen (Score:4, Insightful)
Certainly some people have made some mistakes.
Also, a lot of people have said a lot of stuff, put a lot of spin on things.
If a person is a little hesitant and wants to wait another month or two to get vaccinated, I can certainly understand that. That's no problem - we don't have enough vaccine for everyone right now anyway, so if you don't get a dose somebody else will get that dose. It's all good.
In the long term, over the next couple of years, one of two things will probably happen eventually. You'll either vaccinated or you'll get covid. I hope you choose the vaccine. It's a hell of a lot safer than getting covid!
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Although the vaccine protects against multiple strains of COVID, getting COVID doesn't seem to provide the same protection. And the second infection is sometimes worse.
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[...] And the second infection is sometimes worse.
I'd like to know more about that because I think I got a very very mild case of Covid a year ago but that was before there were tests around.
More antivax nonsense from blogs (Score:2, Interesting)
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Stop posting thehill.com and NYT/WaPo blog crap. As Fauci said: all COVID vaccines are effective in stopping the disease. Get vaccinated. Take the first vaccine offered. Listen to the science, not random blogs on the Internet (and yes, thehill is just another blog).
Don't you dare equate valid questions on a vaccine's effectiveness with antivax crazies. AstraZeneca is fairly effective at preventing serious disease, but has a relatively low relative effectiveness against getting the disease when compared against many of the others. It is completely well within people's rights to question what vaccine they are getting and its effectiveness. There is absolutely no testing right now on the efficacy and implications of mixing vaccines. Zero testing. We don't know yet i
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Re: More antivax nonsense from blogs (Score:2)
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Right now, in Canada, the AZ vaccine is considered poor enough that while it is approved, we don't give it to seniors or anyone who is vulnerable. They all get one of the better ones, generally the best one we have which is Moderna's.
And France recommends the AZ vaccine only to people of age 55 and older. The reason is that the risk of blood clotting due to the vaccine (not yet scientifically settled) seems to be higher for younger people and the risk of dying or getting severely debilitated from Covid-19 is much, much smaller when you are young(er). This means that the risk-reward balance is much better for old people getting the AZ vaccine than it is for young people.
I would tend to agree with France on this. Use the safer alternative
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The reason is that the risk of blood clotting due to the vaccine (not yet scientifically settled)
I find it strange, there is 0 correlation between vaccine and blood clotting. I mean there is as much blood clotting in AZ vaccinated population than in non vaccinated population but still blood cotting is indeed an open question. This is the current observation. Also why UK didn't panic? They are using this for longer than anybody else and nothing happened there.Total waste of time.
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The reason is that the risk of blood clotting due to the vaccine (not yet scientifically settled)
I find it strange, there is 0 correlation between vaccine and blood clotting. I mean there is as much blood clotting in AZ vaccinated population than in non vaccinated population but still blood cotting is indeed an open question. This is the current observation. Also why UK didn't panic? They are using this for longer than anybody else and nothing happened there.Total waste of time.
Two independent research teams have identified the cause of the blood clotting (which had very unusual characteristics): https://www.ibtimes.com/scient... [ibtimes.com]
So there seems to be little to no doubt that it is indeed caused by the vaccine. The question is more if the prevalence and risk is high enough to offset the benefits of using the vaccine. And it seems like the risk can be mitigated by taking specific precautions if you get symptoms related to the blood clotting. But I guess we will know more about this in
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It's all politics. The Oxford/AZ vaccine is seen as a British vaccine. Therefore the UK will roll it out on large scale (and hasn't had a significant numbers of issues reported). The EU is hurting over BRexit and the fact that there vaccine campaign is way behind and are looking for things to blame. Sadly for them all they are doing is making their populations not trust *any* vaccine. In the US the Oxford/AZ vaccine is 10x cheaper that the alternatives so big pharma is campaigning against it.
The simpl
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In the US the Oxford/AZ vaccine is 10x cheaper that the alternatives so big pharma is campaigning against it.
Its not a biggie for the US, in any case. Allegedly, the USG has already prepaid for enough Pfizer, Moderna, and J&J vaccine to innoculate all 335 million Americans. The FDA should just approve AZ and giveaway some of the stockpile to Mexico, (and in secret to the news media) inoculate the people in border detention.
As for big pharma campaigning against AZ, Pfizer & Moderna can only sell their vaccine to 1st world nations; its that expensive to produce. J&J is only one shot, so I bet its as c
Re: More antivax nonsense from blogs (Score:2)
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We go now live to the rollout of the AstraZeneca vaccine... [licdn.com]
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It's good that you want to know the facts. You do know that the testing for the Moderna and Biontech vaccines was different to the AZ? The AZ testing was frankly the most honest - hence the results of the tests make AZ look like it's not as good.
You also need to do is look at the evidence from where the AZ vaccine has been rolled out (i.e. the UK) to notice that it's far outperforming the trial results (which is expected as the trial picked up asymptomatic cases but real life generally won't)
You also ne
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I fully support vaccinations. I will happily take a Moderna or Biontech vaccine. I haven't decided yet if I will actually refuse the AZ vaccine if offered to me,
Just remember (in the US) there is also a one shot Janssen (J&J) vaccine, which has come out. Its having problems ramping up production, but it should be available in large quantities by summer (which is only a couple months away). It has slightly better efficacy than AZ, with no gotchas. Also, summer is not as conducive to spreading coronavirus. With precautionary measures, waiting a couple of months for a better vaccine is a plausible strategy.
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"With precautionary measures, waiting a couple of months for a better vaccine is a plausible strategy."
For many, waiting a couple of months for _any_ vaccine is plausible.
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TheHill is just reporting a press release from www.nih.gov.
Take care that your opposition to antivaxxers is rooted in reasonable argumentation, not in culture war bullshit.
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If you are going to trust Science then you should be happy that officials are questioning each Vaccine for its data and efficacy.
If it gets approved, I want to be assured that it is Safe and Effective. And not just some guy who had Covid sneezed into a bottle of distilled water, then sells it as vial of Covid Vaccine.
From my understanding AZ didn't give us all the data that we wanted to see, so we are questioning them to get some more detail. So they just need to get us more data, when we have it. Then t
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AZ gave us the data up to a certain date. They did not give us all the data they had. It is unclear whether that was in adherence to a prior plan for compiling data (after all, stats do take time to run if you want to compile it pretty and have PhDs checking the work) or was done because late breaking data was exceptionally bad for them. So they requested all the data they had up to now to resolve that question. AZ said it would take a day or two to compile/format and they would get it right over.
I will
Efficacy not safety (Score:2)
The best way right know is to send all vaccine out of the US as a gesture of good faith. Sorry about approval w
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The US has started shipping its AZ vaccines to other countries.
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AZ are simply incompetent. (Score:2)
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The issues with the AZ studies aren't unusual. There were issues with the other studies as well. Notably the AZ study tested everyone on the study for Covid on a regular basis; on lots of other vaccine studies they only tested people with symptoms.
The real life figures from the AZ vaccine are very, very impressive (the test populations for all the vaccines were really too small to get good numbers). I believe the real life figures from the other vaccines are also equally as good.
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regiments
Typo - regimens.
Sorry, don't normally do that here, but this one threw me and might confuse others that aren't familiar with the correct term.
Please help me find this vaccine (Score:2)
Disinformation (Score:3, Interesting)
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Considering that the manufacturer is only able to deliver a quarter of the promised (and paid for in advance) amount anyway and has been caught lying not just once, one'd almost think that you are spreading conspiracy theories.
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Nonsense, AZ has delivered all of its promised volumes so far.
To which alleged lies are you referring? It's just that Macron has lied about it, German newspapers have lied about it and Ursula Fond of Lying has been wittily renamed because of her constant stream of bullshit on the matter.
The damage to the EU from this one simple contract is entirely self-inflicted and the constant attacks on a company delivering effective vaccines at cost are doing more to push countries to leave the EU than even Brexit.
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Ah, Cederic Pants On Fire strikes again, trying to be a cheap knockoff of his idol de Piffle Johnson.
The EU export ban is imminent and since AstraZenaca won't even be able to deliver enough to the UK from India the next quarter and since the UK never had any stock for the required second jab in the first place in order to appear being great at vaccinating people, that vaccination program will suddenly run into a wall in a 6 weeks or so.
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That is a super dangerous game for the EU to play. Critical components of the Pfizer vaccine (the bit that makes the lipid vesicles) are manufactured in the UK.
The EU where very late signing a contract for the AZ vaccine so basically the first batch of vaccine they got was the first batch they grew in the manufacturing plants in the EU. Guess what having the recipe is not enough it takes practice and yields where lower than anticipated. The contract the EU signed says "best effort" for that very reason. The
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Well, give a referendum to England and that's like to be true. They're a rogue state, serious and obvious corruption across the ruling party, the executive and the justice system.
It's quite possible that the UK Government will have to step in and appoint an independent judicial inquiry with criminal charges to follow; the current Scottish Government has demonstrated its utter inability to govern or control itself, let alone its region of the UK.
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Nonsense, AZ has delivered all of its promised volumes so far.
Why do you lie? Just like flat out lie? They have not met the delivery schedule for a single delivery period to date. Are you being paid by them, or are you just really that fucking dumb?
I mean they themselves are telling the EU they'll miss the second quarter deliveries https://www.dw.com/en/coronavi... [dw.com]
They didn't deliver in Ireland 2 weeks ago https://www.thejournal.ie/vacc... [thejournal.ie]
They failed miserably to deliver to the UK last year https://www.ft.com/content/6cc... [ft.com]
They have actively reduced the target for the
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Sorry, I was talking only of AZ's commitments to the EU.
The ones that said 'best efforts', and that they've brought people from the UK over to Holland to try and fix the production line there.
Obviously AZ haven't delivered everything to everyone. For instance, they failed to deliver 250,000 vaccines to Australia. Because Italy supported by the EU blocked them.
Now the EU want to prevent AZ meeting contractual obligations again, in a move guaranteed to have diplomatic repercussions. Meanwhile people in Irelan
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Maybe, although the AZ vaccine is different to the others so it's not all that surprising that one type is more effective than the others.
The AZ vaccine is more "traditional", in that it it relies on cells to do the transcription to mRNA. The BioNTech vaccine skips that step and actually contains the mRNA molecule. I'm not a biologist but as an engineer removing one step that relies on the patient's body working properly seems like it would increase reliability. Maybe someone who knows more can comment.
Of c
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You'd almost think it was a coordinated disinformation campaign
There was. https://www.wsj.com/articles/r... [wsj.com] Fortunatley most health agencies took the correct approach:
1. Briefly suspend vaccine rollouts
2. Investigate
3. Quickly resume after reassuring the people that what they heard was false. (Norway, Sweden, and Denmark are the holdouts, everyone else has resumed)
This was a preferable course of action than simply saying "No they are wrong, trust me we're from the government!" because we all know how well Antivaxxers receive that.
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The error bars on these vaccine studies are wide, which isn't surprising because the goal wasn't narrow error bars. The goal was proving efficacy.
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In fact we know Trump was hiding the truth, describing how bad it was while stating publicly that it was no big deal.
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There is nothing China did that Trump wouldn't have done had he possessed the power.
If Trump had the power of China he would have aggressively locked down America?
Are you hearing yourself?
He would close the borders and keep everyone in their homes because of a 'flu' that was about to go away all by itself.
Remember when Trump wanted Churches full for Easter 2020?
This is nothing like what China did...in fact it's the opposite of that.
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The Chinese gov't at first ignored, downplayed, and hide information about the problem. Only when it became painfully obvious it was something that could not be contained did they lock down everything.
Trump did the first part and if he had the power to restrict information and ignore the problem he would have done so. When he wanted churches full by Easter was Trump full-on ignoring and deny the facts... just like the Chinese did at first.
How about Read Normally (Score:5, Informative)
What you heard:
What it means:
The vaccine was effective in preventing symptoms at 79%. The same results held across ethnic and age groups and over-65 was 80% effective. (That 1% delta is obv. noise.) However, although preventing symptoms is how vaccine efficacy is measured, AZ prevented "severe or critical disease and hospitalisation" in 100% of patients, and that should be a more important number.
I'm just explaining your misinterpretation and have not looked up this quote in the articles.
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What I and I'm sure many others would like to know is how effective it is at preventing Long COVID symptoms. Not being hospitalized is great but I don't want to have chronic lung problems, even if they are not severe enough to merit hospitalization.
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I agree - I'm more frightened of long COVID than immediate death (based on the likelihood of each). I assume the mRNA vaccines are better in that vein, but it's unclear.
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it is 100% effective in 80% of people over 65.
Panther: 60% of the time it works EVERY time.
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The UK study of AZ had everyone tested on a weekly basis (which BTW is why it's efficacy was lower because asymptomatic cases were picked up)
In the UK right all school children are being tested twice a week so testing a small test population (only 10#s thousands) is trivial
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Re:The Elephant in the corner of the room (Score:4, Interesting)
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Yes, I messed up my blockquotes. They delayed because there might be a risk and then started administering again because there wasn't (or it wasn't excessive.)
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Why did EMA approve AZ and why it has kept it approved after the recent blood clotting issues.
Because the vaccine prevents hospitalisation and mostly prevents symptoms, and has minimal side-effects well within acceptable boundaries for a vaccine (and indeed, at a comparable or better level to other covid vaccines).
Given the tremendous pressure on the EMA to say nasty things about the AZ vaccine by the EU and the leaders of its regions, it's a credit to the EMA that they retained professional integrity.
In the US there's a different issue: The AZ vaccine will be distributed at cost, and even once that
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They're worried revenue and profit.
No, they are not. Allegedly, the US has already prepaid enough doses of Pfizer, Moderna, and J&J for every person in the US. There's no more money for Pfizer or Moderna to make in the US. Also, AZ is not a significant market competitor for Pfizer or Moderna. The latter is so significantly expensive, it can only be sold to 1st world countries. Its more likely the disinformation on AZ is being spread by the Russians (and possibly Chinese), because their less effective vaccines are in competition with
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Why did EMA approve AZ and why it has kept it approved after the recent blood clotting issues.
What was the level of political (or is it only political) pressure for them to ignore all of that.
Its because they didn't ignore the blood clotting issues, and you are an imbecile that can type.
Medical personnel noticed patients with blood clots, then noticed they were vaccinated with AZ. About 37 cases of blood clots (pulmonary embolism and deep vein thrombosis), among the 17 million vaccinated. Guess what? In the EU, the annual incidence rates for PE range from 39–115 per 100 000 population; for DVT, incidence rates range from 53–162 per 100 000 population (for 2019). The 37 cases fo
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You have to pay for your vaccine? You get to choose?
I thought the idea was that the authorities decide who get which vaccine, taking into account availability and doctor recommendations. And that vaccination is free. So if only AstraZeneca is available for you, then it is AstraZeneca or nothing. You can choose to wait but no amount of honest money will change the way you get vaccinated.