[underseacables]

At the moment this is right next to “ Norwegian experts say AstraZeneca vaccine is behind the deadly blood clots” on the front page. I think it’s up to each nation to decide for itself if a vaccine is going to work or not, but I pitty the ones they go first and suffer from overzealous cheerleading of a particular vaccines efficacy.

[willmw101]

>but I pity the ones they go first and suffer from overzealous cheerleading of a particular vaccines efficacy

Given the incident rate and the growing COVID swells in a few european countries (France and Italy especially), the slow vaccination progress, not helped by hesitance over AZ and surprising prevalence of vaccine hesitancy in general, you could just as well argue the opposite. Nations that are overcautious may lose far, far, far, far more lives thanks to covid infections than an extremely rare handful of blood clots which haven't even been tied causally to the vaccine yet. The risk reward narrative on this topic has been really bizarre so far.

[MaxBarraclough]

Right. The WHO listed 'vaccine hesitancy' as one of the top global health threats, and that was in mid 2019, before the pandemic. [0] On the other hand, vaccine side-effects have never been a major health threat.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccine_hesitancy

[frongpik]

Delayed side effects is a thing, especially due to interaction with other meds. Huge swaths of americans have hypertension and diabetes and take meds regularly.

[hef19898]

I am no expert at all, or from a medical field. But my understanding is, that long term effects of vaccines are effects that last for a long time, and not effects that tale a long time to manifest.

What we see bow is the rare side effects, like blood clots, in the 30 in 5 million range. These effects are close to impossible to discover in clinical trials, because they are too rare. Again, nothing really unusual.

Once the body developed anti bodies and general resistance, the vaccine doesn't have any effects anymore anyway. So either side effects, also in conjunction with other meds, manifest right after vaccination or they don't at all.

[hayd]

> What we see bow is the rare side effects

Causation hasn't been proved and cannot be assumed.

It makes little sense to worry about this for AZ, it's a very standard viral vector vaccine.

The brand new mRNA family of vaccines however are untested in the long-term...

[kypro]

I think this vaccine and vaccines in general are overwhelmingly safe, but has this not been a slightly different situation?

Admittedly, I don't know much about vaccine safety, but isn't it unusual to have a vaccine rolled out to millions of otherwise healthy people without any long-term studies into its safety? I understand we create new flu vaccines yearly, but my understanding is that's a slight variant of previous flu vaccines which have been proven to be safe over long periods of time – and it's only rolled out to vulnerable people who want it, not everyone under threat of not being able to travel, etc.

I think we probably should have some level of caution when taking any new drug or vaccine – especially one that is going to be rolled out to millions of people. How many times would we need to run this experiment before a 'safe' vaccine does actually cause blood clots or some similar side effect? Or are side effects from vaccines basically impossible? (I genuinely don't know).

For some context, I'm saying this as someone who now suffers from permanent side effects after taking a medication that was once deemed safe and without risk of permanent side effects so unfortunately its hard for me not to be a little hesitant.

[tchalla]

> Nations that are overcautious may lose far, far, far, far more lives thanks to covid infections than an extremely rare handful of blood clots which haven't even been tied concretely to the vaccine yet. The risk reward analysis on this topic has been really bizarre so far.

You seem to suggest risk-reward analysis be viewed at by the number of deaths.

Germany had to suspend vaccination (temporarily) due to legal reasons and risk of a lawsuit to the state.

[willmw101]

Actually talking about the risk reward analysis in the media and general commentary reaction to the AZ vaccine rather than by nations. Think it's perfectly reasonable for nations to conduct safety checks and research on new vaccines

[jkingsbery]

If it is up to each nation, that's too bad. We should be treating adults as adults, telling them "here's the information: about 30 people had bloodclots out of 5,000,000 having received the vaccine (source: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-56397592). We're not sure if any of those 30 are linked to the vaccine. If those risks seem acceptable to you, here's the vaccine."

[llampx]

Well I think the other side of the calculation is a probability that you may be able to get vaccinated with the Biontech vaccine if you wait.

[jkingsbery]

I'm in the US (New Jersey specifically, which has done terribly with the roll out), so maybe it's different in the EU, but at least here we don't have an over-abundance of vaccine doses. Eliminating one of the vaccines currently limits vaccine supply in most places.

[SpicyLemonZest]

But it's not really up to each nation, because the EU is centrally managing the supply. If individual countries aren't willing to endorse the EMA's judgment here, it's likely they'll end up wedged in a state where they just can't get many vaccinations done over the next few months.