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It's a good thing if people try to get informed. The pandemic and its handling by the authorities has unfortunately shown that "the authorities" don't always make the right choices and don't always provide the right data.

If the vaccines are safe, it should be easy for the authorities to provide data that shows they are safe.

Of course trusting the authorities is a valid life choice, to each their own.

m-p-3 1911 days ago

> If the vaccines are safe, it should be easy for the authorities to provide data that shows they are safe.

A portion of that crowd refuse to acknowledge their safety without more data about their possible long term side-effects, which inevitably takes time that we don't really have.

Then that portion of the crowd have to make their own decisions. As I said, uncertainty should also be communicated. How exactly do the authorities handle the issue of long term side effects? Presumably they base their decision on some kind of reasoning?

> It's a good thing if people try to get informed.

Do they get informed though? It seems they mostly get articles written by journalists who don't really understand the issue either, sprinkled with a few quotes from professionals that often get taken out of context.

I don't think we're turning the population into experts. They're not able to judge the effectiveness, risk and side-effects of any measure. I'm not sure "a little bit of knowledge, some fear and a lot of opinion" is a benefit.

It is the responsibility of the authorities to provide appropriate information. If they fail to do that - maybe something is wrong with the authorities. I don't think they can simply blame "journalists". In my European country, for example, there is even a "public TV" system that gets funding of several billion dollars every year. If they can not find some good journalists for that money, what can they even be trusted with?

I mean they DO have the information, right? We assume they are making "informed" decisions, so the information should be available (including uncertainty, which would also be information - the degree of uncertainty, that is).

> It is the responsibility of the authorities to provide appropriate information.

What good is information without knowledge? What can a random citizen do with a medical study but shrug and say "I guess?"

> If they can not find some good journalists for that money, what can they even be trusted with?

Journalists have increasingly transitioned from understanding themselves as a public watchdog to explaining government policies.

But even if they hadn't, journalists are fundamentally "citizens with typewriters", they are generally not experts on the topics they cover, and I'm sure you've noticed that on topics you know a lot about. Even if you agree with their general description, they'll get a lot of details wrong, and somebody who doesn't know the topic at all won't gain a lot by reading an article written by someone who also doesn't really know the topic. It's like playing Chinese Whispers, where you whisper something into another player's ear, they repeat it to the next person and so on until something totally different makes it back to you.

I sure hope they have some information, but I don't think that politicians are making informed decisions. I believe, they delegate the decision to (who they believe to be the best) experts. It's unreasonable to expect career politicians to e.g. understand how exactly viral infections are spreading, how that will affect some part of the population during some specific seasonal weather that we're expecting with such and such probability etc. What they can do is ask their favorite topic expert who hopefully understands all that and tells them to push this button or that one.

But beyond giving that expert room in a news paper to say what they told the politician, what can be done? Surely they can't just compress 6 years of intense studying of the topic at hand into an article and expect citizens to be "up to speed" and able to make informed decisions?

"What good is information without knowledge? What can a random citizen do with a medical study but shrug and say "I guess?"

A lot of people have knowledge, they know maths, they may be doctors, they may know doctors. And they can learn the same way doctors or experts learn. What exactly enables experts to understand a thing, and not "random people"?`

Even if you are not a doctor, you can check a study to see if basic aspects check out. For example I saw a study promoting mask use, but it was based on an experiment with hamsters. So personally I would say that is interesting, but not quite enough to force billions of people to wear masks.

You can check if they do randomized trials and so on. You don't need to be an expert to do that. Or you can check who wrote the study (like "Wuhan lab for genetic experiments on viral diseases" that finds it certainly, under no circumstances, originated in a lab), lots of things you can do without being an expert.

Do you trust experts? There is actually research that shows you shouldn't, in general (not just for Covid).

> What exactly enables experts to understand a thing, and not "random people"?

Mastery of the domain. Yes, any random person (of sufficient intellect) can become an expert in any topic for all intents and purposes. But it takes a lot of time and effort that they'll have to devote to it. I don't think it's reasonably to expect that everyone will be an expert in everything, and it definitely isn't efficient.

With lots of things, you can do general plausibility checks, but you'll miss essentially all of the non-trivial issues if you're not experienced with the methodologies and tools. It's like asking somebody with no programming experience to judge the merits of some architectural choice. They won't be able to make an informed decision and you can't present a complete picture of the intricacies and implications in a 30 minute talk.

From my experience, your average general physician can't tell you a lot about viral infections beyond what you can learn in 30 minutes on Wikipedia. And that's miles away from being able to actually judge vaccines, or the usefulness of masks. What they typically do is rely on experts that write guidelines and recommendations.

m-p-3 1911 days ago

I'm glad we got vaccines out so quickly, but I can see why some people ask about their safety as it never happened so quickly in the past and mRNA at such a large scale is unheard of.

Unfortunately, the anti-vax crowd will use any means necessary to discredit vaccines, and scepticism is part of their toolkit.

xiphias2 1911 days ago

It's not just skeptism: I didn't like the ,,1 and half dose'' and other bullshit that AstraZeneca did in their Phase 3 to not have proper testing on old people. There is a reason why the data was not good enough for the FDA to approve it, it seemed like the AstraZeneca Phase 3 testing was rushed and on a level that would be unacceptable if there wasn't a pandemic.

Even in their announcements AstraZeneca seems like trying to hide the problems instead of giving a balanced view of the (probably small) risks.

kcartlidge 1911 days ago

> it seemed like the AstraZeneca Phase 3 testing was rushed and on a level that would be unacceptable if there wasn't a pandemic

I didn't like the lack of data on the older populations, either, and totally get why various regulators decided they wanted more such before going forward with it (given that the AZ one is based on known vaccine tech I'd have trusted it anyway, but that's a personal choice).

However the lack of data in the older population was not due to rushing (though it was rushed, obviously). They started pretty early on before much was known about the medical aspects of Covid-19 and took the deliberate decision not to risk people with age-reduced immune systems at the start.

Yes, that wasn't helpful, but you could also argue it was pretty good ethically and morally so it's hard really to fault them for it.

xiphias2 1911 days ago

That's totally fine, but they could have finished the Phase-3 testing for old people, or at least offer alternative vaccines if the measured immune reaction is too small.

Right now my parents are opting waiting 1-2 months more for the Pfizer/Moderna vaccines, because after they decide on a vaccine, even if the antigen count in their blood is small, it doesn't give them the right for another vaccine (in UAE the government provides a 3rd dose of Sinopharm for people with small immune response).

maxerickson 1911 days ago

The FDA requires their own trials, there was no after the fact decision to not use the other data, they just never considered it.

It's likely they'll issue an EUA for the AstraZeneca vaccine based on the US trial results in a couple weeks here.

Doctors in the EU are obliged to educate the patient on the risks and benefits of vaccines. It's not unheard of that they don't, but it is our right as patients to know the basic information about any vaccine we are being administered. Sometimes there are multiple options which can be evaluated.

Don't preach about how we should accept anything that's thrown our way. Many of us are in a tough situation so we'll accept the crappy AZ, but if such a vaccine were released on the market and had to compete with the likes of Pfizer nobody would pick it.

thu2111 1911 days ago

This is horrible. There is no difference between the AZ vaccine and Pfizer. One is not "crappy" - you're literally posting this on a thread that says it's safe and effective in multiple studies.

The EU is becoming a disaster zone of vaccine propaganda. I would never have imagined that national governments would become the primary source of anti-vax nonsense. Make no mistake about it - European politicians have been attacking the AZ vaccine because it originates from the UK and they are ideologically blinded by hatred of Brexit. They've been systematically lying about this particular vaccine and no other one right from the start.

They claimed it didn't work: false, based on a "misreading" of a German report. They claimed the UK had blocked export of it: false. They claimed AZ was in contract violation: false. They claimed it was dangerous: false.

Every time one lie is dispelled, another immediately emerges to take its place. And it's coming from people like Merkel and Macron. Unreal.

https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/brexit-blinds-britain-to-...

dtf 1911 days ago

> European politicians have been attacking the AZ vaccine because it originates from the UK and they are ideologically blinded by hatred of Brexit.

There was a good piece in the Irish Times this weekend if you fancy a less UK-centric view on this. The view you've expressed above seems to be the only one I read among the British press/commentariat. Perhaps it is the UK that is blinded?

"The Oxford/AstraZeneca team managed an extraordinary feat – producing a safe and effective vaccine against a novel coronavirus within a few months. Yet time and again, AstraZeneca has undermined its own efforts with communication blunders, a lack of transparency and a consistent record of overestimating its own capacity to deliver."

thu2111 1911 days ago

Well, we know what the EU press are claiming, but that quoted paragraph isn't true is it? How has AZ undermined its own efforts? Where are the communication problems or lack of transparency? They have been doing pretty clear press releases where they address whatever the latest nonsense de jour is. For example, their response to the claims the vaccine was dangerous was very clear and unambiguous. The confusion here has been generated exclusively by one side.

As for the contract, the Commission released that contract specifically redacted to try and imply it said things it didn't, but they redacted it wrongly. Note that the EU committed itself to secrecy about their agreements as part of negotiating a lower price than other countries are paying. Then a Belgian minister violated that agreement too by publishing the prices. So it's hard to criticise AZ for lack of transparency when no company publishes customer contracts proactively and the EU itself has tried to hide the details of its own agreement as part of misleading the public. We know that the Commission was lying about things partly because they keep accidentally releasing information they intended to be kept secret.

The fact is, the EU has been taking measures and making statements here that are UK specific. When it declared it would require vaccine export licenses it exempted every neighbouring state, except the UK. When it suspended the Northern Ireland protocol over vaccines, it was a UK specific move. Now they are threatening to seize factories and block exports of already paid for vaccines, to the UK. If there's some explanation for this that isn't political it's not obvious what it is, because AZ has done nothing wrong, and nor has the UK.

> The view you've expressed above seems to be the only one I read among the British press/commentariat.

I'm from Germany, and that has been pretty much my impression as well. Merkel gave vaccine orders as a PR gift to von der Leyen/EU, they messed up badly. While that came out piece by piece, surprise surprise, in came the "mistakes".

I'm sure it's not a large conspiracy, at some point there's enough FUD spread everywhere that everyone's threshold for "pause the campaign" is low enough, "just to be safe", but some parts of it very much did look like revenge.

Your whole argument is undermined by the massive orders the EU put for this vaccine and how it was and is fighting to get those orders delivered in spite of all the screw-ups by AZ. Seriously, how do you come up with these conspiracy theories about Brexit hatred and then write with a straight face about "propaganda"?

thu2111 1911 days ago

What screwups by AZ? There haven't been any, they've been doing the same things as other pharma firms, who have all always said that manufacturing is unpredictable and they'll try to make it all as quickly as possible but can't offer hard guarantees. The idea they're incompetent is more media propaganda - exactly the kind of thing that's causing people to stop taking it in EU states. Probably the Commission should try and fix the large stockpiles going unused due to this type of propaganda before they worry about export bans.

As for Brexit, see my other comment. A lot of the actions the EU has taken have been entirely UK specific. For instance the requirement for export licenses was waived for every non-EU state neighbouring the EU, except the UK.

detaro 1911 days ago

The meme of "not enough people want to take AZ" needs to die. It's not backed by any reality on the ground, if you have the stuff its not difficult to find people to take it.

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/millions-oxford-astrazeneca-unused...

thu2111 1910 days ago

Where did you get that idea? This is not a meme, it's repeats of widely available data and news reports. As of the 17th March nearly half of all delivered vaccines had not been used:

Germany alone was sitting on over 1 million. The article has a graph showing the backlog in each country. I am very skeptical they have managed to clear this in only 6 days given that around half the European population now incorrectly believes this vaccine is dangerous or useless.

blub 1910 days ago

Missing every delivery target counts for you as success? Your business partners/managers will likely disagree.

kcartlidge 1911 days ago

> Many of us are in a tough situation so we'll accept the crappy AZ

The AZ is pretty much equal (at least) in effectiveness to the other vaccines. This is agreed by the UK regulators (and until Brexit the UK were considered expert enough to run the EU one), the EU regulators, the German regulators, etc, and now the US regulators (not yet approved, I know, but their opinion is now released). How many of these world-reknowned establishments need to say the same thing before you get it?

By saying "crappy AZ" your choice of words is a major part of the problem. You are part of the problem.

As for "competing with the likes of Pfizer", I have the greatest respect for the science behind Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, and all the others - but with equal performance, at normal temperatures, at a fraction of the cost of the others, and with sub-licensed manufacturing around the world, the AZ vaccine is currently aiming to be the one that 90% of the global population will be relying on.

The "crappy" Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine is by a long way the world's best hope (in medical terms). It's very gracious of you to "accept the crappy AZ" (talk about ungrateful) - but if you're willing to take the benefit the least you could do is stop undermining it by posting rubbish on a thread discussing the very story that contradicts you.

In an alternative universe, where we only had AZ maybe it would be considered awesome, but in our dimension, we have vaccines which offer better protection and fewer side-effects than AZ.

AZ's always been clouded in controversy from the botched trials, to the reduced effectiveness against variants up to the significant discomfort after vaccination in a non-negligible amount of people. And then there was the rare form of thrombosis, which is not 100% elucidated yet.

Why would anyone with a choice want AZ when there's Pfizer? And this is exactly what was happening all over Europe, but also in the US and Israel - people choose Pfizer in spite of the costs and complicated distribution.

It's particularly telling that the US prefers keeping tens of millions of doses of the super-awesome AZ on ice and continues with Pfizer.

kcartlidge 1908 days ago

Better protection just isn't true. The figures are not only within a few percent in most studies, but in some studies AZ is ahead. This is all about stats, and those will vary depending upon the sample size and population.

Side-effects? Fair enough. But so what? Most medication has side effects. Incidentally the US CDC says that with the Pfizer one "77.4% reported at least one systemic reaction" and "fatigue, headache and new or worsened muscle pain were most common". This isn't to say AZ may not have higher incidence, but to point out that it doesn't matter which you choose there may still be side-effects, and anecdotes about AZ are faster to spread due to the unwarranted distrust.

The controversy AZ has been clouded in has mostly been politically motivated, AZ miscommunications, natural issues with vaccine yields, or plain wrong. Apart from the rare blood issue, most of it has been either not genuine or irrelevant. Even for the blood issue there are more regulators, governments, and doctors who say it is not a statistical issue than there are who do. It's all about the optics though.

People should not be turning down an AZ vaccine to wait potentially months for a different vaccine (which will still have it's own side effects even if lower). A day or two of side effects vs an extra few months protection is a no-brainer.

People choose Pfizer (which I am not knocking; I'd gladly have it if offered) based on what they read - and the press war is being won by AZ detractors despite the number of times they are wrong (eg Macron saying quasi-inneffective for older people and then France only wanting to use it for older people, or the UK choosing to wait longer than a couple of weeks between doses, being called terrible and irresponsible, but now even the WHO says that improves protection).

As for the US keeping doses on ice, that's not "particularly telling" at all. It isn't approved for use there yet. And they aren't in a hurry as they have enough of the other vaccines. Plus, they are 'loaning' millions of AZ vaccine doses to Mexico and Canada which they wouldn't do unless they thought it was pretty safe (as their FDC has already publicly said it is).

Pfizer seems to be a great vaccine. But so is AstraZeneca and continual unwarranted attacks risks destroying trust in a vaccine (AZ) which is being produced at cost in over a dozen countries and is intended to form up to 90% of the world's protection.

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To risk being overly melodramatic, unlike their counterparts (and admittedly at the prompting of the UK government and Oxford University) AstraZeneca producing billions of doses (the plan) at cost in multiple countries using local production is actually the rare example of a drug company almost literally saving the world without profiteering whilst they do it. They should be applauded, not continually attacked.

In the same way (and I don't like saying this as I believe in the EU and voted remain in the British referendum) the EU attacks the UK for not sharing, when the British government co-funded vaccine development at a British university and ensured a British/Swedish partner providing at-cost production for the world, whilst the EU haggled about prices.

rutthenut 1911 days ago

> so we'll accept the crappy AZ

It's the use of crappy sort of phrases like this that lead to fear, uncertainty and doubt.

No, it's the botched trials, reports about reduced effectiveness from politicians and specialists and reports about side-effects.