Coronavirus: COVID-19

[red assassin]

But the fact is they're not including a warning about the potential for clotting with the distribution of their medication

including the update of the product information

In the meantime, the agency has added a warning to the vaccine’s drug leaflet for the European Union. (...) Similar warnings have been issued in Canada and Australia.

Repeating something with no source doesn't make it true. Where medical regulators have recommended the inclusion of warnings, warnings have been included. (Note that this is not AZ's decision in isolation, and as discussed elsewhere inclusion of spurious warnings may put people off receiving their vaccines, so some national regulators do not appear to have made this recommendation.) This is trivial to verify by looking up the information sheets in question. If you believe something different has happened, source up.

+1 to Mailo's risk analysis.

[BaronVerde]

Yep, +1. I learned what a 'micromort' is

I am looking forward to how and if vaccine will be able to keep the pace with mutation rate. That's all so exciting (Boso Ta) ! Fascinating ! ('^^' Spock)

And I want my shot

[Alan Phipps]

I think I understand some of Vertigo 7's concerns. He is concerned, not for himself, but for his daughter who may suffer a rare condition that makes her more likely to suffer blood clots in certain circumstances. Of course he will wish to be certain about what the circumstances and triggers are and whether the AZ vaccine could be a factor. Whether that is capable of being known with any certainty in the near future is itself uncertain.

If there is such valid medical and psychological concern then I am sure that the AZ vaccinations could proceed quite normally for the good of the general populace, while those rare at-risk cases could be considered by the medical authorities and, if necessary, a different vaccine allocated even if just for peace of mind.

It is not these few special cases that threaten the effectiveness of the vaccination programme, it is more the unnecessary vaccination resistance that uninformed speculation and misunderstanding can generate in the wider population. Dealing with rare-case issues rationally and discretely on a case-by-case basis should hopefully make the wider issues go away.

If I have misunderstood and/or misrepresented Vertigo 7's situation, then I apologise in advance.

[BaronVerde]

Demanding 100% safety is unrealistic, and any hesitation gives the virus an evolutionary edge. If you can get a shot, take it, do not wait. Do not expose your children, family members and yourself to a potentially lethal infection. I mean, that should be common sense, right ?

I admit the situation is suboptimal and there's little choice, but I rather blame the politician scum (oooh, global generalization from my side ) for messing that one up. 'Looking forward to how this turns out'

[Vertigo 7]

@Alan - No, that's close enough to my concerns. There's what, 3 other vaccinations out there, with 2 of them having a higher efficacy? AZ is an unnecessary risk until it can be proven otherwise.

@Malio - yeah, you don't know what you're talking about. Maybe if my kids were going around licking door knobs and acting like idiots, sure, they would have a higher risk for contracting COVID. But as I said, we're doing everything necessary to protect ourselves and will continue to act accordingly until such time as we are outside of this crisis situation. Even once my household is vaccinated, we're not going to treat that as a green light to go on like nothing happened.

Here's the thing, we don't need to go to a restaurant to eat. We have food at home and can order pretty much anything. My kids don't need to be in a class room to learn. They've been doing classes online for the last year, just about, and they're doing just fine with that. I've been working from home for the last 6 years, and that's not going to change even after this is over. We've adjusted to how things are now and we'll keep it up as long as is necessary to get through this. I could probably count on two hands the number of people we've had direct physical contact with in the last year, including doctors and my parents after we had q-tips shoved into our brains.

And honestly, it's not like I'm going to listen to some random dude on the internet tell me how I should deal with my daughter regardless of how you try to quantify risks. Maybe it's irrational, maybe it isn't, but she's worth a metric **** load more to me than your opinion is.

[BaronVerde]

There are many more vaccines and we are leaving reason behind with a slightly aggressive tone.

I am not trying to convince anybody in particular, I know it is beyond my ability, but generally working against misinformation.

My eldest is a medical doctor and she says - just like many if not all other medicine men and women you find all over the place - "take the AstraZeneca vaccine".

It is tested and safe.

[Vertigo 7]

Well, you do what you want to do with your kids, I'll do what I want to do with mine. I'm sure you'll be okay if I opt not to listen to unsolicited advice on a gaming forum about the health and wellbeing of my child. I don't tell you or anyone else how to care for your kids, I'll ask you to pay me the same courtesy.

[Alan Phipps]

... and now we should leave that particular personal aspect of the discussion there, thanks.

[mr.WHO]

My eldest is a medical doctor and she says - just like many if not all other medicine men and women you find all over the place - "take the AstraZeneca vaccine".

It is tested and safe.

My 65 years old Mother drew AZ at her vacination about a week ago, but She joke that they injected her with placebo, because She had zero after-effects.
I also know several person (young to mid age) who had mild, flu-like after-effect of AZ, but they are fine too.

At this point, backed by statistics, it's more likely you get hurt by food poisoning from any item at your grocery store, than by AZ.

I think there is a high chance there is very peculiar health condition that might be deadly when combined with AZ, but then it's probably true to basically anything inject to your body.
The media focus on AZ is due to corporate wars as there is more and more vacines entering the market.
Not to mention Russian and China wanting to offer their to European market as well.
The cake is getting smaller and there are more and more hungry mouths at the table.

[BaronVerde]

Bloody politics. And even if AZ is confirmed as the source of the clotting, it is not that there's a lightning from the sky killing the vaccinated on the spot. For those few who may have won the clottery, it has been said that if from 4 days after the vaccination bruises appear and they feel a headache they shall seek medical aid. Treatment of the clotting is easy and standard.

Have lost the links, but Greifswald and Oslo Universities had press infos handed out.

[Vertigo 7]

For those few who may have won the clottery

Oh, a joke about dead people. Classy...

Did you invest in AZ? What's so wrong with choosing to take another vaccine that doesn't have the associated risk and has a higher efficacy? Pfizer and Moderna have both not had any reports of fatalities. Why shouldn't I opt for one of those over AZ?

[CBJ]

If you have a choice of vaccine where you are then by all means make your own choice. Most people do not have that choice, and it's important that they are not put off by misinformation.

Meanwhile, Alan made it very clear that the personal stuff was to stop. You don't get to accuse people of being a shill just because you don't like what they have to say.

[BrasatoAlBarolo]

I think it's the doctor choosing what vaccine fits better your medical situation (and also based on the vaccines in stock at the moment). If people could make a choice, it would be a uninformed one, thus generally a bad one.

[BaronVerde]

Where I live (Spain, but am an expat), we're not entitled to choose. We get the one that's available and admitted for public application (EMA, I think, eventually national agencies). As soon as it's "our" turn, but dates are unclear for the general public, the mass of people I am a number in. They're still doing it on the (even) elder, politicians, officials, public celebrities and so on.

@Vertigo7, I meant future cases, and just tried to be funny (failed), I didn't mean to provoke you, sorry if you feel like, you have my respect since you came up with the idea of the bering landbridge . But to answer your question: any hesitation to take the vaccine that's available raises the chance for the virus to spread and further evolve. This is bad in so far as it is unclear if vaccine development can keep the pace with virus evolution. The more people get immunized asap, the smaller the chances for the virus. There are already Cassandra voices out there saying that we may have to live with it (and potentially others).

As we said in my youth: "Do it now, there may be a law against it tomorrow". The law here is biology.

Edit: sure, if I could choose ... but that will probably not be the case and I will be very happy to take the shot that's available, even if it has a Cyrillic or Mandarin name printed on it ...

[Vertigo 7]

@Vertigo7, I meant future cases, and just tried to be funny (failed), I didn't mean to provoke you, sorry if you feel like, you have my respect since you came up with the idea of the bering landbridge . But to answer your question: any hesitation to take the vaccine that's available raises the chance for the virus to spread and further evolve. This is bad in so far as it is unclear if vaccine development can keep the pace with virus evolution. The more people get immunized asap, the smaller the chances for the virus. There are already Cassandra voices out there saying that we may have to live with it (and potentially others).

As we said in my youth: "Do it now, there may be a law against it tomorrow". The law here is biology.

Would you agree that the people that have requirements to have face to face contact with others should have first dibs on vaccinations? Obviously health care workers, emergency response, and such... but also grocery store workers, restaurant workers, retail workers, homeless, government services, and so forth?

Assuming you do agree, as I tried to explain, my kids and I do not fall into any of those categories. We're fine self-isolating and doing all the hand scrubbing and wearing masks and gloves when we have to meet people and all of those precautions. I do not want to deprive anyone that has that need from their opportunity to be vaccinated. Not to mention, AZ isn't even approved here, yet, though likely will be in the next few days-weeks. My GP's office isn't even handing out vaccinations to the general public yet. Now, I do work for a hospital and I could use my position to go get myself vaccinated and cut the line, but I'm not going to for the afore mentioned reason, not to mention that I couldn't extend that to my kids.

If/when vaccination availability is such that there's enough for everyone, then I'll be more than happy to schedule appointments for myself and my kids to get that knocked out. But, as things stand today, if this thing mutates, it ain't gonna be in my house so whether or not I get vaccinated now isn't going to change a thing. And if the vaccinations don't hamper some hypothetical mutation, then being vaccinated now won't do any good then either.

[BaronVerde]

I don't have a strong opinion of the sequence. I have nothing to say anyway I'd put the most vulnerable first, the elder, people with preconditions, immune system deficiencies, those vulnerable because or their socioeconomic situation aka the poor and crowded living, those living and working in closed and confined environments to take pressure from the health care system, then health workers, and the rest as they come if they come. I'd hang any poltician on a rusty nail at the wall who jumps the line - with one of their orbits. If you like you can swing them around. But I have no strong opinion

[Vertigo 7]

I meant like the folks that are interacting with the public on a routine basis being the ones that are the most likely to spread infection, or rather be vectors for super spreaders. To me, that's a pretty high priority to contain. As far as I'm concerned, I should be among the last to be vaccinated since I have no need to be out in the public and don't have any foreseeable reasons to be among them any time soon.

[Mightysword]

Finally got an appointment for the first shot this Thursday. It gonna be 2 shots of Pfizer , can't wait

[felter]

I got my first jab several weeks ago and I was like, will it even work on me and they were like, a shrug of the shoulders and a reply of we don't know but what have you got to lose by getting it.

It was several days later I found out why they had no idea if it would work on me or not, it was because they had not done any testing on people with cancer and impaired immune system. I know that because it was reported that they were starting to do trials on people with those conditions a few days after I got the jab and they hope to have an answer on whether the vaccines will work for those people, by the end of the year. I personally think that the testing system for these vaccines has been screwed up and was pretty much flawed, I think they just tested on the minimal amount of people they had to and they only tested on fit middle age people, avoiding anyone who could show a bad result, only using the people who had the greatest chance of showing success. The point that I was even given the vaccine before anyone in my situation was put through a trial to check and see if first it worked and secondly was safe for me to take is ridiculous.

A pretty good web page on how Vaccines alone will not stop Covid spreading.

And just to show how stupid the ones who are running the English contact tracing app, the latest version got banned on both Google and Apple app stores for breaking the rules that they agreed on.

[BaronVerde]

Vaccines will not turn a switch and not result in a 100% protection, that is a trivial thing and not related to COVID and the SARS viruses specifically. Vaccines will gradually and maybe for a limited time immunize individuals and thus keep the virus from spreading. Depending on the vaccine and COVID variant, people are talking of 50% for some up to 95% for others, but I must admid that it is unclear to me if this is individual protection or a derived statistical figure. Exact quantification of the degree and duration of immunization (for an individual and the population) depends on many things and is not known in detail atm, how could it possibly since it is just half a year that vaccines came up and are being rolled out. The process usually takes years to decades but for obvious reasons was greatly hurried.

It is just between very likely and certain that we will have to adapt to new conditions in the future, also but not only COVID related. This is a dynamic process.


I hope the shots brings you guys benefitsss, I still have no idea when and how. But there are only 14 affected of ~90,000 anyway here as of today. Living on an island with well defined entry points has its advantages

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My opinion, people with a smartphone these days don't have their acts together, quite literally