Concerned about having second jab of AstraZeneca

[LuluJakey1]

I have read all of the stuff about AstraZeneca and blood clots and felt the EU was making a fuss about something the WHO and EMA were saying was not a significant issue.
However, I have become increasingly worried over the last few days when further reports have emerged. They are all linked to AstraZeneca, not to Pfizer.
This is in The Independent which is the first time I have read of the medical profession here recognising it as an issue and warning Drs about it.
www.independent.co.uk/news/health/coronavirus-astrazeneca-vaccine-blood-clotting-doctors-b1826144.html
It raises some very interesting points.

I am worried about having the second jab. I am now feeling the government are trying to sweep it under the table' because they have bought so many doses and could not vaccinate everyone without using AZ.
AIBU to be considering not having the second jab?

What I would like to do is leave it for a while and then have two doses of Pfizer. Does anyone know if that is even medically possible?

How utterly horrible and dismissive some posters are being on this thread. OP might have a very good reason why she is anxious about this, or maybe its just one of those things that makes her anxious.

@Haydenjaydenokayden how condescending are you 😂 I have an education thank you very much. I have manners also which is something you definitely very clearly lack.

Then the OP isn't being forced to have the second dose. She/He can choose not to. It's quite simple, don't want it then don't have it. People need to be educated on the facts that there are much larger causes of blood clots that you/we take and do every day. The vaccine isn't just about the individual person, where the contraceptive pill is, it's about protecting the vulnerable. If you're happy to risk a pill and a plane but won't take a tiny risk on a jab, well that's fine. Don't have it.

@LiJo2015

I know the risk of blood clot is small with the az jab, but so was the death of my mum and brother by a blood clot.

In your case it's different to someone who has no highlighted risk like family predispositions. If I were in your situation I too would speak to doctor and try to get something less risky. Absolutely understandable

@identitytalks no, your manners are lacking when you asked your first question. Assuming people haven't researched and you know more than others. That we are jumping the gun by having a vaccine that will protect others.

I admit to a slight concern, but nowhere near enough of a concern to stop me having the second vaccine.

To help minimise the risk I have made sure to walk for a minimum of an hour a day since the jab (often far more), added in extra movement to my home working day and am taking mini aspirin daily for a month.

I had a blood clot when I was 19 so I possibly have an increased risk anyway (and can't take the pill and use mini aspirin and compression socks when I fly and I don't fly long haul).

@Haydenjaydenokayden I stated my opinion. I didn't assume anything and don't think I know more than anyone. What I didn't do is throw insults at others, you did that. You are the one with the problem honey.

This specific disorder is not the same as DVT/ PE and common clotting disorders which the vaccines actually reduce the incidence of.

It is a very rare thing being called VIPIT or CSVT (or at least CVST is a symptom of it). It's a symptom of blood clotting plus low platelets.
It was previously known to occur rarely with heparin injections

It is so rare (estimated 2-15 cases per million natural occurrence) that it's very hard to say if the vaccine did cause any extra cases or not. It also is not at all clear what the risk factors would be. The association with younger women was found in the German cases but the first 5 U.K. cases were in men.

This is from a BBC article

Covid-19: Seven UK blood clot deaths after AstraZeneca vaccine www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-56620646

'If the vaccine is the cause of this rare clotting disorder then the frequency is 1 in 2.5 million (NB this is on the U.K. figures. The worst possible case scenario on the German figures is 1 in 100,000)

If 2.5 million 60-year-old people caught coronavirus then around 50,000 would die. If they were all 40-year-olds then around 2,500 would die.

So even if you are in your 40s then you have thousands of times more chance of dying from COVID than from the vaccine.

The two risks are not even vaguely comparable. COVID is much higher risk. It's not some kind of touch and go weigh up. The vaccine is much much safer than getting Covid

The German scientist who found this possible link and called it VIPIT is still urging people to have the vaccine and saying he would not want people to be dissuaded by his research

So far no-one has suggested this very rare issue to be associated with the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine so you could indeed argue those are safer but who is to say that tomorrow they won't find some rare risk to do with those next week.
The U.K. does not have enough of these vaccines to offer everyone those.

There are risks in all of life
Nothing at all is ever 100% safe
But a 1 in a million risk or even a 1 in 100,000 risk is a very very small one. It is less than the risk of being struck by lightning.
If you ever had a heparin injection eg post operatively you have already accepted a much higher risk of this rare condition than from the vaccine.

However I do support everyone's right to choose and make their own decision.

My own feeling is that eventually the AZ vaccine will, reluctantly, be withdrawn everywhere for younger age groups

I sincerely hope not. It'll put the vaccination programme back and delay people who want the jab from having it. I'm probably in what some people think is an 'at risk' group but it's miniscule and I don't want to wait due to hysteria.

million maybe 4 people have slipped on a bar of soap and broken a leg in the 3 weeks after being vaccinated (because you know occasionally people slip on soap and break a leg). But that doesn't fit the burden of proof that the vaccine caused the soap slip any more than it causes blood clots The way it's reported is really unhelpful radio 4 today was the same as the independent "30 cases out of 18 million" which makes it sound as if of those 18 million there were 30 cases, implying that the vaccine caused the issue in those cases....only later does the independent mention the "if a causal relationship is proved" bit

My own feeling is that it might possibly be a very very rare side effect of the vaccine but will not in fact be found to be related to any particular age or sex when data from everywhere are taken into account and it will just be listed as a rare side effect and will continue to be used as benefits vastly outweigh risks

Flu vaccines have a 1 in a million risk of Guillian Barre syndrome which is a very serious thing and people still accept flu vaccines.

If you have a personal or family history of a more ordinary blood clotting disorder then you are by far and away best off to be vaccinated because COVID carries a huge risk of normal kinds of blood clots like DVTs and PEs

This disorder is thrombocytopenia (low platelets) in association with increased clotting which is a really weird unusual thing because usually low platelets cause bleeding and not clotting. Unless you have a personal or family history of heparin induced thrombocytopenia there is no reason not to have the vaccine

This is from the haematology society

b-s-h.org.uk/media/19512/guidance-version-10-on-mngmt-of-thrombosis-with-thrombocytopenia-occurring-after-c-19-vaccine_20210401.pdf

CovoidOfAllHumanity

Flu vaccines have a 1 in a million risk of Guillian Barre syndrome which is a very serious thing and people still accept flu vaccines.

People still do, and people will still happily have the AZ vax (as evidenced by this thread) but surely people should also make an informed decision, and at the moment, without full investigations into safety having been completed, we can’t, because we lack information.

hettie

million maybe 4 people have slipped on a bar of soap and broken a leg in the 3 weeks after being vaccinated (because you know occasionally people slip on soap and break a leg). But that doesn't fit the burden of proof that the vaccine caused the soap slip any more than it causes blood clots

Not true hettie. I read a report this week explaining the mechanism by which the vaccine can cause these clots in association with low platelets. I’ll try to find a link.

Investigations are ongoing

But I can honestly say that they are not going to find that the risk of this thing outweighs the benefit of vaccination because that would have been seen in the trials if it was. That's what trials are explicitly for
They cannot always detect the very rarest side effects but they can detect anything common enough to outweigh benefit because that's what they are explicitly designed to do. They have to have enough participants to show that in order to satisfy regulators.

A possible mechanism

Sorry it’s a DailyShite link but can’t find the original article..

www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-9416171/AstraZenecas-vaccine-trigger-rare-immune-response-leads-clots-people.html

@PinkSparklyPussyCat

My own feeling is that eventually the AZ vaccine will, reluctantly, be withdrawn everywhere for younger age groups

I sincerely hope not. It'll put the vaccination programme back and delay people who want the jab from having it. I'm probably in what some people think is an 'at risk' group but it's miniscule and I don't want to wait due to hysteria.

People keep forgetting that India is the country that will have the largest dataset in terms of side effects on AZ (they use a different brand name but it’s the same vaccine). Considering they have been vaccinating the under 60s for a while now and not reported side effects should tell you everything. The Indian gov actually would prefer to continue with it’s 100% India made vaccine if given a choice as it’s cheaper and so would try to use any flimsy excuse to make that happen but they haven’t.

I'm not getting any COVID vaccines. Absolutely not, I would have before but I have severe health anxiety and of course brain aneurysms are my biggest fear.

@identitytalks you do know that aneurysms and blood clots are entirely different things?

It is a lesson about epidemiology that they teach you at med school
to beware of possible mechanisms

There are lots of things that epidemiological studies have found to be real associations that we do not know the mechanism of eg why putting babies on their backs to sleep is safer. Previously it had been thought front would be safer so they wouldn't choke if they vomited but back was found to be much safer despite no one knowing why at the time

HRT was thought to prevent MIs for a long time and people put forward lots of plausible mechanisms why it might do that. We now know it doesn't at all and it was just that the HRT takers in the trial had healthier lifestyles so all those possible mechanisms aren't actually happening.

Just because there is a possible mechanism by which the vaccine might induce VIPIT it doesn't mean it actually does do that in the real world.

The jury is out still on this
It's unsatisfying but that's science for you. More data and analysis is required to be able to say that there is or there isn't a causative association
That's all anyone can say for now.

But we still do absolutely know that it is very very rare and that the risk is much much less than that of COVID itself.

They would have to uncover hundreds and hundreds more cases to get anywhere near an even chance and if it was that common then it would have been seen in the trials. Trials are designed to find any risks that would outweigh benefits. They don't always find all very rare risks but they find those common enough to be worse than the condition.

As someone on here said: if nobody had a blood clot after the vaccine, it would have been a cure for blood clots.

You expect a certain number in the population, so with so many vaccinated there's bound to be a few that get one, but they would have had that anyway.

There will also be people that stubbed their toe, banged their head on a cupboard door or ran out of petrol after the vaccine, but we dont worry about that.

That's a fantastic way of putting it!

@PinkSparklyPussyCat

My own feeling is that eventually the AZ vaccine will, reluctantly, be withdrawn everywhere for younger age groups

I sincerely hope not. It'll put the vaccination programme back and delay people who want the jab from having it. I'm probably in what some people think is an 'at risk' group but it's miniscule and I don't want to wait due to hysteria.

It is not due to “hysteria”. The vaccine very likely (certainly if you ask me based on published information) has a potentially fatal side effect. This is very very unfortunate however you cannot expect people to risk their own health even though on the population level this would be clearly advantageous. People who repeat the “blood clot” statistics just don’t fully understand the issue.

Firstly look at the death rate from covid compared to these supposedly caused by vaccine clot death. More people die per day from covid than out of the millions vaccinated with this jab. Second it tends to be women under 55 mainly which to me indicates it could be these women are on hormonal birth control for example. 1 in 10,000 women on the pill develop a clotting issue every year. Less than 1 in a million have had the jab and had clots. Yet people take the contraceptive pill every day for decades. I've been on it for 11 years straight next month meaning 11 chances of me being the 1 in 10000. You have 2 jabs so that's 2 in over a million chances of a clot and that's IF the jabs causing it. However you carry on playing Russian roulette everything you pop to the shop if you like as if you get covid theirs a far higher chance of you being in hospital and dying than from the vaccine.

@CovoidOfAllHumanity

It is a lesson about epidemiology that they teach you at med school to beware of possible mechanisms

There are lots of things that epidemiological studies have found to be real associations that we do not know the mechanism of eg why putting babies on their backs to sleep is safer. Previously it had been thought front would be safer so they wouldn't choke if they vomited but back was found to be much safer despite no one knowing why at the time

HRT was thought to prevent MIs for a long time and people put forward lots of plausible mechanisms why it might do that. We now know it doesn't at all and it was just that the HRT takers in the trial had healthier lifestyles so all those possible mechanisms aren't actually happening.

Just because there is a possible mechanism by which the vaccine might induce VIPIT it doesn't mean it actually does do that in the real world.

The jury is out still on this
It's unsatisfying but that's science for you. More data and analysis is required to be able to say that there is or there isn't a causative association
That's all anyone can say for now.

But we still do absolutely know that it is very very rare and that the risk is much much less than that of COVID itself.

They would have to uncover hundreds and hundreds more cases to get anywhere near an even chance and if it was that common then it would have been seen in the trials. Trials are designed to find any risks that would outweigh benefits. They don't always find all very rare risks but they find those common enough to be worse than the condition.

Medical trials are designed to uncover reasonably common side effects full stop.

Their design has nothing to do with”balancing side effects and benefits” nor is it possible (for example because “benefits” are unknown at the start of the trial).

It is not uncommon to discover rarer side effects once medicine is approved and there are many examples of that. Medical trials are not fool proof nor do they try to be.

I hope you sincerely misunderstand rather than misrepresent.

Public trust in vaccination is extremely important, more so than continued uptake of any specific vaccine. This is why Germany acted the way it did. If we hide or misrepresent side effects we risk to do more harm than good ultimately because without trust people will take no vaccine at all.