Worried about AZ vaccine - advice please

[BCBG]

So I had the AZ vaccine yesterday - (underlying autoimmune conditions) at GP. No option given and to be fair I wasn't expecting one. But since then I have read - here on MN as well as several other sources - that the efficacy of the AZ vaccine is substantially below the others and that's before you take the variants into account. For some reason this has made me really anxious which is not like me - I feel as though I've been given a cheap alternative with the associated risk of still getting ill - and even moderate covid would potentially be very bad news for me I know that it isn't a reasonable or sensible view but I am still surprised about how upset I feel - and some of the comments on the other thread about 'superior' vaccines has not helped. If there are any medical professionals reading this please could they let me know their thoughts? I also appreciate that there is nothing I can do about it now/should just be grateful I have had the vaccine etc etc, and truly I am. Have no idea why I feel upset tbh.

Same here. I particularly felt down reading the “vaccine choice” thread.

I too am f*d if I get covid and worried now that I will have to cower in the house forevermore.

I’m no expert, however I’m pretty sure you will have at the minimum, protection of severe disease from covid. The vast majority will be given the Oxford vaccine. Here and around the world.
If it was such a pointless vaccine they wouldn’t be giving it to our frontline nhs staff and the vulnerable. Try not to feel so disheartened after reading comments on other threads.

No you absolutely haven't been given the cheap version.

Step away from the media and just be glad that you've had it!

(Sorry that you're feeling anxious though)

No vaccines have 100% efficacy. Having the AZ one means even if you do contract Covid you most probably won't be sick enough to need hospital care and more importantly you won't die.

Please stop saying it is a cheap vaccine. You could not be further from the truth.

I've had the AZ jab too and I'm very grateful for it.

J Van Tam said recently that if new variants require upgraded vaccines then when they're available that's what we'll get.

These things that you have read OP, are any of them from reliable published peer reviewed research? I suspect not, more just bored people on forums putting their two penceworth in, sharing links to the Sun and daily Mail.

Do you really think that they would give you a cheap alternative that is not going to protect you from severe disease?

Do you check every other medication, vaccine etc to see which version it is or do you just put your trust in the professionals?

We have gone from people moaning about not getting vaccine when others have, to people moaning that their vaccine is not good enough.

I despair, we should be thankful that we live in a country that has managed to vaccinate millions of people in the space of 2 months. There are many countries that have not started vaccinating yet.

I feel like this has been a very effective online campaign to discredit the AZ vaccine once the EU realised they couldn’t get the amount of doses they required to start their vaccinations. What better way to save face than claim
It wasn’t effective anyway?

I've had AZ vaccine too and certainly don't feel I've had a Lidle vaccine rather than a Waitrose one.😉

None of the current vaccines stop us from potentially contracting Covid, but they do considerably reduce our risk of becoming extremely ill with it. This can only be a good thing, surely?

Scientists are learning about this virus all the time and various trials etc are being done to enable us all to be as best protected as we can be.
As an immunocompromised transplant recipient, I know that the effectiveness of any of these vaccines is a bit of an unknown quantity for us folk but the way I see it is, even a little bit of protection is better than none at all and the more folk that are vaccinated the better for all of us.

Focus on the positives OP.

The latest evidence from over 17,000 people after their first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccination is that 22 days after vaccination there were no severe cases and no hospitalisations in that group. That is incredible. My parents have had the AZ vaccine and I was delighted for them to have it!

Please try not to worry about vaccine efficacy BCBG, I also had the Oxford vaccine yesterday due my medical conditions when everyone else was having the other one

If you have underlying problems it is likely you would have a different response to a normal healthy individual and may have less immunity with any of the current vaccines

However if you catch covid now you are likely to have a mild experience that is survivable whereas unvaccinated you may have been extremely ill or died

Please try not to measure yourself against others, we are all unique and are lucky that there is an option for those of us with autoimmune conditions

@justanotherneighinparadise : I found the EU debacle a bit of a black comedy moment TBH.

If the AZ vaccine was so rubbish, why were they prepared to go to such lengths to get their hands on it?

In the scheme of vaccines, the Oxford AZ one is very impressive, certainly more effective than your annual flu jab and presumably you trust that?

It is enormous, first world privilege to sniff at the Oxford vaccine, like offensively so.

@IrmaFayLear

Same here. I particularly felt down reading the “vaccine choice” thread.

I too am f*d if I get covid and worried now that I will have to cower in the house forevermore.

That's why I stuck around so long trying to debunk/diffuse all the poor science and daft opinions that were being flung around willy nilly!

The truth is ALWAYS that each version of any medication has pros and cons and with new ones noting can be taken for granted.

There is good data that all of the vaccines currently licensed protect against covid enough for Big Pharma to consider them worth the time and expense of manufacturing, licensing and administering them!

They are being cleared for global use by the organisations that have always cleared all medicines.

As more data is collated all of those vaccines can be tweaked. They think the new technology of Pfizer and Moderna are easier to tweak, faster to get nto manufacture.

There are many advantages to the new type of vaccine. But that doesn't make the older technology useless. It just means that in future, when there is more time, we have a nice new form of vacccine to explore.

In short: No matter what the statistics, the AZ vaccine is perfectly effective against the Kent variant, the dominant variant in the UK, and will be tweaked to meet needs of the SA variant as and when needed.

Gaps between jabs? We have the 'uausl' gap that has become standard for trial and now new data that a longer gap might be more efficaceous, in all of them

Boosters? Who knows? All of the vaccines may need them

Mix and match? Who knows. Currently being studied

That's about it. The rest is all in the logistics: which is easiest to move around; which the UK has on order; speed of manufacturing and transport; in the long run you can add cost effectiveness

All else is not worth thinking about as most of us don't have enough knowledge to understand the raw research data

Try not to worry OP.

While it is correct that the reported % efficacy (preventing people coming down with Covid at all) is higher for Pfizer than for AZ, they measured it in a COMPLETELY different way. The results aren’t actually comparable.

Disclaimer: I read the below on MN rather than an actual news source but have no reason to believe it’s false.

AZ/Oxford tested people regularly and caught pretty much every case of Covid among the trial cohort. Pfizer required participants to report symptoms - so they are likely to have missed all the asymptomatic cases.

I don’t quite understand the whole “protection against mild illness vs protection against severe disease” thing but I think they think the vaccines will still encourage production of T cells that attack the virus even if the initial burst of antibodies isn’t quite aligned to a particular variant.

The OP on the vaccine choice thread was someone who refused to take into account any of the arguments presented by the other posters, she just kept going on and on about Pfizer is superior and her family will only accept that one, and we were all stupid for considering AZ. It was a one sided conversation for her, nothing that was said or argued was good enough in her opinion.

Take a deep breath and hide that thread, OP. It’s okay to feel like you would’ve preferred the other vaccine, but trials have shown that AZ too, prevents severe illness and death. In as many cases as Pfizer.

If the AZ vaccine wasn’t good enough, it wouldn’t be offered to millions of people worldwide on a daily basis. I know the UK uses a mixture of Pfizer and AZ for all age groups, but where I live AZ has been put aside for healthcare workers and under 65s with underlying conditions. Try and think of it this way - these are the people who are more exposed to the virus, due to the nature of their jobs/ages. Someone who’s 90 is more likely to die from the virus, but statistically also less likely to catch Covid than say, an average 40 yo who has 3 kids in 3 different schools, works in a busy hospital and socialises each weekend. The AZ has been deemed useful for these people.

The main goal of the vaccine isn’t to prevent infections. It’s to prevent illness and death. All vaccines show that they offer protection from this. For now we don’t know a great deal about how much they prevent transmission of old or new variants, but try and focus on all the positives. We’ll still be living with restrictions for a few months, vaccine or not, but I’m sure the situation will start to improve very soon.

Congratulations on your vaccine. You are very likely to be building immunity right now, that's amazing. You'll get another jab later to boost it, probably at least one for variants. All the vaccines are marvellous, they will all help enormously and we should be amazed by the human ingenuity that got us here so fast. Most importantly, they all work against the dominant UK strain Kent, which is the one you are most likely to come contact with in the next few months (if any, hopefully none). The mixed vaccine testing is also very exciting, it may ultimately turn out most effective for all of us to get a booster from a different type of vaccine to the original.

Put your faith in the MHRA verifying that vaccines are safe and in the JCVI to know what is best to jab each of us with, they are competent professionals unlike certain argumentative mumsnet posters who spout whatever they read on Facebook as though it's given them as much ability to assess data as decades training and working as an epidemiologist or virologist. You wouldn't trust someone who's read a few articles to give you open heart surgery, so don't trust that they know what's best in other scientific fields.

Regarding one vaccine being cheap, you would think people should praise Oxford and Astrazeneca for committing to be non profit rather than sneer, but people can be very odd it seems.

@rainbowunicorn

These things that you have read OP, are any of them from reliable published peer reviewed research? I suspect not, more just bored people on forums putting their two penceworth in, sharing links to the Sun and daily Mail.

Do you really think that they would give you a cheap alternative that is not going to protect you from severe disease?

Do you check every other medication, vaccine etc to see which version it is or do you just put your trust in the professionals?

We have gone from people moaning about not getting vaccine when others have, to people moaning that their vaccine is not good enough.

I despair, we should be thankful that we live in a country that has managed to vaccinate millions of people in the space of 2 months. There are many countries that have not started vaccinating yet.

I did say it wasn't a reasonable perspective and yes, I read the published research once I started looking into it. By cheap I meant only that it is less than £2 a dose as opposed to £10 or more - which has to play a part in cash strapped thinking. I can't help the fact that the comments made me upset, even though I am trying to deal with that. I am also experiencing the side effects, so perhaps that has affected my mood too.

None of the current vaccines stop us from potentially contracting Covid, but they do considerably reduce our risk of becoming extremely ill with it.

Can you share your evidence for this?

And thank you anyone who has posted kind reassurance. There is some very sensible perspective in the answers here and I really appreciate it. I must say I am hoping that having rubbish side effects means my immune system is doing something it should at last!

Interesting thread OP.

My OH had his vaccine at lunch time today and for the Pfizer (we had assumed it would be AZ as it was at a GP hub) but they had both.

If they had to use whatever Pfizer they had up first, and then move to AZ then I will get AZ when I go for my jab this afternoon. I don't know if I'll feel resentful or worried... I hope not!

My mum had Pfizer and my dad had AZ. He is much higher risk.

Also apparently the AZ has a much higher efficiency with 13 week gap whereas they don't know about Pfizer and the 12 week gap yet.
There's pros and cons to both.

Overall I think I'll just be happy that there is something injected into me that means I'm not going to die from covid!

I did say it wasn't a reasonable perspective and yes, I read the published research once I started looking into it. By cheap I meant only that it is less than £2 a dose as opposed to £10 or more - which has to play a part in cash strapped thinking. I can't help the fact that the comments made me upset, even though I am trying to deal with that. I am also experiencing the side effects, so perhaps that has affected my mood too.

The cost is relevant to the quality or efficacy of the vaccine. If I remember correctly, AZ are supplying the vaccine as a non-profit endeavour to ensure that even developing countries can afford it. Other manufacturers aren't doing that.

Not a perfect comparison, but think of it as similar to when you buy own brand paracetamol versus buying a branded version - they both do the job regardless of the price.

@JassyRadlett : No!, because I can't do links on this gadget, but, Gov.UK document, "What to expect after your Covid 19 vaccination", says it.
JVT in one of his briefings says it.
That's why, despite being vaccinated, we still have to adhere to "the rules".
There have also been cases reported of people who have contracted it, but only experienced mild illness, post vaccination.

Sorry, the cost is NOT relevant

"Some people may still get Covid-19 despite having a vaccination, but this should be less severe".
From above document.