Canada pauses AZ vaccines for under 55s (and says women most at risk)

[Boringlynormal]

Please tell me this isn’t something to worry about: www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/30/canada-suspends-use-of-astrazeneca-covid-vaccine-for-those-under-55

Speaking as a woman in her 30s who was immunised 4 days ago (article tells us the risk is for young women 4 - 20 days after vaccination), I’m panicking now. Yes I know it’s rare but so is dying of Covid in my age group so I’m wondering if I’ve made a huge mistake.

By the way I’m very pro vaccine and leapt on the chance to get one. I’m just feeling so anxious now.

its just knowing covid wasnt particularly high risk for me i probably wouldnt have had the vaccine knowing that it also carried horrible risks

Long covid is a terrible risk. Much greater than either dying of covid, or dying of an extremely rare blood clot. But ultimately we don't all have the same attitude to risk, and it's up to people whether they take the vaccine or not. They can never be 100% safe, so they should never be 100% compulsory and hence I am 100% against vaccine passports.

In a few months there will be more choice of vaccine anyway as we'll hopefully have Novavax and the Janssen ones for use in the UK. So if you want to wait a few months you might get a choice.

There’s an article on the BBC today:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-56594189

it’s not totally helpful as it does a lot of saying ‘We don’t know yet’ which isn’t what you want to hear when the stuff is already in your arm.

BUT this last bit stood out to me and made me think that in terms of dying, taking the vaccine is much less risky than not taking the vaccine:

Based on the Germany data alone, if you vaccinate a million people then you would expect 12 to have a blood clot and four of them to die.
But if a million 60-year-olds catch coronavirus then around 20,000 would die of Covid-19. If a million 40-year-olds catch coronavirus then around 1,000 die. It would be a few hundred people in their 30s.

yes justvread this aeticle and it hasnt reassured me at all do they mean 4 to die of a blood clot after vaccine or just regardless?
im feeling really cross that these risks were not made apparent i had no idea its awful there is absolutely no way im having the second dose

I actually like that BBC article. I’m fine with lack of certainty and if I can see numbers myself I can then weigh it all up

If I was on the pill I would avoid this vaccine myself right now. I’m not on the pill but haven’t been offered any vaccine yet

What hacks me off is arseholes arrogantly proclaiming the vaccine is “absolutely safe” without discussing the nuances

poppy i am not scared of long covid. For various reasons. I suffered CFS years ago and got myself out of it. I think it’s similar. I hope the NHS takes the advice of more functional thinking in dealing with long covid patients such as more natural anti inflammatories and optimising levels of zinc, vitamin d and B12. The Chinese have been using IV vitamin C.

ive still got a headache where is the info about getting checked out? the leaflet they gave me doesnt mention it

But UK have given 25 million doses of AZ and seen 5 blood clots - not even linked to vaccine. Unless Brits are weirdly different humans to others then something else is going on. Isn't it strange how the only at cost vaccine is getting the bad publicity and those that make people money aren't.

mums this confuses me too but Germany have used the vaccine on a younger population compared to the U.K. and this seems to affect younger women...

I think the report from the EMA says that this wasn’t seen in over 55s. It’s a bit difficult to tell how many of the U.K. doses this might apply to unless somebody releases the data about how many doses have been given to women under 55.

Under 50s have received 6m vaccines.

16-64 CV is 7.2m
Health professionals 3.2
CEV below 70 was 1.2 I think

so many of these people will have had AZ. Also lately many people have been called in for vaccines because there were spares, id say it was AZ as Makes sense that Pfizer lately has been kept for 2nd doses , so I'd say out of those 6m at least 50% will have received AZ.

@Mumtwoboys90

yes justvread this aeticle and it hasnt reassured me at all do they mean 4 to die of a blood clot after vaccine or just regardless?

They mean that IF the blood clots are linked to the vaccine in every single case in Germany, the risk is that 12 in a million vaccinated get it and 4 in a million die of it.

But on the other hand if a million 40 year olds get Covid, 1,000 die. The risk from Covid is way higher so it seems reasonable to use something with a tiny risk to protect yourself from a much bigger risk.

If you think about it, that would be 1 in 250,000 mortality (IF it’s linked). The cancer death rate is about 160 per 100,000 per year and yet every day we still put things in our bodies and make choices that increase our risk of cancer. Death in childbirth is 1 in 10,000 but most of us have children, and usually more than one. We just don’t have these risks in our faces.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m still shitting myself but I think that BBC article and some general thinking has made me feel a bit more balanced. It’s not a proved thing yet and even if it is, it was still a calculated risk worth taking. You’re enormously more likely to be fine than not.

It feels like damn if I do damn if I don’t scenario. I don’t want Covid, neither am I anti vaccinations but this vaccine concerns me a bit now- maybe it’ll be different in a couple of months when more data is available

Yes I like that BBC article, it struck me as a balanced discussion of the facts as we know them. Jenrick saying “we’re still very confident that AZ is effective” OTOH made me want to punch something.

What the BBC article entirely ignores though is the fact that by far the majority of these clots have affected women. So if you strip out the men, where it seems less of a risk as far as we know for now, the numbers look a bit different. I posted them at the beginning of the thread but here they are again.

29 cases of these normally extremely rare blood clots were reported in 1.78 million vaccinated women under 70. That's one case in every 61,400 vaccinated women. Half of the patients died.

So this means if you vaccinate 1 million women under 70 and if there IS a link, you have 16 cases of this blood clotting, and 8 deaths.

Granted, these numbers may not look much different, but balanced reporting by the BBC it ain't.

schulte excellent point

But all the cases in the U.K. were men so far so I don’t think we can be that unequivocal.

But still even on the very worst case scenario that's 8 deaths in a million younger women vs at least a thousand from Covid in those same group of women

It's just never ever going to be a comparable kind of a risk

And that is exactly why drug trials exist to make sure that benefits outweigh risks. If this was a common or likely side effect then it would have been found in the trial. The fact that it is so very rare is the only reason it wasn't and it still might not be connected at all.

When you are dealing with an event with a frequency of a few cases in a million then it is very very hard to get enough data to make meaningful comparisons about who might be at risk. The observation from Germany that more than expected cases occurred in younger women might be real or it might be a statistical artefact.

But covoid trial numbers were what - 41,000 odd? So say 20,000 odd women. You can easily see how rarer side effects will be missed

My concern is the UK will see higher numbers when they vaccinate younger women. If that is the case then it will be devastating for the vaccine programme and trust

I hiding understand the frenzy around vaccinating everything that moves when the priority should be the at risk group. That would buy some time to study the data and give more information around the safety? It’s almost become a religion like status in the UK- either you are a believer or not nothing in between- if you believe no questions should be asked!
That worries and scares me

What irks me is that the UK government seems so utterly head-in-sand about it. Hopefully the doctors here are more aware and know how to spot, diagnose and treat these clots should there be any further cases.

I asked my gp and said I have some concerns but want to take the vaccine. He didn’t really ask me what my concerns were more of the same narrative about ‘ just take it the risk is minimal’ nothing more

@Boringlynormal the problem is, everyone in the UK is focussing on the German report but ignoring the Norwegian data. In Norway, they vaccinated 120 000 (mainly young, female) healthcare workers with AZ and 6 of them developed CVST. That's about ten times what would be expected over the relevant period of time and a case rate of 1 in 20 000. 3 of them died. I believe this, along with the German report on VIPIT, is the main reason countries are limiting AZ use.

My other concern while waiting to for the vaccine is how will I protect myself? The general attitude now seems to be shifting and I doubt many will adhere to social distancing etc for long

For sure a very rare side effect may not be picked up in a trial because they'd need millions of participants to get one case

But my point is that the trial has to have enough participants (be powered) to detect any side effect that would be more than the benefit

So there could be a rare side effect but the chances of it are still going to be much less than the chances of a bad outcome from Covid as that trial is specifically powered to detect that

A trial cannot rule out all side effects but it can rule out all ones that are common enough to mean risks outweigh benefits.

I don't know if CSVT/ VIPIT are going to turn out to be vaccine associated but I will accept it's possible that such a rare thing may not be detected. That still wouldn't put me off having the vaccine because the risk is so very very small and far outweighed by the benefit of avoiding COVID complications and indeed death from COVID.

I don't think the menstrual abnormalities that people are reporting are at all likely to be vaccine related because they are so common that the trials would have picked that up. Also on a personal level I missed a period after having my trial AZ vaccine and reported that adverse event but after unblinding it turned out I'd had placebo so in my case what looked like an association was chance and that's why trial data are so much more easily interpreted and accurate than post market surveillance. The role of surveillance should be to pick up very rare or delayed complications but without blinding or controls that data is not simple to interpret and can easily be due to chance.

[quote Fieldofmemes]@Boringlynormal the problem is, everyone in the UK is focussing on the German report but ignoring the Norwegian data. In Norway, they vaccinated 120 000 (mainly young, female) healthcare workers with AZ and 6 of them developed CVST. That's about ten times what would be expected over the relevant period of time and a case rate of 1 in 20 000. 3 of them died. I believe this, along with the German report on VIPIT, is the main reason countries are limiting AZ use.[/quote]
The high incidence in Norway surely points to more local / demographic factors, considering that these cases of CVST weren't seen in places like France which have vaccinated a comparable number of young women.