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.

Can I please say that many of us have declined the pill precisely because of the rather common side effects and other issues?

I wish people could stop throwing that at me. “Well there is this drug which is far worse than any vaccine issue so what is the problem”

@Whichjab I'm sorry for the tone of that last post. I do agree people do things without thinking of the risks. I am just getting so angry with this government and I can't bear to think they are blindly going to roll out this vaccine to all young women when the risks for them are getting clearer every day. They can at least identify higher risk groups (e.g. those on the pill) and give them a different vaccine.

Must admit I am seriously considering nit getting my 2nd Az jab now

@Fieldofmemes bit that just isn’t known for younger women? Barely started on the under50’s let alone under 40’s yet. Only when millions of under 50’s have been jabbed will this really be clearer. Total experiment which many are feeling coerced into. Absolutely terrifying

[quote Quit4me]@Fieldofmemes bit that just isn’t known for younger women? Barely started on the under50’s let alone under 40’s yet. Only when millions of under 50’s have been jabbed will this really be clearer. Total experiment which many are feeling coerced into. Absolutely terrifying[/quote]
6m under 50s have been jabbed.

I don’t think we can conclude that the risk is mostly to young females. According to the BBC, the U.K. cases are a wider demographic mix, and the EMA has stated it hasn’t identified a gender/age risk factor so far. In Germany and Italy and possibly other EU countries AstraZeneca was being administered to teachers and kindergarten staff, a large proportion of whom are young or middle-aged women.

@LeeMiller

I don’t think we can conclude that the risk is mostly to young females. According to the BBC, the U.K. cases are a wider demographic mix, and the EMA has stated it hasn’t identified a gender/age risk factor so far. In Germany and Italy and possibly other EU countries AstraZeneca was being administered to teachers and kindergarten staff, a large proportion of whom are young or middle-aged women.

Spain is jabbing teachers and police people as well with it

@Boringlynormal

It hadn’t occurred to me that the U.K. has also stopped giving it to most under 50s as of tomorrow. For a reason that nobody seems to know. That really is worrying.

I should imagine that's because all those who had their first dose in January are coming up to needing their second, and with supplies of AZ at the moment, they're reserving all the AZ for second doses.

@EasterIssland ok so that’s pretty frightening. Splitting the 6million down the middle 50/50 means approx 3m women under 50 have been jabbed.
So far 30 people have had this rare brain clot. No info released about sex or age so for all I know all 30 are women under 50 (as is the biggest risk factor for this type of clot and indeed any type of clot)
If so, 30 out of 3 million is way way higher than natural instance of this brain clot and huge cause for concern

But that is exactly the point
If it would require millions of people to be injected to see one case then it means it's a very rare chance and that means it is less rare than the chances of dying or serious harm from COVID

It's the whole premise of clinical trials
Trials are deliberately set up with enough participants across ages and sexes to clearly be able to see that benefits outweigh harms

No trial could ever account for a 1 in a million or 1/100000 risk because you could never enroll enough people but it doesn't have to it just has to be substantially less risk than that of death or serious harm from Covid for it to be worthwhile and an overall good to have the vaccine.

The risk of death or serious harm from Covid, even for women under 40 is more than the risk of death or serious harm from Covid. We do know that already and getting more data is not going to disprove that. We'd have to find hundreds more cases of this rare side effect for it to exceed the risk from Covid and if it had been that common we would have seen it in the trials

The regulators are not going to approve any medicine for any age group where the risk outweighs the benefits or even where it is marginal.

It is very likely that if you think this is the case you are underestimating your risk from Covid and over estimating your risk from the vaccine.

"Seven people have died from unusual blood clots after getting the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine in the UK, the medicines regulator has confirmed."

www.bbc.com/news/health-56620646

At least now that we are getting more information from the MHRA, we can begin to relax. Until now, we were in the dark. These figures are lower than feared.

So far 30 people have had this rare brain clot. No info released about sex or age so for all I know all 30 are women under 50
It’s not definitive but the bbc say here that the U.K. cases are thought to be more mixed than the German ones: www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/amp/health-56620646

[quote Boringlynormal]@pinkearedcow Bore off.[/quote]
Careful now or you will get labelled soon as a Covid denying anti vaxxer hell bent on killing grannies by the usual Covid purists posters.

Very little is known about the natural incidence of this condition precisely because it is rare. The baseline rates are not known with any accuracy.

Also the baseline would be measured pre Covid. It might actually be COVID infection itself that is causing any observed increase. A Gp on another thread said she saw the first 2 cases on her career last year before there were any vaccines. COVID is well known to cause weird clotting issues.

With all the focus in the press Drs will be looking out for it in people who have been vaccinated and not particularly looking in people who haven't been vaccinated so naturally more cases will be found specifically in vaccinated people. It's sampling bias

The thing you need to hold onto is that even if the vaccine does increase the chances of this very rare thing then it's still 1 in 100000 people at a worst case scenario

It would increase it from vanishingly rare to still very very rare. It's always going to be rarer than the chances of a bad outcome from COVID or else why did we not see any cases in the clinical trial data.

That BBC article does have some more data than before

7 deaths out of 18 million vaccinated
Natural incidence of CVST reported as 2-16 per million ie this is within the range of natural occurrence.
Nothing specific on age or sex but 'a wider mix of people' heavily implies they were not all younger women
Chances of dying from VIPIT 1 in 2.5 million
Chances of dying from COVID if under 40 2,500 in 2.5 million
Ie 1000 times greater risk.

The article also says the flu jab apparently has about a 1
in a million chance of causing GBS. I have that every year and have never thought twice about it. In wouldn't particularly expect to be warned about a 1 in a million side effect.

Young women literally forced into injecting substances banned in other countries.

Do you actually know the meanings of “literally”, “forced” or “banned” @Roonerspismed?

I posted links in the first page of this thread showing that the first 5 cases of CVST in the UK were all men.

@CovoidOfAllHumanity

That BBC article does have some more data than before

7 deaths out of 18 million vaccinated
Natural incidence of CVST reported as 2-16 per million ie this is within the range of natural occurrence.
Nothing specific on age or sex but 'a wider mix of people' heavily implies they were not all younger women
Chances of dying from VIPIT 1 in 2.5 million
Chances of dying from COVID if under 40 2,500 in 2.5 million
Ie 1000 times greater risk.

The article also says the flu jab apparently has about a 1
in a million chance of causing GBS. I have that every year and have never thought twice about it. In wouldn't particularly expect to be warned about a 1 in a million side effect.

Thank you for all your posts today. You are a super star❤

[quote Quit4me]@EasterIssland ok so that’s pretty frightening. Splitting the 6million down the middle 50/50 means approx 3m women under 50 have been jabbed.
So far 30 people have had this rare brain clot. No info released about sex or age so for all I know all 30 are women under 50 (as is the biggest risk factor for this type of clot and indeed any type of clot)
If so, 30 out of 3 million is way way higher than natural instance of this brain clot and huge cause for concern[/quote]
From bbc
So, the real question is: Are the risks worth the benefits?

Even if the vaccine was the cause, and this is still not proven, the numbers suggest around one death in every 2.5 million people vaccinated.

However, this has to be weighed against the known threat posed by coronavirus.

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".

Aww thanks

I am interested to understand it all for myself

And also I could not bear to see how it was making some people who'd had the vaccine so very anxious and wanted to see if I could help them to feel less so

@CovoidOfAllHumanity

Aww thanks

I am interested to understand it all for myself

And also I could not bear to see how it was making some people who'd had the vaccine so very anxious and wanted to see if I could help them to feel less so

Thank you. As the OP and someone very firmly in the grips of that category now, I appreciate it.

@MrsIsobelCrawley

"Seven people have died from unusual blood clots after getting the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine in the UK, the medicines regulator has confirmed."

www.bbc.com/news/health-56620646

At least now that we are getting more information from the MHRA, we can begin to relax. Until now, we were in the dark. These figures are lower than feared.

This is so interesting because your reaction is the opposite to mine. Nothing about this made me 'start to relax'. All I hear is 'this vaccine you'v'e let them inject into you can make people die'. I know that's not necessarily rational and that Covid can also make people die. As can many things. But my heart utterly sank when I saw this news coming out.

The drip drip of news is actually really hard to stand at the moment (yes I should stop reading, and I am for large parts of the day... ) because it feels like waiting for the hammer to fall where we find out it's more common than they thought.

It's is very sad that 7 people died of this rare clotting disorder

It does still remain unclear whether it is due to the vaccine or not.

The article says the background rate of CVST is between 2-16 per million
The rate in vaccinated people in the U.K. is 30 per 18 million so that isn't actually more than background even. They might have died of that whether they were vaccinated or not. We just do not know.

Even if all those 7 deaths were due to the vaccine (which is NOT proven) you have to compare it to

-112,000 people who have died of COVID in the U.K. up to now (and I think we have to acknowledge that is the correct comparison figure because we don't know how old or what sex the vaccine death people were)

-2800 younger women aged 20-65 died of COVID between March and Dec last year.

By having the vaccine you have reduced your overall risk of dying.

@CovoidOfAllHumanity

That makes sense, but humans aren't always rational when it comes to risk. We are neurologically wired to underestimate the costs of inaction, and to see it as less risky than 'doing something' (or ingesting something, in this case).

(In general, our minds naturally weigh the potential costs of action, and that holds us back, when what we should be focusing on is the cost of inaction: what will life look like in 6 months, a year, 3 years, if you don't do this particular thing?)

Incidentally, this tendency to see action as more 'risky' was behind many governments' inertia a year ago with coronavirus,, and then again, repeated reluctance to take countermeasures over the winter..