For anyone who is scared about vaccines, variants, blood clots...

[MrsHastingslikethebattle]

Please follow Mac n Chise on Twitter.

She is a virologist who works for Moderna who gives balanced factual data on Covid 19 and its vaccines. Everything she says is backed up my studies and data.

Really good for anyone who is anxious or who read s a lot of tabloids/social media articles.
Following her, seeing information in a clear way, really helped with my anxiety over this situation.
Every time I see 'mutant variant' or AZ and blood clots, I shrug as I know the actual data rather than just reading the headlines, who you will find, massively misuse information.

I love Mac n Chise! Highly recommend.

@Boph

I love Mac n Chise! Highly recommend.

She was recommend to me by another user on here. I have her to thank.

She often shares news articles and then picks the headlines and puts the actual data. It's really concerning how the media have been getting away with for so long.

It's really helpful to read some of her tweets, thank you. She is full of sense and useful information. I'm slightly conflicted by reading stuff by a furry but that's 2021 for you!

Does anyone have any info on whether AZ is effective against the SA variant? And how effective it might be?

I can’t find her. What’s her pages

Thanks very helpful

twitter.com/sailorrooscout?s=21

@Lemons1571

Does anyone have any info on whether AZ is effective against the SA variant? And how effective it might be?

Serum samples obtained from participants vaccinated with two doses of Pfizer’s BNT162b2 COVID-19 vaccine shows effective neutralization against VOCs B.1.1.7 (UK), B.1.351 (S. Africa) AND P.1 (Brazil). t.co/CIN2wjRWV6 t.co/NpXkomE1jL

This is from Mac n Chise twitter

If you read her page, theres lots and lots of studies explaining B.1.351(south african variant)

In a nutshell. Vaccines have say 80% efficiency rates for Covid 19. It might less effective against variants but still gives a high protection.
Flu jabs are only 50% effective so given the vaccines are still 70%+ effective against variants is really good.
Then also booster jabs are already being produced.

Vaccines are wonderful .

Thanks OP - will check her out!

@Lemons1571

Does anyone have any info on whether AZ is effective against the SA variant? And how effective it might be?

It has an effect. We don't yet know to what extent.

Reports suggest it has quite low efficacy at stopping symptomatic disease [1] which would mean it would also be largely ineffective at preventing transmission.

Not the end of the world though - it may still confer protection against serious illness and death.

1: www.forbes.com/sites/williamhaseltine/2021/03/17/astrazeneca-vaccine-fails-to-protect-against-the-south-african-variant/?sh=20fe84a16526

@Mif4

My vulnerable gran has avoided covid living in a household with her teenage grandchildren who go to school and college and my aunt and uncle who have been going to work during this whole fiasco

She had the vaccine and ended up in hospital for 3 weeks from a blood clot..

I'm not a scientist so I don't know the nitty gritty. There is lots of info on her page for clots.

As I gather, the blood clotting from az is very low. Its 3 people in 1 million. Taking a contraception pill is something like 5-12 people in 10 thousand.

Your gran could have one of 3 in a million or she could just have had a blood clot and it could be coincidence as people do just have blood clots.

^The reported numbers of these types of events you are seeing in the media for these vaccines are not greater than the number that would have occurred naturally in the unvaccinated population.
Comparable efficacy result across ethnicity and age. 80% efficacy in participants aged 65+. No increased risk of thrombosis or events characterized by thrombosis among 21,583 participants receiving at least one dose. The search for CVST found no even^

From her twitter

Bookworm, I had a study but I cant find it () from Mac n Chise, that pretty much supported what you have said.
With the AZ, the south African variant could reduce its effectiveness but still give protection.
It does not prevent symptomatic Covid 19 which is flu like symptoms etc but still high protection against becoming seriously ill, becoming hospitalized and death- which is the aim of the vaccines.

^Wanted to clear this up. First, please remember that vaccines are preventives and NOT cures. One can still contract the virus once vaccinated and as long as it prevents them from facing severe disease and worse, it is still doing what it is supposed to.
t.co/xqvxVaGo99^

Thank you for this OP

[quote MrsHastingslikethebattle]Bookworm, I had a study but I cant find it () from Mac n Chise, that pretty much supported what you have said.
With the AZ, the south African variant could reduce its effectiveness but still give protection.
It does not prevent symptomatic Covid 19 which is flu like symptoms etc but still high protection against becoming seriously ill, becoming hospitalized and death- which is the aim of the vaccines.

^Wanted to clear this up. First, please remember that vaccines are preventives and NOT cures. One can still contract the virus once vaccinated and as long as it prevents them from facing severe disease and worse, it is still doing what it is supposed to.
t.co/xqvxVaGo99^[/quote]
Just to be clear - the vaccine DOESN'T stop you from contracting the disease - no vaccine does. In order for the adaptive immune system to kick into action, there must first be an infection.
What a vaccine does is speeds up the immune systems reaction because it already has the template for the required antibodies.

Typically with covid, the timeline seems to be
Day 0 Contracts covid
Days 2-> Sufficient viral load for +ve test
Days 3-> Becomes infectious
Days 4-> Develops symptoms
Days ~12-> Serious illness/Death

Which is why a slightly slower response to a new variant may result in many more symptomatic cases being detected, but STILL offer high protection against the most extreme cases.

I love Mac n Chise too!

I presume we're not getting more information about the AZ and the South African variant because South Africa stopped using AZ. And not sure about other countries with lots of South African variant? Kent variant I think still dominate in most countries?

Obviously, you can understand why South Africa stopped using Astra Zeneca because of the original study, but it has the downside of not challenging or expanding on that data

I’m confused about people saying AZ doesn’t prevent symptomatic Covid when I’ve read that it does? Which is correct?

www.astrazeneca.com/media-centre/press-releases/2021/astrazeneca-us-vaccine-trial-met-primary-endpoint.html

Thanks for posting this, OP. I have just followed this on Twitter.

@MrsHastingslikethebattle this graph is completely misleading because it doesn't divide the age group Covid risk categories (e.g. 30-39 year olds) between the high risk cohort (e.g. the clinically extremely vulnerable) and the healthy cohort (most of whom have yet to be vaccinated). We know that a healthy 35-year-old has a much lower risk of severe Covid than a 35-year-old with, say, diabetes or kidney failure. But this graphic treats them as the same. Unless we think we can treat all cases of this side effect successfully we are taking a massive risk with young, healthy people's lives by carrying on giving AZ to the non-clinically-vulnerable under 55s/60s. The MHRA figures have been massaged to reassure everyone but in Norway the death rate was 1 in 40 000 when they gave AZ to a mainly young, female cohort. Most of those vaccinated in the UK so far with AZ have been older people. The one in a million risk of death figure is therefore misleading for younger people. Data was leaked to the Daily Mail about numbers of cases in each age group (most occurred in ages 30-39) but if anyone can give me a breakdown of exactly how many people have been vaccinated with AZ by age group I would be really grateful, because we might finally be able to make sense of the figures. I can't see why we can't know this - failure to reveal it doesn't exactly inspire confidence in our government's strategy.

[quote Fieldofmemes]@MrsHastingslikethebattle this graph is completely misleading because it doesn't divide the age group Covid risk categories (e.g. 30-39 year olds) between the high risk cohort (e.g. the clinically extremely vulnerable) and the healthy cohort (most of whom have yet to be vaccinated). We know that a healthy 35-year-old has a much lower risk of severe Covid than a 35-year-old with, say, diabetes or kidney failure. But this graphic treats them as the same. Unless we think we can treat all cases of this side effect successfully we are taking a massive risk with young, healthy people's lives by carrying on giving AZ to the non-clinically-vulnerable under 55s/60s. The MHRA figures have been massaged to reassure everyone but in Norway the death rate was 1 in 40 000 when they gave AZ to a mainly young, female cohort. Most of those vaccinated in the UK so far with AZ have been older people. The one in a million risk of death figure is therefore misleading for younger people. Data was leaked to the Daily Mail about numbers of cases in each age group (most occurred in ages 30-39) but if anyone can give me a breakdown of exactly how many people have been vaccinated with AZ by age group I would be really grateful, because we might finally be able to make sense of the figures. I can't see why we can't know this - failure to reveal it doesn't exactly inspire confidence in our government's strategy.[/quote]
There are many many more graphs and studies on her twitter page. This was from a few weeks ago. This is just one of the many studies. More of them will show a wider range of data.

The blood clot issue sometimes caused by AZ is nothing like the more common blood clots sometimes caused by the pill, sitting still too long on a long haul flight etc... People keep comparing the odds of the two things but it's a false equivalency. The vaccine related blood clot is an extremely rare complication normally, so if you don't get the vaccine, you are saving yourself the risk of that particular kind of life-threatening clot.

Doesn't mean that the risk vs benefits weighs the same for everyone- for some the risk of the vaccine is less than with covid- but it's not correct to say (as some on other threads have) if you take the pill, you are already taking a bigger risk than you would with the jab. They're not the same thing.

No little red, they are not the same thing. But it is putting things in perspective. The media massively mis use information and dont present all the facts. A 20 year with no underlying health conditions would think that taking the AZ would more risk than Covid. Fair enough.

But when people who are 40+ refusing to take a vaccine because they have 3 in a million chance of a blood clot, well then you could say the benefits of vaccine outweigh the risk.

It's not a "three in a million" chance of a "blood clot". It is an unknown risk of a catastrophic systemic clotting and bleeding condition (CVST/VIPIT/VITT) which has killed at least 30% of the people that developed it. We don't KNOW what the risk is for a 40 year old because the MHRA haven't broken the case data down by age group. Some countries have seen case rates as high as 1 in 20 000. Still further, the MHRA have compared the risks of this AZ side effect versus risk of Covid by including in their age group graph the high risk (clinically vulnerable) which is irrelevant because no one is arguing that those at high risk should not get the vaccine. The groups still to be vaccinated are LOW risk younger people. David Spiegelhalter has said that the risk of severe harm from the vaccine is 1.1 in 100 000. The MHRA contradicted themselves in the press conference - they stated quite clearly that they could see no greater risk from the vaccine for any particular group - and yet at the same time said 51 of the 79 cases were in women. And the graph with the blue/orange spots shows a bigger risk for younger people (bigger orange spots) which again contradicts this "no greater risk for any group" assertion. And if you still don't believe me, consider this: the MHRA stated that all the cases of CVST/VIPIT/VITT occurred in first doses, therefore they considered it safe for people to get their second dose. But at that point in time, the vast majority of doses given WERE first doses as they had only just started giving second doses. I'm not saying that people WILL develop this condition after the second dose, I'm just trying to point out that the official figures and recommendations are MISLEADING. And given the background of nearly every other country restricting AZ use far more than we are (they wouldn't be doing that for nothing), the lack of transparency is to my mind unacceptable. Consent to medical procedures should be INFORMED consent.