Alternatives to AstraZeneca vaccine for under 40s “could be considered” amid rise in blood clots

[Whichjab]

www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/astrazeneca-vaccine-side-effects-blood-clots-under-40-b931498.html

This is concerning, especially as there is limited research into combining vaccinations. I feel that the trust in vaccination is being eroded. I have always been pro vacc but feeling much less so atm.
I'm not sure I will get my second jab now.

@anyoldtime

It isn’t simplistic at all. It suits people to believe that.

Having half a dose of your vaccine is risky. Having started, you might as well finish, or you might just be taking a wider variety of risks.

I don’t see the logic of the above when boosters are needed every twelve months or even every six months. If someone is worried about something, why would they take repeated doses?

I think some people are more risk adverse. I have ne er taken illegal drugs. When I was younger, I didn’t ‘try’ drugs. I never took a pill/a popper/heroin/coke/magic mushrooms. I’m not comparing the vaccine to any of these but using as an example of how worried I would be about the risks involved. I wouldn’t ride a motor bike as the risks are higher than cars. Some people are happy to try new things, the payout is worth the risks. We are all different.

@anyoldtime - your comparison with illegal drug taking doesn’t actually make sense, as you can happily avoid taking illegal drugs and know that is good for you. Likewise riding a motorbike. One takes a vaccine because one is a risk averse person who doesn’t want to risk the actual disease or to be caught up in an epidemic of the disease. If you take one dose without finishing the course, you take almost all the risk of the vaccine in the first dose. To then not finish the course is deliberately taking a further risk. You are not being risk averse, you are taking a risk that is contrary to medical advice.

So the EU is indeed set to sue AZ. For vaccine delivery delays... It appears that they do want it afterall.

My reading of that is they are suing for breaking a contract rather than wanting it.

If you take one dose without finishing the course, you take almost all the risk of the vaccine in the first dose.

That is not how vaccines work.
The first dose of AZ (potentially) gives 60+% cover. The second dose (potentially) boosts that to 74%. Of course you may be one of the 26% who doesn’t receive any protection from the vaccine at all.

They wouldn't bother sueing if they didn't want it.

They wouldn't bother sueing if they didn't want it.

Of course they will. They will get a huge payout if they succeed. That’s business.

It isn’t simplistic at all. It suits people to believe that.

Believe what? The UK does have one of the highest death rates.

1.4m died of TB in 2019 & every day 25k die from hunger & related causes. I'm confused why vaccinating the young & healthy in the West is so morally outrageous all of a sudden. We routinely vaccinate for lots of diseases that kill others in poorer countries.
I fully support the Covax project but it is too simplistic to draw an arbitrary line in a population & decide they X shouldn't get the vaccine plus we have an ageing population (UK median age is 40.5 vs 33.5 in Brazil, 26.8 in India) & is our population overtly healthy? I would say no which has contributed to the higher death rates.

@anyoldtime

So the EU is indeed set to sue AZ. For vaccine delivery delays... It appears that they do want it afterall.

My reading of that is they are suing for breaking a contract rather than wanting it.

If you take one dose without finishing the course, you take almost all the risk of the vaccine in the first dose.

That is not how vaccines work.
The first dose of AZ (potentially) gives 60+% cover. The second dose (potentially) boosts that to 74%. Of course you may be one of the 26% who doesn’t receive any protection from the vaccine at all.

@anyoldtime - what has the level of protection, or duration of protection, of the vaccine got to do with the risk of a blood clot?

What do you mean?

@anyoldtime - read your post. You quoted, “ If you take one dose without finishing the course, you take almost all the risk of the vaccine in the first dose.” Then you said that was not how vaccines worked and stated that the first dose gives 60% cover and the 2nd dose ups this to 74%. It looked remarkably like you couldn’t tell the difference between protection and risk and were quoting selectively from a post in a way that meant you lost all the original meaning, anyway.

Walkaround

I was writing in response to risks v benefit for more risk adverse people.

Tbh I’m on my phone and doing bedtimes, so can’t write in detail explaining what has already been explained. Read back over it and hopefully it will be clearer.

@anyoldtime - I think you need to reread things! Trying to do several things at once probably explains why you do. Don’t quote bits of other people’s posts out of context to make them look like they mean something other than what they actually meant, please.

I know the link for this has already been posted but I am going to amalgamate the diagrams into one for hospitalisation V ICU V death from Covid against AZ blood clot risk.

Does anybody not agree that the UK is currently in the Low Infection Category (55/100,000)?

@StarCat2020 - in most parts of the country, but not all, I think. The problem I have with the chart, however, is it doesn’t take into account my risk aversion to hanging around a vaccination centre when there are high levels of covid about, just to take the same blood clot risk as the one I would have at lower levels of covid. I would feel safer risking a blood clot when hospitals are less busy, so more able to deal with my blood clot, knowing that if people are not willing to risk blood clots, then hospitals will be getting more busy.

At our vaccine centre they weren't giving the AZ to under 30s, I was mistaken for being under 30 and questioned about my age, so I presume this is nationwide.

@Walkaround
I see what you mean.

That doesn't look quite as I hoped, sorry about that.

Also, feel free to rip me apart if I have done it wrong.

Data from - www.ema.europa.eu/en/documents/chmp-annex/annex-vaxzevria-art53-visual-risk-contextualisation_en.pdf

@StarCat2020 I can’t check the stats are correct, but that looks really useful, thank you.
The problem I have with comparing these figures though is that we know that with covid the risk of a bad outcome is multiplied by some very clear comorbidities, as well as by sex. But we don’t know anything about that for the blood clots, other than an as-yet unconfirmed (I think) suggestion of increased risk for women.
And I think that is the calculation many, including me want to do: their own covid risk factor (eg for a woman in her mid 30s with no comorbidities, and so, in theory, with a lower covid risk than that stated as the average for the age group - there are various web tools that let you explore these more individual risk profiles). While we can look up our own personal risk factor from covid, atm it’s a bit of a blank on the clots side (unless we assume the clots are just fairly indiscriminate, other than on age - which is what I think we have to do for now in the absence of any other information).

@PlanDeRaccordement

I’m not sure where this First Nation narrative comes from, since I would have thought everyone knows we’re not?

The BBC reported it....as fact using this graphic

Well presumably even the hard of thinking realise there aren’t only six countries in the world...

@MrsFezziwig
BBC doesn’t always present full facts when pushing narratives....

That's a useful link @StarCat2020, thanks.

This from the EMA yday seems to have a lot of the analysis of relative risks for different age groups that many of us are interested in.
See p19

www.ema.europa.eu/en/documents/referral/use-vaxzevria-prevent-covid-19-article-53-procedure-assessment-report_en.pdf

Thank you for posting the EMA link. Unless I'm reading it wrong it sounds like there have been more cases of the clots in the 30s and 40s age groups than any others?

@nordica that does seem to be what it is saying, yes.

It compares the relative risk of death and hospitalisation from covid, to the risk of these rare blood clots, by age group (but not by sex, as that data is not yet available).
My reading of it is that under a low covid transmission scenario (which is where I think we are right now in the U.K.) the relative risk of death for an under 40 year old from the blood clots is higher than from covid. For the 40-50 group it’s about neck and neck. Of course, we won’t always be in a low transmission period. But for me, this points to now possibly being the right time to offer an alternative vaccine to under 50 year olds.

Note the risk of death from covid is over a 4 month period, not forever. Getting vaccinated is still really important.
But the right vaccine.

@nordica btw i dont think the absolute numbers are the thing to focus on. I think that in many EU countries the vaccine programme focused on younger healthcare workers first, not older people. But it’s the rates that matter - which is what that table models in the annex. The U.K. data also suggests higher blood clotting reaction in the under 50s group.

Apologies if this has already been posted, but the US announced yesterday that they will be sharing stocks of the AZ vaccines with other countries, presumably to include India as a high priority.

www.cnn.com/2021/04/26/politics/astrazeneca-vaccines-us-share/index.html

We're quite close to the tipping point where the supply of mRNA vaccines will exceed the demand in the US. Some mass vaccination sites are already being closed and more supply is going out to pharmacies and medical practices. Everyone age 16 and older is now eligible.

@Carefulvulvadriver - that’s inaccurate as an interpretation, as the majority don’t die from the blood clots, so it is untrue that the charts show that more die from the vaccine than covid at any age. Also, the UK has a particularly high covid death rate compared to most other countries in the world, whereas the chart bases its data on something like 196 countries, most of which therefore have lower covid death rates. Also, would you really want to hang around a vaccine centre during a time of high covid infections when hospitals may be too busy to notice or deal with vaccine side effects in a timely fashion and when you might get covid before you’d had a chance to develop any immunity from the vaccine (which takes several weeks)? Surely it’s actually safer to get vaccinated during a time of low infection, given that whenever vaccinated with AZ, the clot risk stays the same, and given the fact that we are in the midst of a global pandemic with no guarantees of exactly when sufficient supplies of alternatives will arrive?