Lisa Shaw death possibly connected to the vaccine

[Notagoodtime]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-57267169

This is so very sad

@SomeKindOfFloppyWeirdo

Did Matt Hancock make the vaccine in his shed? Is that the next scandal?

Probably as a come down after this

No disrespect. RIP Lisa.

@Poolbridge

In Australia the AstraZeneca vaccine will not be offered to those under 50 because of known risks of blood clotting leading to deaths. Citizens under 50 will be offered the Pfizer vaccine instead.

The risks of clotting with AZ have been widely reported here

They’ve been widely reported here. Along with a very clear info graphic showing the level of risk from the vaccine compared to different levels of virus prevalence.

In Australia, the calculation is slightly different due to your border controls and covid policy. Unfortunately, even with what are low levels of covid for the U.K. currently, the risks of complications from covid for a 44 year old woman outweigh the risks of serious adverse harm from the vaccine. With rising levels of Covid currently, that risk/benefit calculation sways further toward being vaccinated being the less risky option.

Perhaps we do need to look at the data again and adjust the age upwards, or look at the messages we are giving about what signs to look for. But it’s not true that because you are younger you won’t be badly affected by covid either. If it was we’d have stopped the vaccination program here by now and given the rest of our vaccines to other countries.

But such is the cult of the vaccine that any questioning of its safety is tantamount to treason

I think it would be helpful (for all of us!) to separate mumsnet from the real world. On every thread on vaccines, there are some people strongly against, some people strongly for, and the vast majority in the middle.

The problem is, the pro-vacciners see an anti-vaccine post and argue against it. The anti-vacciners see an pro-vaccine post and argue against it, quoting the post. Repeating the post. The majority of the thread is now full of these two highly polarised views fighting it out against each other, repeated and quoted over and over. I’ve certainly been guilty of this myself!

And the sensible, middle ground “have it if you want, don’t if you don’t” majority has backed nervously away from another thread.

And all that’s left are the two opposite ends of the spectrum, yelling at each other and getting nowhere.

It’s not fun

I hope this will be helpful to some who are worried by this story: theconversation.com/blood-clot-risks-comparing-the-astrazeneca-vaccine-and-the-contraceptive-pill-158652

The likelihood of a clot from the vaccine is given here as 1 in 250,000. Whereas the likelihood of getting a clot from the contraceptive pill is about 1 in 1000. The article acknowledges that the types of clots are different and the post-vaccine clots could be more serious. But, as someone who had a blood clot caused by the pill that developed into a life-threatening pulmonary embolism, I know that clots from the pill can be very serious too.

The article goes on to point out that between 40-95% of people with significant illness from Covid will develop clots. So if you catch Covid and become quite unwell your risk of some sort of clotting is very high.

Whether or not to have any vaccine is your decision but it’s helpful to have a sense of the relative risks, I think.

Also Mumsnet has around 7 million unique user visits each month, so one would certainly expect that there will be users on here who know someone who has had a clot after the vaccine. That doesn’t make it any less scary and worrying for those affected but again it would be odd given a prevalence of 1 in 250,000 if there weren’t users on here who have sadly been affected by this.

Anecdotally, part of my role is sickness absence reporting for a workplace of approx. 2100 staff. We had TWO confirmed cases of COVID since the pandemic began. In the last 3 or so months, we have had 78 instances of people being off sick following their vaccine. For context, we usually have around 8-12 new absence occurrences a month. Make of that what you will but I am doubting getting the vaccine.

I do get the argument for only vaccinating the vulnerable, but we shouldn’t be underestimating the effect of long covid. 600,000 people are thought to have LC now. To carry on the theme of ‘people in my social circle have had’, I know 3 really fit young people wiped out by LC after relatively mild illness. Neither have been able to work FT since. One has confirmed heart damage. This virus can have some nasty long lasting effects even for those who have it mildly. I was very glad to be offered Pfizer though. I’m not sure about the U.K. ploughing ahead with AZ.

It’s so sad for Lisa Shaw and her family

But equally we just aren’t in a perfect situation. Some people might die with the vaccine. Without it thousands more will die of Covid. We don’t have time to wait for the perfect vaccine that wont have potentially serious side effects. At the moment it’s all we have and for most people it’s better than Covid

I developed for the first time ever gout since my vaccine, no idea if it’s related but it’s a weird thing for a woman in her 40s to get.

it's almost inevitable that anti-vax nutjobs will draw a connection but unless they can show that these sudden deaths have suddenly become statistically more likely, or that there is some other evidence of causation, there's nothing to see here.

Interested to know (because I genuinely don’t know how these things work) whether you can do something like a freedom of information request and compare current numbers of patients under stroke/blood clot care to say two years ago? Sorry if that’s a simplistic approach but there must be way to see what the impact is and whether it’s being downplayed or not.

I know of one person who is in hospital after suffering a blot clot in her 40s. No idea if she’s had the vaccine or not but the timing would be about right for her age group. Obviously you can’t ask or you’ll be labelled a conspiracy nut job

@thedancingbear

The lack of intellect and basic understanding on display here is fucking scary.

Don't be so harsh on yourself.

@SomeKindOfFloppyWeirdo I am talking about the real world. I don't really spend much time on mumsnet at all. I'm too busy with my real life.

All of my work colleagues (I'm a teacher) are absolutely over the moon, skipping off to get their vaccines. We're all fairly young. When us mid-to-early thirty somethings got our texts through last week, everyone was asking everyone else when their appointments were, etc. When I said I wasn't getting mine and I didn't feel comfortable with having it, everyone was quite aggressive in trying to talk me into getting my vaccine.

Same with some of my friends.

Honestly, the cult of vaccine is real and it's not just in mumsnet land. And what disturbs me is that the vast majority of my friends and colleagues are very highly educated, middle class professionals. They've all taken the vaccine rhetoric at face value, or brushed aside their own safety fears as being unimportant in the face of wanting to get back to normal/go on holiday.

I feel very much in the minority, and I now do my best to avoid the subject of the vaccine altogether so I don't have to deal with people's raised eyebrows when I confess I'm not planning on getting it.

I wish people were as casual about it as you say. But in my experience, it's just as polarised out there in the real world, and this is why so many people are feeling coerced into getting the vaccine despite their concerns.

The likelihood of a clot from the vaccine is given here as 1 in 250,000.

And that’s for blood clots, not deaths from blood clots which is 58 from 33 million. If anyone’s gooder-er at maths than me, they could work out what that is per million (1.something?) which is of course even smaller.

Now some people might say that’s still too much risk and that’s absolutely their right. As long as they are properly informed.

@EnidSpyton I agree with your comments. I'm afraid to voice my opinions publicly as so many of my friends and acquaintances have drunk the Kool Aid and jumped on the "if you don't get vaccinated you're selfish and wicked" bandwagon.

Sorry to hear that Enid I’m a teacher too and know what you mean about people being happy to have the vaccine (I mean, I’m one of them - my willingness went up every time a year 10 took their mask off to sneeze in my class )

But if a fellow teacher told me they were worried/wouldn’t have the vaccine the last thing I’d do is nag them/attack them/ostracise them. I’d just assume they had a good reason (including not feeling safe). I’m sorry you’ve had to put up with that. People are weird.

[quote somgreatapollo]@bytheby people are relating their lived experiences with the vaccine. Why does that mean this thread is "getting out of hand?" Whst do you want people to do lie?[/quote]
What if they're lying about knowing so many people having had adverse effects?

‘ I hope this will be helpful to some who are worried by this story: theconversation.com/blood-clot-risks-comparing-the-astrazeneca-vaccine-and-the-contraceptive-pill-158652’

This article is over a month old. The risk of a blood clot as it’s currently understood is around 1 in 77,000.

At least stick to the facts.

I’m terrified of having the vaccine as have suffered with long covid since back in March/April 2020. I still suffer from mcas as a result of it and take anti histamines daily to calm my system etc. I’m so worried the vaccine will make this worse or worse than that, no idea what to do.

@EnidSpyton

As time goes on, more and more cases of severe side effects are being reported. I know more people who have been severely ill after the vaccine than I do people who have even had coronavirus in the first place.

I'm not an 'anti-vaxxer', but I am very concerned by the heavy-handed, biased approach taken by the government when it comes to essentially forcing this vaccine on the entire adult population. The message is constantly to insist that it is safe, that is has been well tested, that we all need to do this to ensure we're 'doing our bit' etc - and in the process, reports of severe side effects are being brushed under the carpet or their significance downplayed to ensure maximum uptake. However, the yellow card scheme used to report side effects is very underused. We do not have an accurate picture of the severity or scale of side effects, and so we as a population are not really being given an informed choice, despite being told we are.

I don't believe these blood clots are as rare as they're making them out to be.
I also don't believe this vaccine is as safe as they claim it to be.

Covid is not deadly for the vast majority of people who catch it. Why then should we essentially be coerced (because we are being coerced, by the constant messaging, and the belittling, sneering attitude of others who consider anyone who is unsure about the vaccine to be a nutjob conspiracy theorist) into taking a vaccine to protect us from a disease that for most of us poses little to no real threat? It suits the government to roll the vaccine out like this because it makes financial sense to do so. But what will the longterm effects of these untested vaccines be? And how many people will die of the side effects? We simply don't know. The data doesn't exist. It's erroneous to keep insisting the vaccines are safe, because we don't definitively know that's true. For some people, as with Lisa Shaw, the vaccine is deadly. A needless life lost to a disease that wouldn't have killed her in the first place. We need to be talking more about this, and we need to have more nuance to the vaccine conversation. It's not as cut and dried as people are making out. I'm 35. I'm slim, fit and healthy. My chances of dying of coronavirus are miniscule. There's over a year's worth of data to back that up. What are my chances of dying of the vaccine? I have no idea. There's no equivalent data to help me weigh up my options here. So why should I take the risk? At the moment, I feel like I can't even ask that question without being told I'm a hysterical conspiracy theorist. To me, though, that's a common sense question. But such is the cult of the vaccine that any questioning of its safety is tantamount to treason. And that is very troubling.

Very well written.

@SomeKindOfFloppyWeirdo Thanks very much. I appreciate that! Fellow secondary school teacher here - the amount of kids taking their masks off to talk to me... !!

I'm very much a live and let live, you do you, person. I've really been shocked at how insistent people have been surrounding the vaccine. I'd never tell anyone what medical treatment to have.

I just avoid the topic in the staffroom now...

The likelihood of a clot from the vaccine is given here as 1 in 250,000.

In Germany the stats are 1 in 100K.

Before Denmark highlighted the issue, the UK didn't have any. I find that incredibly hard to believe.

It just crossed my mind that the risk of blood clots in women could be compounded by the fact that that for those women who take the pill the total risk is combined therefore higher.

But apart from the age cut off, no one seems to be considering whether women are on the pill when given the jab.

Anyone feels the same?

@EnidSpyton

As time goes on, more and more cases of severe side effects are being reported. I know more people who have been severely ill after the vaccine than I do people who have even had coronavirus in the first place.

I'm not an 'anti-vaxxer', but I am very concerned by the heavy-handed, biased approach taken by the government when it comes to essentially forcing this vaccine on the entire adult population. The message is constantly to insist that it is safe, that is has been well tested, that we all need to do this to ensure we're 'doing our bit' etc - and in the process, reports of severe side effects are being brushed under the carpet or their significance downplayed to ensure maximum uptake. However, the yellow card scheme used to report side effects is very underused. We do not have an accurate picture of the severity or scale of side effects, and so we as a population are not really being given an informed choice, despite being told we are.

I don't believe these blood clots are as rare as they're making them out to be.
I also don't believe this vaccine is as safe as they claim it to be.

Covid is not deadly for the vast majority of people who catch it. Why then should we essentially be coerced (because we are being coerced, by the constant messaging, and the belittling, sneering attitude of others who consider anyone who is unsure about the vaccine to be a nutjob conspiracy theorist) into taking a vaccine to protect us from a disease that for most of us poses little to no real threat? It suits the government to roll the vaccine out like this because it makes financial sense to do so. But what will the longterm effects of these untested vaccines be? And how many people will die of the side effects? We simply don't know. The data doesn't exist. It's erroneous to keep insisting the vaccines are safe, because we don't definitively know that's true. For some people, as with Lisa Shaw, the vaccine is deadly. A needless life lost to a disease that wouldn't have killed her in the first place. We need to be talking more about this, and we need to have more nuance to the vaccine conversation. It's not as cut and dried as people are making out. I'm 35. I'm slim, fit and healthy. My chances of dying of coronavirus are miniscule. There's over a year's worth of data to back that up. What are my chances of dying of the vaccine? I have no idea. There's no equivalent data to help me weigh up my options here. So why should I take the risk? At the moment, I feel like I can't even ask that question without being told I'm a hysterical conspiracy theorist. To me, though, that's a common sense question. But such is the cult of the vaccine that any questioning of its safety is tantamount to treason. And that is very troubling.

Well said.

@YogaLite

It just crossed my mind that the risk of blood clots in women could be compounded by the fact that that for those women who take the pill the total risk is combined therefore higher.

But apart from the age cut off, no one seems to be considering whether women are on the pill when given the jab.

Anyone feels the same?

I believe this has been investigated, and dismissed as a theory.

Enid You’re a braver person than me - I avoid the whole staffroom! (locked myself in my classroom to eat lunch today. It was bliss!)

@thedancingbear Well said. I completely agree with you.

@pinkmagnolias

The likelihood of a clot from the vaccine is given here as 1 in 250,000.

In Germany the stats are 1 in 100K.

Before Denmark highlighted the issue, the UK didn't have any. I find that incredibly hard to believe.

It could be that the stats will change and it will turn out to be a more frequent complication, perhaps 1 in 100,000. But I think it’s still useful to know that unless we’re looking at a 1 in a 1000 risk, which seems unlikely given the number of people who have already had the vaccine, it’s significantly less risky than a medication that 3 million+ women are prescribed each year.

Now I would argue the risks with the pill are much too high and that women should be better informed about these risks and the other options available to them. But that’s a different thread!

Statistics are never going to be the whole story because they give views of large groups rather than individual circumstances. Depending on what job you do and what other health conditions you have, the risk you face from Covid vs the risk from the vaccine might be slightly different.

This isn’t about trying to push anyone - it’s just about highlighting relative risk.