That's why they are either limited or outright banned for certain populations.
Moderna remains banned in the Nordics for boys/men under 30. NHS does NOT give AZ boosters, only mRNA. NHS will not give AZ for those under 40, only mRNA.
That's not true. We don't know which condition triggers this effect. Remember, the UK data doesn't show this effect.
It's not known ahead of time who is susceptile to this effect.
It still can't even be ruled out if this is just a statistical anomaly. That's somewhat unlikely though but we just don't know which precondition is increasing the risk.
In an ideal situation we would suspend vaccinating with AZ but it's also a fact that not vaccinating would be putting more people at risk. Currently, there are not enough alternatives around to do otherwise.
This is an excellent point, and exactly the reason why the UK decided to stop administering the AstraZeneca vaccine to people under 30. Not sure why you're being downvoted.
For people under 30, particularly women, the risk of blood clots from AZ is higher, while at the same time the risk from coronavirus infection is lower. When there are alternative vaccines available with no evidence of similar side effects, it makes sense to temporarily stop administering AZ/J&J to those groups to investigate if there are any risk factors we can use to predict and protect those who may be most vulnerable to side effects. (It has been suggested that young women on certain types of birth control are at highest risk of blood clots after AZ.)
That said, as some have pointed out, the risk of blood clots is still thought to be very low, even for women under 30, and anti-vax groups as well as the vaccine hesitant may see this news as a sign that it's not safe for anyone to take any vaccine. However, I don't think we as a society should actively try to conceal news or research about vaccine safety so that people don't worry. In my opinion, people have a right to know, and efforts to conceal concerning information often backfire, producing more public distrust.
> Overall, the Covid-19 vaccines are overwhelmingly safe and remarkably effective. But as the shots went into millions of arms starting late last year, researchers uncovered a handful of sometimes serious side effects, which were so exceedingly rare
> A study looking at the early days of Israel’s booster campaign, giving another dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine to people 60 or older, did not appear to turn up any new safety concerns
These are quotes from that article. It talks about some of the rare side effects and generally concludes that there are few safety concerns from booster shots. What is your bar for "anti-vax garbage"?
your argument would make some sense if this were the only adverse type of events that existed, and if you used the total number of AZ vaccine administered, rather than total of all SARS2 vaccines, which include SputnikV, JJ, pfizer mRNA, moderna mRNA, Sinovac, etc. .
No, other vaccines certainly do not have the same thrombosis risk as AZ. We easily have enough data here that we would have seen that by now. There is the myocarditis risk for the mRNA vaccines, but that is quite a different thing than the thrombosis risk for AZ. The myocarditis is not deadly.
The argument for vaccination of young boys is more complex, and different expert panels have come to different conclusions there. The UK is more of an outlier in this case. There is still enough uncertainty here, especially on the consequences of the infection itself that it's a really difficult decision.
As for point C, there is no reason to believe that Novavax would be safer than the mRNA vaccines. It could be, but there isn't anything inherently superior here that would automatically make it safer.
That is misinformation. While the vaccines are generally safe and effective, they are not "completely" safe. There is a small but real risk of serious side effects, particularly myocarditis which has mainly affected young males. The risks from not getting vaccinated are still higher, but let's be straight with parents about the safety profile.
Regarding your third point, you are baking in an assumption that the UK AZ vaccine is the same as the EU vaccine, but they made in different facilities.
There could be a manufacturing issue that causes this. There could be a genetic issue that causes this. There could be a drug interaction issue that causes this. There could be an issue with how the doses are being injected.
Or it could be a total coincidence and these issues were caused by something else.
Regarding your first point, the chances of dying from COVID in the USA if you are under 20 are like 1/100,000 if you have no pre-existing conditions. All people under 40 is probably higher than that, but I wouldn't take that AZ shot if there was a 1/25,000 shot of dropping dead. I certainly wouldn't give it my children. I'm not saying those are the odds of dropping dead from the AZ shot, but if they were, its not worth it for younger people.
The vaccines have regular approval in the EU by the EMA, the US approval is the odd case here. And there is no reason to expect a significant risk for side effects that only appear after several years, for vaccines they generally appear reasonably close to the date of the vaccination.
And you're seriously downplaying the risks of COVID-19 here, of course it is relatively harmless for very young people. But it is seriously dangerous for a large part of the population that is older.
I believe it’s not a lot higher than for the population but it’s a lot higher than the expected risk is for the group that gets the side effects now: young women.
That, together with the fact that this group has minimal risk from the disease means it’s concerning. You don’t want to give someone a vaccine with risks of the same order as the disease.
Giving AZ to 60+ is still almost no concern even with this rate of adverse effects because they show a lower thrombosis risk and of course a massively higher risk of severe illness or death from the disease.
Countries with a mix of AZ and mRNA vaccines like many EU countries can probably use AZ for 60+ and since AZ underdelivers, the rest can take mRNA. Countries that have only or mostly AZ are in a more difficult situation.
> AZ "is responsible" for the serious adverse effects (not blaming them - it is most likely due to poor application method and the vaccine getting into the bloodstream)
No vaccine, no medicine really, is 100% safe. A very small percentage of people do have serious adverse reactions to them, potentially deadly. Distributing an ineffective vaccine causes harm to that population for no reason.
Not ignoring but these are very rare side effects. It's something for doctors to know about in order to help treat the unlucky. But I think we have different meanings of the word safe.
These vaccines are very, very unlikely to give anyone a hard time. Nothing's without risk, but even for the unlucky that doesn't even sound that bad.
As soon as my son is eligible, he's getting it, too.
As can be seen, getting infected is actually not that bad compared to getting the AZ vaccine. In younger age groups the vaccine became hard to recommend contrary to what many claimed and continue to claim on social media.
You also obviously haven’t read case reports for the people that got the blood clots and survived, if you’re only considering deaths as an undesirable outcome. They will have to adjust to significant sequelae for the rest of their lives.
> Are all medications used to prevent an highly transmissive disease
We may argue this makes any rare side effect from the vaccine, which is meant to avoid a potentially serious illness, more acceptable than those from the pill.
How much of that is just confirmation bias? The AZ vaccine isn't approved where I live (USA), but I know plenty of people who have had scary reactions to the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. The scary reactions are apparently proof that the vaccine is working as expected on your immune system, but that's small consolation when you're puking your guts out and suffering from dehydration.
That's why they are either limited or outright banned for certain populations.
Moderna remains banned in the Nordics for boys/men under 30. NHS does NOT give AZ boosters, only mRNA. NHS will not give AZ for those under 40, only mRNA.
Follow the science below:
[1] https://thl.fi/en/web/infectious-diseases-and-vaccinations/w...
[2] https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/coronavirus-covid-19/coronavir...
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