from Hacker News

EU agency says AstraZeneca vaccine is 'safe and effective'

by ncw96 on 3/18/21, 4:17 PM with 38 comments

  • by kian on 3/18/21, 8:29 PM

    A clarification - this isn't just 'blood clots', it is an extremely rare form of blood clotting that has a 40% risk of death, in a population that has an extremely low risk of death from COVID, where it works out to be 7x as many people have died from this new form of clotting than the general population at large would have expected in the time frame given. Given the numbers we know so far, if you are a young woman who considers herself as having a 10% chance of catching COVID, the 'known' risk of dying from the AZ vaccine is now already higher than your chances of dying from COVID. Specifically, COVID has a 10x higher known death rate than the rate of this complication in the appropriately considered population. A young woman who is working from home and taking precautions could reasonably decide that the AZ vaccine is not worth the risk, without being 'statistically illiterate'.

  • by rolph on 3/18/21, 5:17 PM

    about 3/4 of theway thru the text i finally find some numbers

    >>What has AstraZeneca said?

    The company says there is no evidence of an increased risk of clotting due to the vaccine.

    It said it had received 37 reports of blood clots out of more than 17 million people vaccinated in the EU and UK as of 8 March.<<

    37 reports out of 17 million vaccinations.

    this is aprox. 1 report out of 510 000 vaccinations.

    what is not shown is spatial distribution over population. this would provide insight regarding statistical groups such as those who recieved a bad batch [if extant] or those with existing cerebovascular pathology concurrent with vaccination.

    i cant say im a fan of the adenovirus vector approach, for technical reasons, however it does appear to be a vaccine for those not immune to adenovirus.

  • by mytailorisrich on 3/18/21, 7:21 PM

    It was expected all along as the EMA never suggested otherwise.

    It's baffling that so many countries rushed into suspending the vaccine. By all means they should track and investigate potentially serious side effects but it's unclear to me why they escalated this so much when, at least based on the raw numbers (ie. about 50 cases of blood clots out of about 17 million injections), the incidence of blood clots is minimal even if caused by the vaccine (people have a higher risk of dying in a car accident than developing a blood clot after an injection...)

    I feel some countries suspended it out of 'peer pressure'. For example it seems to me that France did not really want to suspend it but did soon after Germany announced it would. Now they have already said they will resume immediately and that the PM will get an AZ injection tomorrow to show it's fine.

  • by an_d_rew on 3/18/21, 5:15 PM

    For those that want a bit of evidence and scientific background on this, Derek Lowe's writings are, as usual, an excellent source. https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/03/16/wh...

    It is a scientifically and statistically rigorous look at the available data that takes into account how people probably feel about the whole issue.

  • by tobias3 on 3/18/21, 5:23 PM

    I think the EMA press release is a better source: https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/news/covid-19-vaccine-astrazene...

    Specifically it doesn't say "safe and effective", it says "benefits outweight risks" (BBC says that at well, but they removed that bit from the headline).

  • by s_dev on 3/18/21, 5:21 PM

    Surely it's inevitable that during a worldwide rollout of a new vaccine a few 'pauses' happen -- even if people find them deeply distressing. Lots of people were claiming this was politically motiviated reather than scientificially motivated.

    Does this confirm the motivations were scientific?

  • by Smithalicious on 3/18/21, 5:38 PM

    If they keep vaccinating with this vaccine and it does turn out that the vaccine causes the deadly blood clots it will destroy the legitimacy of vaccines. "they pushed the vaccine despite knowing that it kills some people" is how it will be framed. Even though I agree that for health reasons continuing to use it is almost certainly correct, not considering the public opinion is madness and will cause massive issues. Do not increase vaccine skepticism beyond where it's already at.

  • by underseacables on 3/18/21, 5:06 PM

    At the moment this is right next to “ Norwegian experts say AstraZeneca vaccine is behind the deadly blood clots” on the front page. I think it’s up to each nation to decide for itself if a vaccine is going to work or not, but I pitty the ones they go first and suffer from overzealous cheerleading of a particular vaccines efficacy.