That’s pretty much what I said up-post. My response was to cheap shots taken at the US.
Canada has always been a good neighbor through thick and thin and I expect that will never change.
Just to reinforce the view proposed by @Novelty_Bobble.
Death is not the only outcome from this virus, data gathering and research is now under way for those who have survived the virus - note the use of the word there.
Initial reports confirm what has been largely suspected and strongly anecdotal although as yet small studies.
‘Long Covid’ has been noted in many places, now some studies are taking place - its literally just been on BBC news just minutes ago - experts are saying that recovery can take more than one relapse - usually, but not always less severe and that the effects of longer term exhaustion look very similar to other viral infections.
Full recovery is variable in extent up to date, and the time to recover has not yet been determined. Worst of all is that up to 70% of those with severe symptoms are signficantly affected 5 months after initial symptoms.
Anyone who has been denied the vaccine during the long EU approval period or the precautionary - but largely baseless - accusations of blood clots has been put at very much greater risk of longer term harm.
One thing that has emerged is that the Oxford vaccine is very good at preventing severe infections, and so prevents long term Covid.
Long term Covid is much more likely than death, it too has an important social and economic consequence.
So when AstraZeneca voluntary halted their trail because they had to investigate one illness that was… what excactly? It wasn’t statistics. It was to investigate an issue they felt concerned about. It wasn’t a statistical review, it was a medical review.
AstrazZeneca’s statement from NY Times: Bolding mine
The company said it was “working to expedite the review of the single event to minimize any potential impact on the trial timeline,” and reaffirmed its commitment “to the safety of our participants and the highest standards of conduct in our trials.”
SINGLE EVENT.
Where do you peg the odds?
That was during clinical trials, before they had robust safety data. Not the same thing at all.
I’ve been looking for those odds. If anyone has a cite, if be really interested.
And when the German Paul-Ehrlich Institute determined the number of cases of cerebral vein thrombosis after vaccination was statistically significantly higher than the number that would occur in the general population during a similar time period?
Then you have to look at the numbers, just like you’ve been told over and over ad nauseum. But given that a thousand people in Europe are dying every day from Covid, it’s going to take a pretty significant vaccine complication rate to swing the cost-benefit analysis into the red.
Numbers don’t detect a flaw in the vaccine process except after the fact. Like I’ve been telling you ad nauseum.
So lets look at AstraZeneca’s process.
Fortune Magazine
Opaque numbers
At least once before the company has been caught potentially shading its vaccine data in a press release to make its inoculation seem more effective.
The preliminary results of its U.K. and Brazilian clinical trials, the press release trumpeted a 70.4% efficacy against symptomatic COVID-19. It did so again when a fuller analysis was published on December 8. But that figure was only obtained using a “blended” average that included a large group that received the planned dosing schedule of two full doses, where there was a 62.1% efficacy, and a much smaller group that had been given a half-dose initially, where the vaccine seemed to be 90% effective.
It turned out this smaller half-dose group consisted only of people younger than 55, meaning that besides being a smaller sample, there were other reasons to think that high efficacy number might not be representative of how the vaccine would perform in the general population. This was especially concerning because COVID-19 is most dangerous to older people.
The picture got murkier still as medical experts and reporters tried to get to the bottom of why some trial participants had been given the initial half-dose, with those behind the vaccine seemingly struggling to get their story straight.
Sarah Gilbert and Adrian Hill, both told journalists that there hadn’t been an error. Gilbert told The Financial Times that there “wasn’t a mix-up in dosing,” while Hill told Reuters , “ that is really not true” the Oxford team was unaware of the half-doses when it administered them.
Finally, after a few weeks, a fuller story emerged: there had been a problem with the method Oxford—which was running the U.K. clinical trial—used to verify the amount of chimpanzee virus particles in the doses a contract manufacturer had produced for it. This method meant the test showed twice as many virus particles as should have been in each vial, even though the manufacturer, using a different method, said its own test showed the vials contained the correct amount.
AstraZeneca has had data and quality control issues in the past and are again being questioned regarding their data in the US approval process.
You haven’t made a case as to why the world should have ignored a consortium of medical experts who say there was an unusually high number of a rare clotting disease (statistically) in favor of your un-cited post opinion.
Here’s the case. It’s really simple. Clotting cases are 1 in 3 million. Say we had 7.5 billion doses on hand and unlimited logistical capability and gave the AZ vaccine to everyone on the globe tomorrow, and every one of those cases died as a result. 2500 deaths, because we administered the vaccine. That’s what you’re arguing, right? We can’t do that?
But if we do, the rate of spread of the virus will plummet below replacement cases rates will rapidly dwindle. Even where pockets of mutated variants hang on for a bit, their lethality will be hugely diminished. People will pretty much stop dying from Covid. Right now, 2500 people die from Covid every few hours. Killing 2500 people with vaccine complications will save hundreds of thousands, if not millions. Therefore, I’m arguing we must continue vaccinating in the face of rare complications, even if they are occasionally lethal.
It’s the trolley problem writ large, and we must throw the switch.
Your first sentence should read "Here’s an imaginary case. It’s really simplistic.
Sigh, fine. I’ll play.
here’s an imaginary case based on the facts:
-Astrazeneca either lied or their quality control product count was 50% off from the manufacturer’s counts.
-there was a statisticaly high number of cases of a rare blood clotting disease.
-there are other vaccines currently in production/distribution that can replace Astrazeneca if an investigation showed a deadly flaw in production or the vaccine itself.
So using the numbers you provide we spare thousands of lives by using the other vaccines which could have been ramped up just like Merck is doing with the Johnson and Johnson vaccine.
I’m not suggesting a fantasy of multi-company cooperation in the production of vaccines, …. It’s happening.
I’m sorry, I think I just can’t help you.
Also, I freely grant that if we could magically replace the Oxford/AZ supply with Pfizer/BionTech or Moderna then we should probably do that, but they are different manufacturing processes and you can’t just swap one for the other. Vaccines are massively supply-constrained, and will be for several months. Even switching the AZ manufacturing to J&J, which I believe is theoretically possible at least, would result in weeks if not months of lost production, meaning tens or hundreds of millions of delayed vaccinations.
So long as vaccine complications are occurring at rates of 1 in millions, it is criminal to delay vaccinations. This would be a different calculus is the rate of complications were much higher, but it is not. The AZ vaccine works, whatever the problems with AZ’s data. Go look at the UK’s death rate over time if you don’t believe me.
AZ’s vaccine is 100% effective at preventing serious illness (from Covid). That’s good enough for me as long as the risks remain small.
A course of action can be based on an accurate calculation of statistical significance and still ultimately kill more people than it saves.
For the nth time, no one is disputing the numbers, people are disputing the action taken.
What do you mean by this? you aren’t expressing yourself very well.
Flaws in an individual batch obviously have to be detected after the fact.
The fundamental manufacturing process is part of the package that is approved by the regulators (and in this case nothing novel is being done).
What part of this are you concerned with?
what specifc odds are you looking for?
Maybe I’m being too harsh to Magiver. Let me try this another way.
Is it fair to say that your concern can be summed up thus?
“there may be a fundamental problem with either the manufacturing process used by AZ or with specific batches so far released and it is possible that those problems are leading to the very rare adverse events seen”
The odds of developing “long covid”, ideally by age and sex. I’ve seen the odds of death, and the odds of hospitalization.
I realize this is harder, because death is very binary, you can count deaths. And hospitalization mostly is, too. Whereas this is a “softer” diagnosis. But it’s a very scary outcome, and i wish i had some sense of how common it is. Maybe i should start a new topic for it.
Yes, It is a bit trickier to collate that, not least because “long covid” is something of a spectrum that defies easy classification. If my general reading throws anything up I’ll post back here but the casdave article posted is the only one that springs to mind regarding figures, and those are pretty rough.
I decided it’s a hijack of this thread, and started a new one:
But thanks.