Your scenario was focused on a single theoretical conclusion before the fact.
Let’s use your exact scenario and add 2 more variable outcomes. The vaccine production process is bad. there is a contaminated batch. Both would kill thousands if not corrected.
Now let’s think through what they were faced with. Covid was already linked to a rare type of blood clot this is from a vaccine that has only been out for a couple of months.
They have other vaccines in use with more coming on line…
Pfizer has agreed to 200 million vaccines on top of the 300 million contracted.
Moderna has agreed to 150 million more vaccines on top of their 160 million contracted.
That’s 180 degrees wrong. The scenario has purposefully taken out any conclusions. we don’t know if the cause is linked to the vaccine or not, It could be a manufacturing defect, a tragic interaction with an unknown condition or a complete coincidence.
All we do have in the scenario is a statistic that shows how often these adverse events are happening with various unknown possibilities and options for action. Just as it was for Europe.
Why are you doing that? there is no evidence of such an issue in either the real Europe situation or my hypothetical. There’s no evidence of potential issue killing thousands because…wait for it…thousands aren’t dying.
All irrelevant because as has been made clear to you, there were no additional vaccines available to make up the shortfall. Potential future supply does nothing to plug the gap created by the pause.
So I’m done with you. At this point I think it is a waste of my breath trying to get any answers from you and anyone reading this thread that cares to understand the issues has got all the info they need. I’m just repeating myself and you aren’t understanding.
You really don’t seem to grasp what I’ve said. Lets try again. Stopping the vaccine was not limited to the blood clot issue. That was an indicator of “a” problem but not all the problems. They needed to certify the manufacturing process wasn’t flawed or there was a bad batch that could kill more than it saved.
I’m not asking you to concede anything. I’m just pointing out what medical experts from 20 countries were faced with. They had no way of knowing if the vaccine was or wasn’t compromised and frankly neither did you.
Firstly, it WAS certified for use, next they certainly had no way of knowing it was compromised because they hadn’t chosen to look at the data, the number of cases that were claimed were too few to be statistically meaningful in the data noise.
What they could have done was to investigate first before making announcements - there was no pressing reason to do otherwise and plenty of reasons not to create a meaningless scare - it got you roped in didn’t it?
Your fear is precisely the reason that they should have checked the urgency first, there was no pressing urgency, there have not be large numbers adversely affected by the vaccine, however there have been lots of people who are now unvaccinated - a significant number of whom will catch COVID and a few will die, in addition, you are now running irrationally scared because you do not have the knowledge or the information to make a judgement, and you will not be the only one who has now gotten vaccine resistance - how many we do not know, but some of those will catch COVID, and a few will die.
Was that worth it? No-one has affirmitively been proven to be damaged by the vaccine, but some people will certainly die from infection, all for the sake of a far too early rush to do SOMETHING.
Just as a counter example to what the pausing countries did, think about what happened when the Pfizer vaccine first started being administered to the general public.
Reports started coming out that some very small numbers of people were having serious allergic reactions after getting the vaccine.
Some people just hand-waved it, pointing to the relative lack of allergic reactions in the clinical studies. Others got panicky about whether it was safe.
But public health officials largely just kept collecting data, while adding some precautions about administering the vaccine to people who’d previously experienced anaphylactic reactions, and they instituted the post-vacvination observation period.
So, keep collecting data, keep investigating, put in place procedures or limitations that might help, even if only as temporary precautions. Like, add to list of symptoms to watch out for (as they have).
9 people have died from CVST since taking the vaccine in a very short time span.
At this point it’s your medical background vs the medical experts of 20 countries who thought it prudent to investigate it in the manner that they did.
How many people are expected to die of CVST in that time span?
For the record, I suspect there will be a link, because I do think the experts know what they are doing in identifying the concern. But I don’t see any reason to believe that it’s a large risk, let alone a higher risk than dying of Covid-19.
what of what? What does that have to do with the connection of Covid to blood clots or the independent conclusions made regarding the AStraZeneca vaccine?
Yes it was. There was never any indication that the AZ caused general blood clotting issues at a rate higher than expected. There was (and remains) a hypothesis that a very rare and unusual adverse event was happening at a rate of approximately 1 death in 3 million doses given. That is precisely what was seen.
no, it is a potential indicator and remains so, an indicator of a very low risk even if proved to be connected.
You say “not all the problems” but there have been no other indicators put forward that suggest anything else of concern that rises above the background noise. The original studies didn’t show any, the USA data released today doesn’t show it, the 20+ million doses delivered so far don’t show anything beyond this one, small potential signal.
The manufacturing process “certification” is part of the regulatory approval process.
There was nothing in the data that suggested or even hinted at a “bad batch”. Whatever you think that means.
I mean, I don’t want to pull out the experience card but creating certified aseptic manufacturing processes has been part of my job for years. Getting batches released as well, not to mention in-depth investigations on engineering, manufacturing and batch failure issues. This isn’t some hypothetical to me. I’ve been knee deep in exactly these sort of risk assessments before and worked with the regulatory bodies. At the core of it is always a reference to the real data and the signals being seen and the risk/benefit calculation of any course of action.
Your stance remains that you think a reasonable reaction to an unproven 1 in 3 million even is the closing down of a vaccination program that will directly cause the deaths of far more than 1 in 3 million.
Well, the likelihood of a 1 chance in 3 million event in 32000 tries is only 1.1%. You’d need a much, much, much larger study to get any sort of reliable data. Why, you’d need to do something like administer the vaccination to half the population of Europe to even have a chance of figuring out whether there’s a causal link or just a coincidental temporal link.
Well quite, that’s the benefit of big data for you. And even if a causal link were found at those sort of incidence rates you are not going to pull the vaccine.
The AstraZeneca US Phase III trial of AZD1222 demonstrated statistically significant vaccine efficacy of 79% at preventing symptomatic COVID-19 and 100% efficacy at preventing severe disease and hospitalisation.
Which is excellent and more than we could ever have hoped for at the start all this…also
Previous trials have shown that an extended interval of up to 12 weeks demonstrated greater efficacy, which was also supported by immunogenicity data. This evidence suggests administration of the second dose with an interval longer than four weeks could further increase efficacy and accelerates the number of people who can receive their first dose.
Which is indeed what the UK government is doing and I wouldn’t be surprised to see some real-world data coming back from that in the next few weeks.