Vaccine Megathread - See OP for threadbans

hmmm

Wolf359f wrote: »

Why single out just European regulators?
It's not just EU countries who have age restrictions on AZ.

No, and I know pandemics don't come around very often, but I don't think we have been well served by adopting the standards which we might have adopted in normal times during a pandemic. That's not to get all captain hindsight on it, but to look forward to the next (new coronaviruses seeming to become much more regular?) and decide how we should react. There needs to be much more consideration given to the the economic and social impacts of lockdowns, and not make it such a binary decision between risk of disease (with extended lockdowns) versus risk of rare vaccines side effects when given to vast numbers of people. We make these risk decisions all the time, e.g. when setting speed limits.

Vaccinated30

I have seen so many people in fb my age (30s) receive Pfizer vaccines today I don't know what group they all fall into but I'm so happy to see so many take them, and so many being done.

Beasty

hmmm wrote: »

Germany allows everyone over 18 get the Astra Zeneca vaccine
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/06/world/germany-astrazeneca.html

The actions of various European regulators will have to be scrutinised after this is over in my opinion. Well meaning actions, but we cannot have vaccines with rare side-effects going unused in the middle of a pandemic.

I think it's outrageous - they are delaying people getting vaccinated because they are claiming to be ultra cautious. That is nonsense - the cautious thing to do is to protect more by dishing out the vaccines unless the science says that's a riskier route (which has simply not been the case with these vaccines)

mun1

Strazdas wrote: »

Oh right, yes, well you have to wait for your specific day : I think 54 year olds are this Sunday and 53 on Monday etc.

I’m 51 and wandered onto the site last Tuesday for a look and i was able to register for the vaccine

NIMAN

Got my 2nd jab yesterday. Pfizer.

No flu symptoms from either jab thankfully, except a sore arm from the 2nd, which I am blaming on the person giving it, as it was sore going in and out.

The regulators can't just ignore the clotting issue. If anything, the fact that it's being taken seriously should increase confidence in the vaccine rollout.

In the UK, the MHRA released the latest data today. There have now been 49 deaths in the UK from a CVST following vaccination with Astrazeneca. They have also confirmed for the first time that the risk is higher in women than men, but not by a large margin.

Reports are now emerging that the UK will raise the age restriction to 40:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/covid-vaccine-astrazeneca-blood-clots-cases-latest-b1842455.html

I am very much in favour of vaccines, but it's not right to stick our fingers in our ears and pretend there's no safety issue with Astrazeneca.

Beasty

Flying Fox wrote: »

I am very much in favour of vaccines, but it's not right to stick our fingers in our ears and pretend there's no safety issue with Astrazeneca.

The science has been clear all along. You are better off with the vaccine than without it. The behaviour of certain countries over this has been outrageous in my view - they took actions which were to the detriment of their inhabitants

Micky 32

My brother who is 48 doctor called him to come in for his vaccine tomorrow.

Wolf359f

Beasty wrote: »

The science has been clear all along. You are better off with the vaccine than without it. The behaviour of certain countries over this has been outrageous in my view - they took actions which were to the detriment of their inhabitants

The problem is, each country is different.
Norway has had 6 deaths total under the age of 40 from covid. So far I think they had 2 deaths in that age group from blood clots from vaccination.
So potentially they could keep vaccinating that age group with astrazenca and possibly end up with more deaths from blood clots than from covid.
How do you convince people in that age range to take a vaccine where more than likely you will die from that than the chances of catching covid and the chances you die from covid.

Yes any vaccine is safer than getting covid, but that only makes sense if there's no alternative vaccine and the choice is between AZ and gaining herd immunity through infections. You have to access the chance of catching covid. If covid was rampant (like India) then of course the benefits outweigh the risks, absolutely.

Beasty

Beasty wrote: »

The science has been clear all along. You are better off with the vaccine than without it. The behaviour of certain countries over this has been outrageous in my view - they took actions which were to the detriment of their inhabitants

The data clearly shows that for young people, the risk of harm from the AZ vaccine is higher than the risk from covid. This was laid out very clearly at the MHRA press conference when they first placed an age restriction on AZ.

We were hearing a month ago that the risk was one in a million. The latest UK data shows the incidence rate to be 10.5 per million. This is not surprising given that they are moving down through the age groups.

It makes sense to offer a different vaccine to the younger groups under the circumstances.

Charles Babbage

Beasty wrote: »

The science has been clear all along. You are better off with the vaccine than without it. The behaviour of certain countries over this has been outrageous in my view - they took actions which were to the detriment of their inhabitants

There is a problem though with the Covid risk being so strongly correlated with age and the clot risk correlated in the opposite direction. At some point these risks become comparable for the individual, if not for society at large.

I think Ireland has a reasonable balance so far, as we haven't actually slowed down vaccinating other than for the time it took to decide what to do. With Pfizer producing so much and Curevac probably on board soon, any delay in vaccinating the younger cohort will be a couple of weeks. The AZ and J&J could be made available on an elective basis.

Technocentral

mun1 wrote: »

I’m 51 and wandered onto the site last Tuesday for a look and i was able to register for the vaccine

Cheers just registered

plodder

Flying Fox wrote: »

The data clearly shows that for young people, the risk of harm from the AZ vaccine is higher than the risk from covid. This was laid out very clearly at the MHRA press conference when they first placed an age restriction on AZ.

We were hearing a month ago that the risk was one in a million. The latest UK data shows the incidence rate to be 10.5 per million. This is not surprising given that they are moving down through the age groups.

It makes sense to offer a different vaccine to the younger groups under the circumstances.

NIAC say that the benefit of all vaccines outweighs the risks in all age groups.

Do you have any links to contradict that?

podgeandrodge

Wolf359f wrote: »

...........

Yes any vaccine is safer than getting covid, but that only makes sense if there's no alternative vaccine and the choice is between AZ and gaining herd immunity through infections. You have to access the chance of catching covid. If covid was rampant (like India) then of course the benefits outweigh the risks, absolutely.

Good point.

SharpshooterTom

Had the Astrazeneca one yesterday here in Belfast in the SSE Arena at 2pm, started feeling poorly after 9pm went to bed and woke up i the middle of the night feeling like utter ****.

Body felt like its on fire, bed's roasting hot, aches and pains everywhere, my eyes and ears are sore, shots of pain in my fingers and joints. When I woke up I had to get someone else to get me paracetamol and a glass of water, just couldn't get out of bed I was in so much f***ing pain.

I'm told if I still feel like this after 4 days to contact my GP then.

When you see what's going on in places like India and Brazil you feel fortunate to be able to get it when tens of thousands are still dying each day who have no access to any vaccines, people far older and far more in need than me (I'm only 34), so you've got to look at the glass half full and feel this is all worth it.

Turtwig

Beasty wrote: »

The science has been clear all along. You are better off with the vaccine than without it. The behaviour of certain countries over this has been outrageous in my view - they took actions which were to the detriment of their inhabitants

The science IS never clear.
This is a really nuanced complex issue that is continually evolving as the underlying risk gets better understood.

If New Zealand uses AstraZeneca or J&J in all of its population it will kill more people than covid would - possibly by some margin too. Now you might say that's only because they don't have a covid pandemic and that's the point. If there was no pandemic it would be unethical to use the AstraZeneca vaccine on people. PB, Moderna do not carry that.

The calculation every country does is very similar. In the EU they use the EMA safety profile data to assess the risk based on disease incidence, disease profile, availability of vaccines etc. The EMA themselves even state this.

Ireland's dilemma for no medical risk under 30s is:
How many people under 30 with no medical risk are likely to get covid before we can give them a vaccine?
Is it 1,000, 10,000, 100,000?
(keep in mind as we vaccinate others around them this groups risk of infection drops)
Now, how many people are there under 30 to vaccinate?
600,000?
AZ current incident rate of CVST is around 1 on 125,000. That's 4 people in ICU from the vaccine. How many do you have to infect with covid to get that outcome? Is this number of infections likely to happen? Is it ethical to offer someone something that could cause serious adverse events to protect them from something that poses little riskwhen you have alternative choices available? Keep in mind you likely need 80% uptake or higher in this population

If it was the peak of the third wave in January the risk benefit of AZ to the under 30s population would massively favour AZ. That is not the case now. The risk benefit of the vaccine still favours the individual (~1 in 100,000) but it does not favour the population that individual belongs to. Here, the vaccine is harmful to the population.

Delta2113

mun1 wrote: »

I’m 51 and wandered onto the site last Tuesday for a look and i was able to register for the vaccine

- You won't get it any quicker than someone who waits until next Wednesday May 12th and registers as requested to do so then.

plodder

plodder wrote: »

NIAC say that the benefit of all vaccines outweighs the risks in all age groups.

Do you have any links to contradict that?

I think you're misinterpreting the relevant part of the NIAC statement, which reads:

“Vaccination with Vaxzevria Covid-19 AstraZeneca vaccine is highly effective and substantially reduces the risk of severe Covid-19 disease across all age groups.

Niac realises the need to balance the significant benefits of a national vaccination programme with the very rare risk of these reported events.

While this is an extremelyrare condition, consideration must be given to the fact that it has a very high risk of death or severe outcomes."

Nowhere does it state that the risk from covid for every single age group is higher than the risk from the vaccine. In fact NIAC explained very clearly at their press briefing that the risk v benefit equation changes considerably across different age groups.

It's also worth referring to the slides presented by the MHRA, see below link to a report on it. Scroll half way down to the graphic on benefit v harm. Bear in mind the data is now a month old, the clotting incidence rate has since increased and covid circulation has decreased:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/apr/07/under-30s-in-uk-should-be-offered-alternative-covid-vaccine-to-astrazeneca-jab-says-regulator

I get that people are sensitive about anything that looks remotely anti vax, but is it not anti vax to discuss the actual data available on one specific vaccine provider. If we want people to have confidence in vaccines, we have to see that safety issues like this are properly investigated and responded to.

Strazdas

SharpshooterTom wrote: »

Had the Astrazeneca one yesterday here in Belfast in the SSE Arena at 2pm, started feeling poorly after 9pm went to bed and woke up i the middle of the night feeling like utter ****.

Body felt like its on fire, bed's roasting hot, aches and pains everywhere, my eyes and ears are sore, shots of pain in my fingers and joints. When I woke up I had to get someone else to get me paracetamol and a glass of water, just couldn't get out of bed I was in so much f***ing pain.

I'm told if I still feel like this after 4 days to contact my GP then.

When you see what's going on in places like India and Brazil you feel fortunate to be able to get it when tens of thousands are still dying each day who have no access to any vaccines, people far older and far more in need than me (I'm only 34), so you've got to look at the glass half full and feel this is all worth it.

Sorry to hear all that but it seems to be the luck of the draw with AZ. Some people are reporting all of the above and saying they felt in rag order after a dose whilst others say they scarcely noticed a thing. Hard to explain why it would affect some people like this but leave others unscathed.

Caquas

Alun wrote: »

I was in and out in no time at the Aviva this morning at 9.00. No queues anywhere along the line.

I suspect the backlogs later in the day could well be down to people arriving late and messing up the scheduling but I could be wrong.

Having spent over an hour shuffling along in that Aviva queue the other morning, I think you are right.

Everyone in that queue had an appointment- the registration desk was vetting everyone first. So either they had given a ridiculous number of 11 o’clock appointments or there were lots of people turning up late, and I mean hours late. But people who deal with the HSE know the score - no one was going to get turned away so why get up early when you can saunter in at your own pace? Of course, in a rational system they would have been told they had missed their appointment and would have to wait.

What irritates me now is that they had hundreds of floor markers to keep social distance. So instead of planning for a smooth through flow, they were planning for massive queues. Although they had an appointment system which could precisely regulate the numbers in the building. I’m going to bed cranky just thinking about that!

afro man

I assume you dont have a choice in what vaccine you get once you register.. family history of father &uncles having strokes and brain hemmorrages ..and i thought AZtra zenca not recomened for under 60's...

leck

Micky 32 wrote: »

My brother who is 48 doctor called him to come in for his vaccine tomorrow.

Is he getting it in the High Risk group?

moonage

dwayneshintzy wrote: »

Most recent data out of Israel suggests that Pfizer/BioNTech cuts asymptomatic transmission by 91.5%.



That doesn't sound "useless" to me; a vaccinated 25 year old has a much, much lower risk of getting it and passing it on to someone else if they've been vaccinated. Whether he'd have got sick or not isn't really relevant; more and more data is showing that vaccines drastically cut asymptomatic transmission.

Asymptomatic transmission is very low to start with so it's not much of a problem. There's very little virus present in the airways and if there's no coughing it's not going to be transmitted by just breathing or talking.

Even if there is very low level of transmission, there's no issue if the vulnerable are vaccinated.

Lumen

I have commented before in this thread about how Israel opened up at around 50-55% population vaccinated with at least one dose. Turns out this equates to around 80% of the adult population.

This is possibly where the "80% of adults offered a vaccine by the end of June" target comes from.

Unfortunately Israel has a much larger youth population than we do, which means our 80% of adults is something like 62% of the total population.

This is worth knowing when using sources like OWID which have per capita stats only.

In the last month we've added about 10% per capita vaccinated with at least one dose, and at that rate it will take us until the end of August to reach 62% per capita.

But sure, the ramp up is just around the corner, right?

edit: using more recent trends, i.e. the last week in OWID, puts us at about 13 weeks from hitting that target, so early August.

Also, I noticed that FF is now using the % adults without identifying that it's only the adults. From Donnelly's FB...



I welcome sanity checks of my maths.

Ted_YNWA

Mod

Anti-vax posts deleted.

Link dump also deleted.

Roanmore

My wife got a call from her doctor late yesterday asking would she be available to get the vaccine, they had one left. She took it.
She had registered on the HSE site and the girl in the surgery said to go in and cancel it but there is no option to cancel?

When the surgery updates it records will it get cancelled automatically?

CrowdedHouse

I think when she gets an actual appointment if she logs into the account there's a way to cancel it.

vienne86

CrowdedHouse wrote: »

I think when she gets an actual appointment if she logs into the account there's a way to cancel it.

Not sure about that.......I'd ring them.

stephenjmcd

Paul Reid says 46k done yesterday

MilfordBud

Sorry if this is the wrong thread, just wondering if anyone know how it works on a county by county rollout on age group?

My aunt (69) in Tipperary got her first jab today 2 weeks ago.
My uncle (66) in Tipperary got his first jab on Tuesday of this week.
My mother (63) in Tipperary hasn't recieved a text yet.

My aunt (64) is getting her first jab in Cork today.
My aunt (60) on Cork/Kerry border is getting her first next Tuesday in Kerry vacc centre.

Do they give a per capita amount to each centre and then work down the age groups or because Cork has more centres do they get more doses? Or, is there a lower uptake of vaccine among people in their 60s in Cork? I know it's only a few years but just curious.