My First COVID vaccination

If it’s really within 28 days it sounds as though the vaccine is reducing the number of blood clots below the average incidence in the general population in normal times!

News from Germany today. 7 incidents of a particularly rare type of thrombosis, where the average for a year is 50 (within Germany). I’m not sure how the doctor is able to make the link without knowing how many people in total have experienced this sort of thrombosis over the period of time in which the AZ vaccine has been given, and comparing it to the same period in previous years.

A French doctor has said that it is unsurprising that regulators are looking harder at the AZ vaccine because it is less effective against the SA variant, and because of AZ failing to meet its contractual obligations. I’m sure there is a sequitur in there somewhere…

What are the clot figures for people who have had each of the other vaccines and those who haven’t had one yet? That might give some sort of perspective to these figures.

A Finish study concluded no increased clotting risk for those who have had the O/AZ vaccine compared to the general population. Can’t find the report (I suspect it is in Finnish), but the researcher was one Dr Petteri Hovi. (I’m sure there will be more studies published this week, both supporting and casting doubts on this.)

My dad got out of hospital yesterday after being in for over a week for observation after suspected blood clots. However the EU don’t seem to be making a fuss about him, as he had the EU produced Pfizer jab.

Oh, and what is this? More blathering by the EU about restricting vaccine exports to countries with high vaccination rates, i.e. Great Britain.

Just making themselves look even more incompetent.

and those who haven’t had one yet?

a lot more – about 120 per 100,000 per year

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4624298/

a lot more – about 120 per 100,000 per year

Statistically that says the AZ vaccine is reducing your chances of a blood clot¹, so there’s an extra reason to have AZ.
Of course proper studies should be made to see if the Pfizer jab has similar clot busting properties and people can assess which to have to avoid VTE, oh, and Covid.

¹ As per Clive’s comment earlier

More blathering by the EU about restricting

Yeah. It’s an absolute omnishambles.

FFS, point me to somewhere nearby that stocks Moderna (or Pfizer; I’d prefer an mRNA vaccine) and I’ll be happy to pay for mine. It’s what, $35 a pop? Double that (storage and injection person) and it’ll be a nicely favourable exchange rate of €70 (if the price of Raspberry Pi etc is anything to go by).
That’s fine.

Just making themselves look even more incompetent.

Yeah. They’re having some sort of lockdown in Île-de-France. Weekend? Always? I dunno, I don’t live there so I didn’t read beyond the headline. Suffice to say that rates are rising so back into the naughty corner they go.

Why are rates rising? Likely a combination of the French’s aversion to getting vaccinated, a failure of governance to explain why this is important, an even bigger failure of governance in a vaccination programme that seems to be hotch-potch at best, and all the politics.

France stopped O/AZ because of “fears”, now they’ve restarted. But the FUD was spread, they’ll probably have even fewer people getting vaccinated. And, well, how long are these restrictions going to go on? It’s been a year already and really there’s no end in sight. We’re just mostly cruising along with partial curfew until the government makes some sort of grand announcement that this will change “as of tomorrow”.

I don’t want to hear that we’re going to have another lockdown. I don’t want to hear that they’re fiddling with the curfew hours, or redefining again what an “essential” business may or may not be. I don’t want to hear ludicrous crap like in the summer open air events of 5000 people might be permitted, but the same twelve guys can’t prop up their local bar.

What I want to hear is that there is a sufficient supply of vaccinations that the programme is now open to everybody, go call your doctor and make an appointment…

That’s how we get over this. Not bickering, arguing, stupidity, and restrictions so that by the time the general public can get their shots, there’ll be fourteen different variants that the vaccine doesn’t do so well with (which is pretty much a GOTO 10, or a snake for the non nerds).

Now the Norwegians, in contrast to the Finns, mean that they have confirmed the connection between the O/AZ vaccine and blod clots ⁰.

⁰ In Norwegian: https://www.vg.no/nyheter/innenriks/i/QmwR1V/professor-om-mistenkte-vaksinebivirkninger-aarsaken-er-funnet

they have confirmed the connection between the O/AZ vaccine and blod clots

Okay, okay, okay… Enough.

Rant follows.

Dear EU/France/Germany/Von der Leyen/Etc etc,

There may be a connection between the vaccination and blood clots. It is possible. But it’s running at a minuscule….what was it, 30 in 15 million or something?

As opposed to potentially dying of the fu@#&!=%ing virus.

There’s a reason why we’re under curfew, and parts are under lockdown.
There’s a reason why hospitals are saturated.
There’s a reason why we currently call nurses “heroes” (and not politicians).
There’s a reason why the economy is in tatters.
There’s a reason why there may well be a lot less restaurants and hotels than there were in 2019.
There’s a reason for the sunshine in the sky…

Seriously, though, I can’t help but feel that this pathetic assinine messing around with holding up the vaccinations (and spreading FUD) over potentially 30 deaths (and maybe 570 more if everybody in the EU gets vaccinated and it follows the exact same pattern) is likely to cause a lot more deaths of Covid than would ever die of blood clots or other weird side effects.

30 deaths from the vaccine, maybe? France alone has lost ninety one thousand to Covid. The UK, hundred and twenty something. Spain, seventy two. Germany, seventy four. All of those numbers are units of thousands. Over a third of a million deaths in those countries alone.

Abundance of caution? Where was that when the first lockdown ended and everybody started to mingle again without any advice other than “wash your hands and no kissing each other”. Where was that when you decided to ban the sale of face masks and keep them all reserved for medical staff (rationing would have been better). Where was that when it took abso-bloody-lutely forever to decide to require people to wear face masks in public and in the workplace?

Sod your caution, it’s not being done for our benefit, it’s a political weapon because you’re upset that the annoying pompous Brexit Brits have not only come up with a vaccine (which Sanofi and l’Institut Pasteur failed to do) but the utterly incompetent government headed up by Asshat Johnson and Bitchy Patel as Home Secretary have actually managed to put in a decent attempt at a vaccination programme.

F..k the lot of you. Nobody cares what politicians think. They aren’t qualified to know the difference between a picture of Covid and a picture of Pacman. How about instead of the threats and the bickering and all the pompous bullshit, you instead work out how to ramp up vaccine production so that everybody can be treated. Preferably before there are so many variants that the vaccine doesn’t work any more.

Think you can manage that?

Yours sincerely,

A very annoyed former EU citizen.

Now the Norwegians, in contrast to the Finns, mean that they have confirmed the connection between the O/AZ vaccine and blod clots

Oh, so they’ve confirmed the figures – which are lower in vaccinated people than in the baseline population.

With the figures they’ve given vs. the figures for a normal year the vaccinated seem to be less likely to have a clot. Perhaps AZ should start marketing the vaccine as a clot avoidance medication? Although if Pfizers clot figures are lower still, then they have a better shot at that market segment.

A very annoyed former EU citizen.

Norway, of course, is not part of the EU… ;)

I agree that it seems like a manageable risk though – personally I would take the O/AZ vaccine without hesitation, if it were offered to me, but (un)fortunately I’m not in a risk-category this year, so I’ll have to wait. Every bit helps, and it’s a race against the clock.

Oh, so they’ve confirmed the figures – which are lower in vaccinated people than in the baseline population.

What the Norwegians are saying is that they’ve found a causal connection in the form of specific antibodies that they mean can only be explained as a reaction to the vaccine, though they cannot say what the causal mechanism is yet. They also claim an elevated occurrence of serious clotting incidents in vaccinated versus the general population, for Norway at least.

What the Norwegians are saying is that they’ve found a causal connection in the form of specific antibodies that they mean can only be explained as a reaction to the vaccine,

Google translate gives something that’s almost as readable as a management report (although I think Google is fractionally better)

From that I get the understanding that they saw something that might be linked but without a causal path it’s just a theory.

Taking a theory and thrashing it to hell and gone is the scientific method, so they have a lot of work ahead, and it may just indicate a set of people with a predisposition to a particular immune reaction akin to population sub-groups allergic to nuts. It could just be a reaction to the cleansing wipe before the jab.

A school friend had an allergy to the adhesive in some makes of medical dressing items commonly known as “plasters” another was allergic to the adhesive on the “non-allergenic” plasters…

From that I get the understanding that they saw something that might be linked but without a causal path it’s just a theory.

Sure. They are very clear that their conclusion is that the excessive blot clots and related low trombocytes ⁰ are related to the vaccination as an event, but perhaps the conclusion that it is related to the vaccine cannot be justified.

A school friend had an allergy to the adhesive in some makes of medical dressing items commonly known as “plasters” another was allergic to the adhesive on the “non-allergenic” plasters…

I developed, not an allergy perhaps, but some kind of immune–response, to many of those that last year, as well as against medical gloves (both the latex and non-latex variety). We never quite made out what triggered it, and it was very annoying, but it seems to have been temporary.

⁰ Essentially making the subjects pretenders to the throne of all the Russias, though I guess that’s a small comfort when you’re suffering internal haemorrhage.

Sure. They are very clear that their conclusion is that the excessive blot clots and related low trombocytes 0 are related to the vaccination as an event, but perhaps the conclusion that it is related to the vaccine cannot be justified.

Indeed.
Related misuse of statistics:- The “alcohol related” mortality “J” curve.
Back in the 1990s there was a graph touted around showing mortality rates loosely associated with alcohol consumption where the curve was a tilted J where the x-axis was increasing alcohol consumption.
Unfortunately for accuracy on the “alcohol” element the proponents had omitted mention of the lung cancer deaths contributing to the steep rise as x increased beyond 5-6 units per day.

1. I, like other normal people, drink beer or spirits, I tend not to inhale them.
2. Until the lung cancer element kicked in the net effect of drinking was a reduced mortality.

I contributed these details to one of the workers on the study, he agreed the cancer need to come out and be considered on its own. It’s a pretty obvious active/passive smoking element for social drinkers¹ which was something I knew about, since I was the chair of the local branch of CAMRA at the time, and we did come across a fair few smoke-filled pubs.

The graph then showed the health benefits of alcohol up to 8 units per day (upto 8 every day, phew) and since the study was funded by an anti-alcohol group the funding promptly ceased. It would have been useful additional data for passive smoking research, but I don’t think the funders were actually interested in health.

For me the moral is that all research studies should, in the scientific way, be regarded with a jaundiced eye. If it stands up to critique, then it probably has value.

¹ Or French/Belgian coffee house drinkers of yesteryear.

Brilliant anecdote! I so miss real ale… There are two pubs serving it regularly where I live, but going to the pub is of course a bit of a no-no, and you can’t get ale to take away in Sweden…

Brilliant anecdote!

Not so brilliant for the guy I’d been talking to – I found out about the defunding when I bumped into him in the city centre (I’d been down there on a job and happened to visit the same shop)

He was, sadly, unemployed at that point because the funding had gone…

Looks like because of a shortage of AZ vaccine, they may let chemists give out other types – the mRNA ones. :-)

https://www.ouest-france.fr/sante/virus/coronavirus/covid-19-les-pharmacies-pourraient-bientot-vacciner-avec-les-doses-pfizer-et-moderna-7204828

Now I only have to wait until about 2028 for when the government decides to open up vaccinations for “everybody else”. :-/

Or, maybe if they can secure enough Pfizer and Moderna, they’ll stop mucking about with who can and can’t get it and just get on with vaccinating everybody who wants it.

Well it’s 1800 now so that’s just over 2 hours.

I had my second yesterday afternoon, very efficiently done at my local Health Centre. There were no effects from the first back in January, but I feel a bit groggy from this one, although nothing dramatic.

My partner had her second shot (Pfizer) last week. No side-effects except a sore arm the first time, but she and got all the common side-effects (except head-ache) this time, and was basically out cold the day after. Most of it had passed on day three, but she was still feeling a bit queasy yesterday. I guess that shows it works though?

Shows that the immune system is reacting. According to articles I’ve seen the older you are, the lower the reaction in symptoms, but higher anti-body production.

In the wake of the enormous¹ clot rate of 9 in 2.7 million from the AZ vaccine (has anyone found a reference for the figures for other vaccines?) the news that another vaccine is coming out of trials and heading through the approval system is probably welcome.

No doubt euro-politics will kick in with the news that Boris has signed up for “up to 60 million doses”

Oh, and like the AZ vaccine it stores at fridge temperature for months.

¹ Not really

Astra-Zeneca again kind of banned in Germany for below 60 year olds. This time it sounds like a serious concern stated by the chief doctors of five hospitals, a try of a translation of their statement after some incidents: “Putting all together we can state, that for the example within the group of 20 to 29 year old women, women have a very bad unfortunate benefit/risk-profil for the use of Astra-Zeneca vaccination”. “In that respect the use of Astra-Zeneca vaccination for younger women is currently not justified.”

Again I wonder…no data, do discussion about that in Great Britain ?…all very weird…

This time it sounds like a serious concern stated by the chief doctors of five hospitals,

Long experience of what doctors might do without a good solid reason backed by figures leads me to say: Where are the comparative figures for the same demographic who were given a different vaccine?

A simple table of age group and incident rate per million for each vaccine will do.

Repeat for male or female. It’s easy to see the risk groups and the best treatment for each sex/age group from that.

For some reason various interested parties aren’t putting the info in a simple table.

Edit: After a bit more digging and reading I realise that my cultivated ethnic blindness made me miss the different health effects for different ethnic groups.

Still not finding any figures for comparison. AZ seem forthcoming¹, what about Pfizer? and others.

¹ News boys and girls have those figures.

what doctors might do