Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Several nations have suspended rollout of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine, after multiple reports emerged in Europe of vaccine recipients suffering brain haemorrhages, though AstraZeneca denies any link.
Norway reports three more ‘severe blood clots or brain haemorrhages’ after AstraZeneca jab
AFPnews@thelocal.no
@thelocalnorway
14 March 2021
07:45 CETNorwegian health officials reported three more cases of blood clots or brain haemorrhages in younger people who received the AstraZeneca Covid-19 jab, but said they could not yet say they were vaccine-related.
The Norwegian Medicines Agency said similar incidents had been reported in other European countries. While there was no proof of a link to the vaccine, anyone under 50 who felt unwell and developed large blue patches after vaccination should seek medical attention.
The World Health Organization said no causal link had been established between the vaccine and blood clotting after Denmark, Norway and Iceland on Thursday temporarily suspended the use of the vaccine over concerns about patients developing post-jab blood clots.
A number of other countries have also suspended use of vaccines from one batch.
The manufacturer and Europe’s medicines watchdog have meanwhile insisted that the vaccine is safe.
…
Read more: https://www.thelocal.no/20210314/norway-reports-three-more-severe-blood-clots-or-brain-haemorrhages-after-astrazeneca-jab/
The response from AstraZeneca;
AstraZeneca says there is ‘no evidence’ its COVID-19 vaccine increases risk of blood clots
AstraZeneca says a review of safety data of people vaccinated with its COVID-19 vaccine has shown no evidence of an increased risk of blood clots.
An analysis of 17 million people vaccinated in the European Union and the United Kingdom found no evidence of an increased risk in blood clot conditions, an AstraZeneca spokesperson said on Sunday.
“A careful review of all available safety data of more than 17 million people vaccinated in the European Union and UK with COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca has shown no evidence of an increased risk of pulmonary embolism, deep vein thrombosis or thrombocytopenia, in any defined age group, gender, batch or in any particular country,” the company said.
“In fact, the reported numbers of these types of events for COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca are lower than the number that would have occurred naturally in the unvaccinated population.”
…
Read more: https://www.sbs.com.au/news/astrazeneca-says-there-is-no-evidence-its-covid-19-vaccine-increases-risk-of-blood-clots
There is substantial evidence infection with Covid-19 causes blood clotting disorders in some patients, so there is obvious concern about claims the vaccine might cause similar symptoms. From the Heart Research Institute;
People with coronavirus are at risk of blood clots and strokes
As well as causing severe respiratory problems, there is mounting evidence COVID-19 causes abnormalities in blood clotting. Patients with severe COVID-19 infection appear to be at greater risk of developing blood clots in the veins and arteries.
…
Recent data from the Netherlands and France suggest that of the patients with coronavirus who are admitted to intensive care units (ICU), 30-70% develop blood clots in the deep veins of the legs, or in the lungs.
Around one in four coronavirus patients admitted to ICU will develop a pulmonary embolism.
These rates are much higher than we would usually see in patients requiring admission to ICU for reasons other than COVID-19.
…
Read more: https://www.hri.org.au/health/your-health/lifestyle/people-with-coronavirus-are-at-risk-of-blood-clots-and-strokes
What can I say? The risk of side effects from the vaccine, if any, have to be weighed against the risk of contracting Covid. Even if there is a risk, which AstraZeneca denies, whatever the vaccine does to recipients, infection with the actual disease would likely be far worse.
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As Germany becomes the ninth country to suspend use of the AstraZeneca jab, the Deputy Chair of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), Professor Anthony Harden, has hit back at claims that the vaccine increases risk of blood clotting today, saying ‘We’ve given 11 million doses here and there’s no evidence of increased risk of blood clots’.
The World Health Organisation (WHO), the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) have all made it clear there is no link between the vaccine and blood clotting, and there is no credible reason to withhold the jab.
Of course, this isn’t the first time other countries have invented problems with the Oxford jab out of thin air.
https://order-order.com/2021/03/15/jcvi-dismisses-baseless-vaccine-blood-clot-claims/
It seems really crazy. None of them have given any evidence to show that there is any higher incidence among those who have got the vaccine than yu would expect if they had not. The only numbers given are tiny numbers of individual cases out of the millions vaccinated.
Its like we have thrown out the concept of evidence and people are just making policy on the hoof in the form of gut feels.
There are lots of other examples where this same kind of thing is going on – conclusions and actions which are not justified by any kind of evidential reasoning. Very worrying.
This is nothing to do with science. The EU has completely failed to arrive at a coherent vaccine policy, and its looking for a face save. The ‘precautionary principle’ that says ‘in any doubt do nothing’ is ingrained in EU law. The German/American Pfizer vaccine is ten times the price, and is fragile and difficult to use, And there isn’t enough of it.
What can they do? tell their citizens they have made an utter mess? No. find a ‘problem’ with the AZ vaccine. To justify not giving it, so to hide the fact they haven’t got enough people or shots to do the program anyway.
As Jean Claude Juncker. ex-president of the EU famously said…”When you are in trouble, you just have to lie”.
You cannot understand what is going on here unless you understand EU politics, Brexit, and the power of Big Pharma to control a part of the medical profession to get it to say what it wants…
British vaccine Bad. German vaccine Good.
British government stopping people in EU getting vaccine. British government letting people in EU get British vaccine, but it’s dangerous.
Or it doesn’t work.
Meanwhile Britain is the highest vaccinated country in Europe, and it seems to be working. Boris Johnson’s party high in the polls.
In Europe, political parties against the EU are gaining ground.
Go figure.
Germany just suspended the vaccination with AZ.
Add France and Italy to the list of countries suspending use of the AZ vaccine.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/coronavirus-uk-cases-news-update-deaths-vaccine-latest-test/
They have to wait for the EU regulator to make the ruling. So many other countries have stopped already. Lack of understanding of statistics combined with a superstitious dread of the new.
It is not the EU’s finest hour.
I can see four possibilities:
1) It is a newly identified risk of the specific vaccine
2) It is a newly identified risk of any of the vaccines (or at least more than one)
3) It is a problem with a batch of the vaccine
4) It is unrelated to the vaccine
It would seem likely that an increase in brain hemorrhage would have been observed by now if it were all the vaccines. It seems likely it should have been observed it it were only the Astra Zeneca vaccine itself.
It could be something wrong with a batch given all the pressure to produce the vaccine. Or possibly something specific people are taking already that interacts with the vaccine.
It is most likely unrelated. Just like matching up certain kinds of cancer to the proximity of power lines turned out to be bad use of statistical methods, this could also just be seeing what people are already biased against.
I however have no problem with a short suspension – it’s important to get this right so taking time to look closely at the issue is prudent.
Not asked ’til now is the production source of the vaccine, as there are several.
Side effects are a risk factor that everyone should consider before getting the vaccine. I had some unusual side effects after getting my first shot of the Pfizer vaccine. As a result I have canceled my 2nd dose. Will wait and see if the side effect goes away.
I suspect I developed a mild case of myocarditis. This problem has also been reported among those who have contracted covid 19. My evidence is a very slight pressure in my chest along with some strange changes in my smartwatch fitness parameters.
My already low resting heart rate dropped even more (52 to 47) and my oxygen volume maximum during a workout dropped from above average (39) to below average (27) right after the shot.
If we’re into anecdotes here, I got my first Pfizer shot yesterday, about 1 PM, and at 1 PM today went on an hour and a half trail run. Felt as well as I ever do during this run (apart from slight tenderness in the shoulder they injected).
Antibodies take about a week at least to be formed.
By “right after” do you mean ” a weeks or so later”?
Good piece by Spiegelhalter here:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/mar/15/evidence-oxford-vaccine-blood-clots-data-causal-links
Show us the numbers!
Now the claim is apparently that they are seeing more cases of an unusual kind of clotting syndrome than would be expected normally. Maybe that is true, lets see the numbers though. How unusually high is this sydrome, considering the target population?
It’s the usual way to spread fear for easy and “better” gouvernement.
I have to say that I’m on the side of Griff in this argument. Covid and it’s severe pneumonia make it very much distinct from regular flu. The occupancy of hospital intensive care beds shows this clearly.
Do you think that hundreds of thousands of hospital staff worldwide are just pretending to be overwhelmed by an unprecedented demand for respiratory intensive care?
Did I miss the memo that if you’re sceptical about climate alarmism, you have to be an antivaxxer as well? Well count me out.
Yes, the hospital admission and ICU numbers are indeed the key indicator. And what they are showing is obvious.
“The occupancy of hospital intensive care beds shows this clearly”
What does the lack of occupancy of the nightingale intensive care beds show?
In the UK it shows that we have not recruited enough nurses to staff them.
So we shipped the sick back to nursing homes instead. And got the highest death rate in Europe.
You should never be with Griff on anything….
Notwithstanding that both myself and brother had it. He brought it home. The 13 people we know directly none were hospitalized. The POC protocols matter. We know from several States in the USA POC protocols they seemingly damn near had a protocol by designed to produce a specific outcome.
“Covid and it’s severe pneumonia make it very much distinct from regular flu”
Yes and the diff is political – mostly anti populism.
Populism apparently means
This is what the Telegraph says today:
_______________________________
According to the charity Thrombosis UK, up to one in 1,000 people each year will experience a dangerous blood clot in a vein, known as a venous thrombosis. That means about 66,000 people in Britain might be expected to suffer a blood clot annually – or 1,269 a week.
According to AstraZeneca, there have been 15 events of deep vein thrombosis (DVT) and 22 events of pulmonary embolism (PE) reported among those given the vaccine so far across the EU and UK, based cases up to March 8.
The company estimates that 17 million AstraZeneca vaccines have been delivered in that time. That means that the risk of suffering from DVT or a PE after vaccination is 37 in 17 million, or roughly one in 460,000.
At the current prevalence rate, in a population of 17 million we might expect 326 cases to naturally show up in the week following a vaccine, so 37 starts to look very low.
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) estimates the risk of a blood clot is even higher – around one in 500 – meaning that even more cases would be expected.
Even if all 37 cases were linked to the vaccine – which is highly unlikely – the risk is still far lower than that of dying from coronavirus, which has an infection fatality rate of between 0.5 and one per cent.
So they’ve proved that the AZ vaccine is a cure for thrombosis.
Well, the numbers speak for themselves. There have only been 37 post vaccine cases recorded. The usual incidence would lead to over 300 with no vaccine. So something does not add up.
Is there miscounting or mis-estimating?
I cannot believe the estimates of one per 500 or 1,000 are wrong – they predate the pandemic, they come from two independent sources, one a specialist charity, one which is the UK national adviser on clinical practice and drug purchases for the nationalized health service.
I also find it hard to believe that the Europeans are failing to report or catch all the clotting problems in their vaccinated group, so I assume there really have been only 37 cases.
I find it hard to believe the vaccine prevents clotting disorders, there’s no obvious mechanism this might happen.
But what we can conclude is that there is at the very least no evidence that it raises the risk, and that what needs investigation is whether it lowers it, unlikely as that may seem a priori.
As to policy, we are left with only one explanation of the policy decisions: hysterical incompetence. Maybe someone can think of some other way this makes any kind of sense. I cannot.
Its what you get when the people occupying your policy making positions are unelected Enarques. They have selected people to run the government of the EU whose only qualification is having passed competitive examinations, and got along with their superiors, and who have never been accountable, either to a Board of Directors, an electorate or customers.
Johnson, say what you like about him, found a woman who knew venture capital and the drug industry, and despite her having zero political experience he appointed her, turned her loose, and backed her all the way, and she delivered. The contrast with von der Leyen is striking.
The results again speak for themselves. In the UK 30% of the population are vaccinated versus 8-10% in the EU, deaths, UK hospitalizations and infections are falling. Thanks to the above lady they have vaccine supplies coming out of their ears and are actually talking about giving the old a third booster in the Fall. Meanwhile Brussels only seems to reverse itself every couple of days and do anything but focus on solving the problem.
Evidence shows you are100% right.
Sadly Dido Harding and Dom ‘Eye-Test’ Cummings shows that this was luck, not judgement.
The lack of people flying may have an impact on thrombosis numbers, or maybe not.
Well they certainly have shown no correlation between it and thrombosis.
At some point the risk of dying from an auto accident while driving to get the vaccine outweighs the risk of death from the vaccine itself.
I am just an average Joe. I am trying to make sense of this pandemic. My wife has an autoimmune disorder. She has had covid (apparently) got over it without to much trouble. Headlines from various outlets said don’t have the vaccine if you have autoimmune disorders, then our GP contacts her saying she should have the vaccine because she has an autoimmune disorder? The PCR tests with a CT of 45 are useless. A survival rate of 99.97%, no distinction between those who die of covid and those who die with it, effective treatments used in India, Peru and other countries but not allowed in others. In 2008 (I think) the WHO changed the criteria for what is considered a pandemic. I am not an anti vaxxer but with all this confusion I don’t want to be part of a global experiment and I certainly don’t want my wife to be. It seems an awful lot of NHS worker’s agree with me and have refused the vaccine I presume they for the most part would know better than me.
well I have autoimmune disorders. Asthma principally. I had the jab – AZ. My asthma seems better…I had less side effects than I got from last years flu jab.
Anyway I take aspirin as an anti-clot anyway because of heart artery operations.
Eric Worrall.
You are not simply just a man, you are a grownup man, even more, an old man,
with experience and knowledge, also very much to be considered as a smart intelligent learned man, in the old age… of your age… Eric.
But still Eric, Eric Worrall, do you remember, really remember your own mother telling you when you were just a young “pappy”,
that you shall never ever play with fire?!
Do you remember or not that advice of your own mother, Eric?
I do not think you actually do!
do you!!!
Not expecting much of a reply, old smart failed Eric…
As you specifically just a smart intelligible learned flexible old provocatuer…
Please make my day and try to prove me wrong in your case,
old dog whistler!
cheers
Call me skeptical (or cynical, or both), but these questions come up when I see reports like this:
How many competing vaccine companies are out there?
How many legacy media organisations are interested reporting objective information without a political or paid-for spin?
Are there any western health authorities that are not controlled by pharmacological interests?
With or without covid, laying around in a hospital for weeks or months is conducive to developing blood clots. That is why (and I say this from a non-covid experience) such patients are stabbed with heparin needles daily. That didn’t save me from a subsequent pulmonary embolism, but it was a small one and I survived.
As an Australian who has had a pulmonary embolism in the past and is seemingly doomed to AstraZeneca in the future, I can not help but be interested in these reports. I would like to believe that the Scandinavian health authorities in this report are reliable (and I know that no one should trust WHO), but I do wonder how these reports relate to recent blockages of shipping the AZ vaccine to Australia.
Anyway, interesting, very interesting.
In a discussion with my physician I pointed out that the weighing of risks was not the dire consequences of Covid vs potential damage from the vaccine. It was the risk of contracting the virus. At age 90 I want to see more data on the experiences of superannuated folks who take the various vaccines. I see some concern wrt blood clots with AstraZenica vaccine.
The chief concern is that the AZ vaccine is damaging Big Pharma profits, and the EU’s war on Britain’s audacity in giving them the finger.
More provax propaganda even a 11 years old wouldn’t accept…
I can hardly believe what I am reading today. The Italians appear to be contemplating a manslaughter prosecution following the death of one person after they received a vaccination.
You can imagine that if he was in a super high risk group, made it clear to the staff, and they went ahead regardless without taking any precaution, that might be a case of reckless misconduct. If for instance he had a history of extreme allergy, told them, they went ahead contrary to manufacturer’s guidelines, and he went into massive shock immediately.
But there is no suggestion of anything like this in the press accounts I have seen. Its just, here is a death, lets look at manslaughter. Not, we have to investigate every possible bad outcome, which of course we should. No, prosecute at once.
This is real craziness. EU governments along with Brussels seem to have lost all connection to evidence and reality.
Interesting how European countries, with a completely failed vaccine program is finding all these issues with a vaccine they have very little of. Meanwhile the EU in Brussels that has taken most of the flak say it’s safe. Political carreers are on the line here, why not blame the vaccine that you don’t have to cover your failings and lock down Europe for the third time.
At least one thing is clear from this whole AZ vaccine episode. For Europe and much of the rest of the world, the British are the new Jews. The proxies to kick when they can’t kick America. Britain justifiably today announced a 40% increase in its nuclear warhead stockpile. Maybe those will cause blood clots?
From The Spectator:
Far from subsiding, as it seemed to be doing last week, the European war over the AstraZeneca vaccine has intensified. Over the past few weeks EU leaders have swung from accusing the company – and Britain – of hoarding the vaccine and failing to supply it to EU countries, to claiming that it is ineffective, back to accusing us of hoarding it again. But the decision by several European countries to suspend rollout of the vaccine over fears of blood clots is the most serious challenge yet.
This time, however, the blame cannot be laid at the door of the EU, as the European Medicines Agency continues to declare the vaccine to be safe and has said that any negative side-effects are outweighed by the benefits. Individual European countries (and non-EU Norway and Iceland) have made the decision themselves.
The fears over blood clots have been largely dismissed in Britain – according to Professor Anthony Harnden of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation there has been no higher incidence of the condition among people who have been vaccinated than among the general population (allowing for such things as age and health conditions). However, Anders Tegnell, head of Sweden’s Public Health Agency, has suggested it isn’t so much fears of blood clots which have caused his country to suspend use of the AstraZeneca vaccine but another blood condition. His comments reported in the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet reveal the agency is more worried about a condition which causes bleeding – and which has been detected in ten to 20 cases across Europe, with a temporal link to the AstraZeneca vaccine.
Should we be worried? Many millions have been vaccinated in Britain alone and only a handful of cases have come to light, which suggests that if there are any real risks, they must be tiny compared with the threat that Covid-19 poses to the population. Given that the EU has so far administered 6.9 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, Tegnell’s figures suggest that the harmful side-effect he describes is not more prevalent than around three in every million vaccinations. By contrast, Sweden has so far suffered 1,300 deaths per million from Covid-19.
But if it does turn out there are potentially fatal side effects from the AstraZeneca vaccine in a small number of cases, that information must not be suppressed. Over the past few weeks there has been a great intolerance shown towards anyone who expresses concerns about vaccines, and social media sites have acted to delete anything which they feel contradicts scientific consensus. This week’s war of words over AstraZeneca shows just how foolish it is to pretend there is a scientific consensus on the safety of vaccines, or indeed anything else. If we want people to have faith in vaccines – and Britons have shown great faith so far – it will be necessary to be open about any risks which emerge, however small those risks may be.
Lunchtime Briefing 16 March 2021
Yes, a French spokesperson said that the concern in France was not that there is an increase in clotting incidents in general (which there is not) but that there have been several incidents of a very rare sort that have followed a vaccination.
It would be more plausible if there were some numbers on how often this very rare condition occurred before the pandemic, showing that incidence post vaccination was higher than expected.
Without numbers on that its just winging it, and if they have numbers, they are not giving them out. One would want to have the Pfizer and AZ numbers both, I think.
It must be possible that if it happens with both, its an artifact of changed reporting. Or even if it doesn’t. We are paying attention to all kinds of conditions in the vaccinated in a different way than we did to the general population before the pandemic.
From the Daily Mail (yes, I know….)
__________________________
Germany sought to justify its move by saying that one particular kind of blood clot, a ‘sinus vein thrombosis’, had occurred seven times among the 1.6million people vaccinated when only around one case would be expected.
By contrast, only four such cases have been identified in the UK out of 11million doses administered.
__________________________
The UK seems to have a pretty decent recording system – easier when you have socialized medicine and there is one giant service provider.
The Swedes are saying that the risk seems to be 3 in a million.