[Info-vax] [Totally OT] Covid-19 vaccine situation

[Simon Clubley]

This is totally OT for comp.os.vms but the last discussion on Covid-19
in general revealed some interesting insights and I hope this one will
as well. Besides, nobody is posting anything VMS related at the moment.

I've marked the thread as OT to help you killfile it if you wish.

My question is this: What the hell is going on with the vaccine authorisation
decision makers in Europe (and elsewhere, such as Canada) at the moment ?

I'm reacting to the various decisions made to restrict or even stop the
use of the AstraZeneca vaccine just because of a few possible cases of
nasty blood clotting side effects out of many millions of doses given.
And at the moment, it's not even clear if the AZ vaccine is even
responsible for those cases because there are so few of them.

I really can't get my head around some of the decisions being made
in the rest of Europe at the moment and I am hoping that some people
who actually live in those countries might be able to provide some
insights that I am clearly missing.

Medicines in general are not safe. They are instead "mostly safe" and
they all come with risks as a reading of the safety information leaflet
for the medicine will reveal.

Some medicines have risks of very nasty side effects at the level of
1 in 10000 people taking them. Yet people take those medicines because
the benefits to most people outweigh the risks to a very small number
of people.

The number of people who may be affected by blood clots as a result of
having the AZ vaccine is far fewer than even 1 in 10000, but the same
people who want to ban the AZ vaccine in parts of Europe are the same
people who have no problems with other medicines which have nasty
side effects at the 1 in 10000 people level remaining on sale.

Why for goodness sake ?

Are some people really so risk-adverse that they are looking for medicines
without _any_ side effects and are unwilling to accept a low level of risk ?

Are these same people actually really playing politics with the lives of
their citizens for some screwed-up reason ? I really hope this one isn't
the answer to be honest.

The longer that some people play stupid games and slow down the vaccine
effort, the more opportunities the virus has to mutate into something
that the current vaccines will not work against. It also means that more
people end up dying than would otherwise have died.

The only decision that makes sense to me is to go all-out with the
vaccines that _are_ currently available in order to get the death
rate (and serious long-term problems from the virus for some survivors)
down to a much lower level and hence end up saving a lot of lives.

Oh, and I had my first AZ dose a couple of weeks ago and was very happy
to have it at the time because the benefits dramatically outweigh the
risks.

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Walking destinations on a map are further away than they appear.