Splendour wrote: ↑Thu Apr 01, 2021 10:16 am
It's hard to find any coherent data online, but when the EU first suspended AZ jabs there had been less then 20 incidents, 8 deaths recorded from more then half a million injections.
Compared to the rate of survival of infection without inoculation during the same period (thousands of deaths from half a million infections), the AZ jab is a risk I'd be willing to take, but then I've always liked cold calculations. Statistical risk analysis is a whole lot messier when it involves your own survival...
I was just listening to an NPR segment on the AZ issue. The concern is the occurrence of a very, very rare medical condition that has led to the formation of blood clots in the brains in some patients who had recently received the AZ vaccine . So far, the very few so afflicted have been predominantly young and female.
The interviewer asked the guest epidemiologist, [paraphrased] "but these medical occurrences are so very, very rare, how can they possibly offset the benefit of the vaccine and how can anyone issue a recommendation to not administer the AZ vaccine?"
The epidemiologist replied [paraphrased]:
"It isn't a simple issue making a blanket recommendation one way or another as the risk of Covid to various segments of the population does not fit under a single blanket . In the case of the young adults, primarily females, who "may" be at risk, however slight, from the AZ vaccine if current numbers hold, the question becomes, "'how does that AZ vaccine brain clot risk compare to their risk from Covid?" Brain clots, however very rare, are often fatal. Against that, the fatality risk of Covid to young healthy adults is effectively zero.
If the person in question were elderly, overweight, diabetic, or suffering from any medical condition that might be an issue, there is no question, the risk from Covid is great and by comparison the risk from the AZ vaccine is non-existent.
But, at the other end, if we are discussing the options facing a healthy young female, the math involved in the decision changes. Does the question of whether or not to take the AZ vaccine then also change? I don't have an answer to that. Not at the present."