So the risk of getting a blood clot after having the AZ jab is 4 in 1 million.
To me, that seems like people looking to spread fear and beat the makers of AZ purely for their success in getting the vaccine rolled out as quickly and smoothly as they did.
Have they released details on other vaccines and the numbers they are seeing in regards to blood clots?
No, because the risk is different between different age and gender groups. Until the cause of these side effects can be definitively determined, we won’t know if the age-sex differences are legitimate or just noise in the data.
Oh yes. I’ve given the figures before but happy to do so again. The figures (there will be another update tomorrow, they’re weekly) for the UK up to 21 March were:
Thrombocytopenia
AstraZeneca 44 reactions, 1 death
Pfizer 25 reactions, 1 death
CVST
AstraZeneca 24 reactions, 4 deaths
Pfizer 2 reactions, 0 deaths
These don’t tally with the figures given by the MHRA/JVCI today so presumably those will be shown in the update to be published tomorrow.
Worth noting that AstraZeneca has been given in far greater numbers for first doses. As at the reporting date 15.8 million AstraZeneca first doses had been given compared with 10.8 million Pfizer first doses.
Thanks. Must of missed your posting them originally.
I find it interesting that Pfizer has the same number of deaths among less reactions, yet no one seems saying boo about them being a risk in regards to thrombocytopenia. So why the hysteria over AZ?
but at the end of the day a 4 in 1 million chance is pretty miniscule.
If you had a 4 in 1 million chance of getting a blood clot from drinking water, would you stop drinking water?
Yes, curious isn’t it?
I think what might be unclear from the data is that some of these reactions may be combined. So if a patient suffers Thrombocytopenia and CVST both of those reactions are recorded but it has affected one person.
There is some suggestion that it is the combination of CVST with Thrombocytopenia that is unique to AstraZeneca (this may be so, given the low CVST reactions exhibited from Pfizer). I am not certain whether they also record deaths in the same way - or whether at that point they try to identify only one specific reaction as the cause?
I have posited a theory earlier and these updates seem to back this up a bit:
https://twitter.com/BenKentish/status/1379833914278182912
https://twitter.com/BenKentish/status/1379835357403959300
https://twitter.com/BenKentish/status/1379835733788258304
It is my theory that AstraZeneca isn’t actually causing these rare events. Instead, what is happening is that AstraZeneca is not preventing them whereas Pfizer seems to be. Or to look at it another way, Pfizer is potentially a medicinal device for vaccinating against covid and for preventing CVST in combination with Thrombocytopenia, whereas AstraZeneca is simply a vaccine against covid and has no affect either way on blood clotting (except in as far as it prevents you from dying from blood clotting caused by covid).
Ben Kentish posted a follow up tweet reaffirming that the breakdown of ages still needs to be clarified as some groups may be at increased risk than others (and at less risk of dying from covid so the risk/benefit equation balances slightly differently). There is also the possibility that the prevalence of CVST in the general (unvaccinated) population may be naturally higher in certain (age and/or gender) groups anyway?
One other thing that I’ve seen mentioned as possibly causing an increased focus on this is the temporal connection to these reactions occurring relative to vaccination. So the overall incident may be comparable to the annual rate within the equivalent timeframe (over 3 months) but if a majority of these reactions are occurring say, within 2 weeks of vaccination, then that would point to a greater likelihood of the two being linked.
The advice, which focuses on reactions specifically within 28 days of vaccination, seems to indicate that this may be what is prompting the current focus.
You can’t at this moment just count all those who have recieved the vaccine and say your chances of death are pretty much non existant.If it turns out that the majority of deaths are in a specific group,either sex,age or combination,then that has to be explored,and in the meantime if there is an alternative that choice should be taken.
If a healthy young woman with very little chance of dying from covid but is at a risk of dying from blood clots if they recieve this particular vaccine,they are gonna ask and should recieve an alternative,since there is an alternative out there.
Ok, the government has given further analysis of the relative risks depending on whether an individuals risk of exposure to coronavirus is low, medium or high.
Screenshots…
Still no numbers from The Netherlands for yesterday.
Yeah, one of the biggest red flag in terms of the possible causation, is that all the events are happening after the first shot. If there was no real causation as we’re identifying these cases just because we’re now looking for them, we’d expect an even distribution between the first and second shot.
The caveat there though is that there has been relatively few second doses of AstraZeneca so far (as I understand it too few so far for it to play meaningfully into the overall figures).
If you combine the UK ICU graph with this graph, that’s why the EMA is still recommending it for all age groups.
Most of Europe is either the Medium or High risk of exposure of of Covid 19. (6 per 10,000 and 20 per 10,000 as defined in UK graphs above). In other words even in the 20-29 year age group, in those countries your between 2-6 times more likely to end up in ICU if you dont take the vaccine.
The researcher that produced the graphs also said, that notably this does not catch the effects of long Covid. Also the effect of a young person passing it on to someone more vulnerable.
Rather than deaths, this graph is better
60 per 100,000 = Meduim Risk
200 per 100,000 = High risk
That gives proper context to the ICU low, medium and high risk.
For reference, the UK is apparently at medium risk.
