You probably know that many European countries have suspended the use of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine. This seems to be a panicky, unjustified reaction based on incredibly limited evidence. About 40 people have experienced some clotting out of >10 million doses administered. The numbers are very similar for the Pfizer vaccine, which remains unquestioned. And these numbers appear to be about what you'd expect if you monitored 10 million random mostly elderly people for a few weeks. If you apply extreme scrutiny to big numbers of people without a reference or control group, you will see all kinds of patterns that don't really mean anything. Even if the vaccine does increase the risk of clotting, it does so by a minuscule amount while protecting you from a still-burning pandemic.
European governments continue to screw this up badly. I assume they think that suspending vaccinations because of 'concerns' while they 'review the situation' makes them seem responsible and makes people trust the system more. I suspect they are wrong and that they are fatally undermining the painfully limited trust that their citizens already have. Incidentally, this has happened before; we lost the first ever vaccine for Lyme disease in the 90s because of a loss of trust:
"The clinical trials for the vaccine showed that arthritis occurred at similar rates in both the vaccine and placebo groups. But media reports and suits by plaintiff’s lawyers led to fears among members of the public. Even after a panel of outside advisers to the FDA voted that the vaccine’s benefits outweighed its risks, sales fell so low that the company withdrew the vaccine from the market" (Story from here: https://www.statnews.com/2021/03/15/the-curious-case-of-astrazenecas-covid-19-vaccine/ )
The Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine isn't the best available. But it is effective (I'd take it if I could), Europe is short of vaccines, and it is seeing a variant-driven surge. This is not helping.
I'd also like to remind you that the US and Europe are sitting on tens of millions of Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine doses that they are not using while abusing intellectual property law to prevent poor countries from manufacturing vaccines for their citizens.
European governments continue to screw this up badly. I assume they think that suspending vaccinations because of 'concerns' while they 'review the situation' makes them seem responsible and makes people trust the system more. I suspect they are wrong and that they are fatally undermining the painfully limited trust that their citizens already have. Incidentally, this has happened before; we lost the first ever vaccine for Lyme disease in the 90s because of a loss of trust:
"The clinical trials for the vaccine showed that arthritis occurred at similar rates in both the vaccine and placebo groups. But media reports and suits by plaintiff’s lawyers led to fears among members of the public. Even after a panel of outside advisers to the FDA voted that the vaccine’s benefits outweighed its risks, sales fell so low that the company withdrew the vaccine from the market" (Story from here: https://www.statnews.com/2021/03/15/the-curious-case-of-astrazenecas-covid-19-vaccine/ )
The Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine isn't the best available. But it is effective (I'd take it if I could), Europe is short of vaccines, and it is seeing a variant-driven surge. This is not helping.
I'd also like to remind you that the US and Europe are sitting on tens of millions of Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine doses that they are not using while abusing intellectual property law to prevent poor countries from manufacturing vaccines for their citizens.
