1 fatal case of Immune thrombocytopenia for AstraZeneca 1 of Thrombocytopenia for Pfizer

Slightly different reporting periods but I'm pretty happy with the odds and I'd take either if offered.

Much better odds than covid anyway.

There's no guidance on how to read that.

I suspect it's probably "possible side effects and deaths within 28 days of administering a vaccine", in the same way that the UK records "deaths within 28 days of a positive COVID test". One does not imply the other was the cause. (edit) other commenter points to the official UK docs.

Even with that information, you need to know the non-vaccine incidence of the illnesses in that report to make any meaningful comparison and assessment of the efficacy of the vaccine. Which is what I rely on scientists to do.

From the horse's mouth:

Ann Taylor, Chief Medical Officer, said: “Around 17 million people in the EU and UK have now received our vaccine, and the number of cases of blood clots reported in this group is lower than the hundreds of cases that would be expected among the general population. The nature of the pandemic has led to increased attention in individual cases and we are going beyond the standard practices for safety monitoring of licensed medicines in reporting vaccine events, to ensure public safety.”

https://www.astrazeneca.com/media-centre/press-releases/2021...

Yup. In the UK when you get vaccinated they (should) give you paperwork that explains how to report any side effects. Obviously if your side effects are severe like you're struggling to breath or something your first action should be to seek medical assistance for the difficulty, not fill out a web form - somebody can do the paperwork later, but there's no reason any person who, for example, experiences otherwise unexplained dizziness for an hour the next day shouldn't write it up themselves if they don't feel they need to trouble a doctor.

The Yellow Card scheme and similar schemes are not useful for direct analysis, they're basically an aggregator for anecdotes. I had a mysterious craving for a kebab after the flu-like side effects from the Oxford vaccine subsided. Probably nothing. I'm not going to waste a doctor's time with a video appointment to report "I suddenly really wanted a kebab". But while musing about it I might as well fill out this web form (with the other boring side effects too), then it goes in the big pile and hey, maybe over the millions of shots given in this country they find 8000 people reported a craving for a kebab which is enough to be interesting even though it's unclear how that could happen or what you should do about it.

Medics are going to write a lot more of these. Patient comes in with unexplained back pain, can't recall any triggering incident, but they did get the Pfizer vaccine 10 days ago? It goes in a Yellow Card report. Again, probably nothing, patients turn up with unexplained back pain all the time, vaccine or not. But collecting these anecdotes gives us a better chance to spot real problems early, so long as we don't mistake them for serious data.

An explanation of the above reports, including why they can't be used to make any inference about the safety of the vaccines: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid...

Not quite sure why I'm getting downvoted for publishing those two links, but hey :)

Anyway, here's the UK's disclaimer from the Yellow Card summary link you posted.

Part of our monitoring role includes reviewing reports of suspected side effects. Any member of the public or health professional can submit suspected side effects through the Yellow Card scheme. The nature of Yellow Card reporting means that reported events are not always proven side effects. Some events may have happened anyway, regardless of vaccination. This is particularly the case when millions of people are vaccinated, and especially when most vaccines are being given to the most elderly people and people who have underlying illness.

I don't see any problem with reporting official information.

Can we please fucking stop the downvotes?