This is false.

Some countries have temporary suspended using it well they investigate a very small number of people who got blood clots, which very well might be random chance. Nobody has permenently banned and in all probability the clots are a coincidence (healthy people get blood clots sometimes) and the suspension will likely be reversed once it is fully investigated.

The blood clots are apparently of a specific type, not a localized big one, but many small clots all over the body. This was on danish news Monday but I can't find an english reference.

This makes it different from the blood clots healthy people sometimes get.

> a very small number of people who got blood clots, which very well might be random chance

To put it in concrete numbers: it's seven people in a sample where it's expected to be one. We're not talking hundreds or thousands of people, but seven.

Yes but still 7-fold increase over normal, therefore it is likely that the vaccine is the issue.

The question to answer is what exactly causes this, so we can learn. It's almost unthinkable that a vaccine which has vastly greater benefits than risks will be banned over this.

I disagree with halting the vaccination, as timing is vital now. It's prime time for mutations with these infection rates since evolutionary pressure is really high right now (mixture of high spread and increasing immunity).

Third waves are rolling over Europe at this moment and we need to stop spread as much as possible to lower the chance of further mutations.

> Yes but still 7-fold increase over normal, therefore it is likely that the vaccine is the issue.

As was my point, it could be just a coincidence. The sample size isn't truly random, it's people who were picked to receive a vaccine. Correlation =/= causation. Investigation needs to be completed for the cases to be attributed to the vaccine.

On one hand, you are right.

On the other, even Sweden suspended it (Astra-Zeneca is a British-Swedish company). I wish HN would stop pretending everything is fine with this vaccine - it might really be problematic.

https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-sweden-va...

I don't see why sweden suspending it makes any more difference than any other county. They're a non-corrupt first world country. I doubt they play favourites because its a domestic company.

Anyways, im not saying don't investigate, we should investigate all possible side effects. However so far it sounds more like a coincidence so im not worried. Healthy people get sick randomly sometimes when you're looking at groups of millions of people. Sometimes by chance it will happen near when they got the vaccine. Its important to keep perspective.

There's been plenty of suggestion that other EU countries' decision to suspend AZ is somehow a political decision, and not primarily motivated by health concerns.

> Its important to keep perspective.

Yes, it is - on both sides. Just because, as someone here said, "I'm a lever puller" doesn't automatically mean that your opinion is better and more informed than that of health authorities across EU. (note that I'm not accusing you personally of being a "lever puller", I'm just venting about what I perceive to be HN propensity to take risks on other people and dismiss concerns).

What's a lever puller?

> doesn't automatically mean that your opinion is better and more informed than that of health authorities across EU

I agree that health authorities know better than I do, but i don't think i'm disagreeing with any health authorities. There are some health authorities saying its safe to keep on using it and there are some temporarily suspending while the situation is being investigated out of an abundance of caution. Unless i missed something, not a single one is saying that the vaccine is unsafe or confirmed to cause blood clots.

> I'm just venting about what I perceive to be HN propensity to take risks on other people and dismiss concerns

There is no risk free view here. Less vaccinated people means more people with covid, which among other things means more blood clots because covid can sometimes cause that (although obviously that's not the primary concern with covid).

Obviously if we can confirm a link between the blood clots and the vaccine, we should stop the vaccine. But as it stands the evidence is extremely weak bordering on non existent, and stopping using that vaccine will cost lives.

> What's a lever puller?

Sorry - trolley problem, pull the lever to kill one person and save 3 others, that kind of metaphor.

> stopping using that vaccine will cost lives

In the EU, there are alternatives (e.g. in my country I could actually register to Moderna and due to the shorter time between shots I'd actually be completely vaccinated faster with Moderna than with AZ).

Look, I'm not saying AZ should be killed either. Just that in my mind, precaution is justified. Symptoms are bizarre, affected people are young with no other obvious reasons to be affected. Also read what this guy says: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26473368

Again, I'm not saying "AZ=bad". I'm saying precaution is reasonable, and the view that precautions states are "obviously wrong" and should just plough through with vaccination using AZ is a bit simplistic and less informed than people would care to admit.

40-ish cases of blood clots out of 17 million injections is not problematic even if they were indeed caused by the vaccine (which is not proven at the moment, afaik).

People should really keep a sense of perspective and compare that with the risk of blood clots in general, the risk of Covid complications, and even more generally the risk of mundane things like going out or driving. E.g. based on the numbers above someone in my country, the UK, is 10x more likely to die in a car accident in any given year than to develop a blood clot after a jab of that vaccine...

The EMA disagrees, and this is a really foolish move IMO which will directly lead to thousands or tens of thousands more people dying from coronavirus across Europe.

It's worth pointing out that if the population vaccinated with AZ had been unvaccinated instead, then given the base frequency of Covid cases and how often severe clotting shows up in Covid cases we should have expected several hundred cases of severe clotting in the same population. Which isn't to say this isn't a potential problem. The very fact that Covid causes clotting problems lends credence to the idea that the vaccine against it could do the same thing through an auto-immune pathway. But we're in the middle of a pandemic, this problem happens in at most a tiny number of people, and I'd take this vaccine in a heartbeat.

Well, the vaccine was halted in Germany because the Paul-Ehrlich-Institut, which is not a political entity, had this to say:

"Compared to the status on 11 March 2021, additional cases (as of Monday, 15 March 2021) have now been reported in Germany. Analysing the new data status, the experts of the Paul-Ehrlich-Institut now see a striking accumulation of a special form of very rare cerebral vein thrombosis (sinus vein thrombosis) in connection with a deficiency of blood platelets (thrombocytopenia) and bleeding in temporal proximity to vaccinations with the COVID-19 vaccine AstraZeneca.

The data are being further analysed and evaluated by the European Medicines Agency (EMA).

Vaccinations with AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine in Germany will be suspended until the EMA's evaluation is complete. Today's decision affects both initial and follow-up vaccinations."

These things are not done lightly.

While they may not be being done lightly, the reasoning is still based on legal concerns rather than medical ones. https://twitter.com/leonardocarella/status/13718299183388016...

In order to maintain confidence in vaccines in general this sort of thing has to be taken seriously. You can't say that the vaccines are perfectly safe and then have a bunch of anti-vaxxers shout that people are dying from blood-clots and no action is being taken. That would severely damage trust in the health authorities which would lead to fewer people getting the vaccine from any company, not just AZ.

Better to stop everything, be clear that action is being taken, transparently evaluate the risk and then start back up or stop as appropriate.

Maybe this kind of vaccines under suspicion should be reserved for those age segments more vulnerable to the virus?

This way we avoid deaths due to Covid and at the same time don't put healthy individuals at risk that would have only mild symptoms due to Covid.

Don't know why you were downvoted on this. I agree - if there's a certain small risk of a blood clot complication, keep giving the vaccine to older people, that have a higher risk of serious COVID complications, and suspend it for younger people, whose benefit doesn't outweigh the risk.

Irecived my first doze previous week, I was supposed to get next doze in 3 weeks, but now its delivery is suspended here.

Not sure what will happen, if they do pull it alltogether, get 2 doses of some other vaccine ?

It’s clotting, not cluttering. And that decision was taken by politicians keen to cover their ass, afraid of idiotic anti-vaxxers.

Here’s what the EU regulator says. The European Medicines Agency is 'firmly convinced' benefits outweigh risks - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-56411561

Its not done by politicians. Its done by the national agencies that investigate and approve medicines.

The decision is also due to legal issues, at least in Germany. The number of cases for clots exceed the threshold. The govt has no choice to stop or face lawsuits since it is a state vaccination program.

If that is the case, why then isn't the Pfizer also suspended? Since it generated the same deaths

The number of cases or deaths are conditional on the cases in the general population, it’s not an absolute number. The cases for AZ - 7 cerebral vein thombrosis in 1.6M vaccinations - which is higher than in general population. AZ will get back on the market with a restricted use or a warning label.

> And that decision was taken by politicians keen to cover their ass, afraid of idiotic anti-vaxxers.

It's more of the EU playing "well, we didn't want it anyway" after getting the short end of the stick in AZ vaccine production (the EU has been a net exporter of AZ vaccine, but AZ deliveries are lagging behind significantly compared to UK).

They didn't get the short stick.

EU deliveries of the AZ vaccine are behind the UK ones because they started production at least 3 months later and it takes time to debug pharmaceutical plants for new drugs.

Even in the UK the production process is still inconsistent with fluctuating yields

UK got many of its initial doses from plants in the EU (Netherlands and Belgium).

One of the production places in the EU mentioned in the EU contract still isnt up and running because AZ has refused to file the proper paperwork to be able to use it. Its insane.

Is that Halix in NL - https://www.politico.eu/article/breton-no-astrazeneca-jabs-e...