The graphs here as a very general overall snapshot of the evolution of cases in Europe is interesting.
Is there data on how many Italy has actually vaccinated?
Found something here
As of March 16, 2021, there had been over 6.8 million COVID-19 vaccine doses administered in Italy
That is roughly 10% of their population, which is in line with the “10.3 per 100” in the BBC article (but the BBC can’t use the word “percent” because it would be dividing its audience into ones who went to school and ones who didn’t 
).
France is departing from the above 10.3%, with On March 7, 2021, the number of people who received at least one dose of vaccine amounted to 3,881,967 according to the French Ministry of Health figures
I have not seen any actual data that suggests especially rare forms happening at a rate higher than that expected in the general population.
I have however seen various news articles using non-specific weasel words like “it has been said that some extremely rare form happened in country X”.
A programme like this is going to be a coding nightmare from a pharmacovigilance perspective. I would wager no dataset even exists for analysis yet. Someone has got to dig into those anecdotes and get it into a form that can be analysed quantitatively.
The data reported to the MHRA so far (which is a far easier to analyse dataset because its 10m+ doses in a homogeneous reporting environment) shows a higher rate of clot events for Pfizer than for AZ, but neither above the level expected in the general population.
One would have thought these various national regulators had already lost most of whatever credibility they might have had over the 65+ issue.
Graham wrote:
I have not seen any actual data that suggests especially rare forms happening at a rate higher than that expected in the general population.
Fuji_Abound wrote:
Germany’s health minister, Jens Spahn, said at a press conference on 15 March that there had been seven reported cases that may be related to CVST out of 1.6 million vaccinations in Germany. Estimates of how many incidences of CVST you might expect in the general population over a year vary from two to five cases per million people to more than 15 cases per million, depending on the study
Let’s say in two months since the start of vaccinations with AZ in Germany we can expect 3 cases (they give 5-15 per million per year, so say 1 per million per month; rounding up)
A poisson distribution with lambda=3 gives a value of 7 or above in 3.4% of all cases. We would expect this to occur around once every five years or so; so certainly a strong indication that the AZ vaccination is a contributor. Of course there is no correction here for seasonality, sample selection etc etc so it can’t be more than indication, though.
Assuming for the moment that the vaccine is the sole cause of this – it certainly is tough to decide (and communicate) that this is a perfectly acceptable number of deaths in the context of lives saved by vaccination and carry on regardless.
But that is why we select our politicians in a carefully designed, rigorous process to get the brightest and most capable, and pay them the big bucks… hold on, wait a minute…
Cobalt wrote:
But that is why we select our politicians in a carefully designed, rigorous process to get the brightest and most capable, and pay them the big bucks… hold on, wait a minute…
He, he.
Cobalt wrote:
A poisson distribution with lambda=3 gives a value of 7 or above in 3.4% of all cases. We would expect this to occur around once every five years or so; so certainly a strong indication that the AZ vaccination is a contributor. Of course there is no correction here for seasonality, sample selection etc etc so it can’t be more than indication, though.
But, (and I appreciate you make this point), I would have expected a significant adjustment for the age of the population vaccinated, if we are comparing the incidence in the overall population, with the incidence in an aged part? I appreciate we dont know the veracity of any of these assumptions, and I dont even know if we should expect a higher incident of brain clots in more elderly people (but it would seem dangerously logical?)
I rather hope when we get to the promised statement we are provided with the numbers which were relied on, so we can at least see how the conclusions were reached – albeit this is to say that it wasnt a straight forward knee jerk reaction by the politician, in which case why would they allow numbers to get in the way of a good story?
Sure, and with no pressure you would certainly take the time to make these adjustments and see what the result is
My statistics knowledge is nowhere near good enough to work out what it would take to “explain away” the effect.
MedEwok wrote:
My sister works in the German Health Ministry and says the decision was wholly made by the PEI without political intervention.
Same here in Norway. The only sound political way of doing this is to push for injecting as many vaccines as possible. It makes me wonder though:
Pretending this is a political issue is more of a conspiracy theory IMO. Besides, AZ is a Swedish company, not UK, so what exactly would the political issue be?
I suppose that it is a simple case of covering their backsides and making sure that nobody can later claim that “they should have known better”.
Psychologically the AZ ban could not have come at a worse time and will further give food to the anti vaxxer movement to torpedo the efforts. Obviously it is also very contraproductive to the vaccination effort if one of the major suppliers drops offline in a time where there is virtually no vaccine available for anyone in most parts of Europe.
We will need a massive increase of quantity in the next 1-3 months in order to satisfy the demand, yet I am very sceptical that vaccination goals can be met even by approximation in most countries. There is simply not enough of the moderna or pfizer vaccines available, now that AZ is out of the race for the forseeable future it is really imperative that alternative vaccination suppliers get certified and can enter the market. J and J, Sputnik, whatever.
It will be too late for 2021 as the 3rd wave is fully developing now, but it may save 2022, even tough I have my doubts there as well. Particularly as more and more it becomes clear that even with all those vaccined who will take it, most restrictions such as social distancing and masks will need to remain for a long time to come. Some experts yesterday here were talking about several years more. Basically, the new normal that has been talked about. I don’t know how such predictions will influence people’s ill to vaccine at all. Also any further delay will risk the virus mutating towards resistance and nullifying the vaccination effort.
Personally I would take just about any vaccine offered, if there were any to be had… but there won’t be for us until earliest fall 2021.
MedEwok wrote:
My sister works in the German Health Ministry and says the decision was wholly made by the PEI without political intervention.
Sorry, but this is factually wrong!
Theoretically the PEI could take such a decision (and has so in the past for other drugs/vaccines): If they have strong and clear evidence of a safety issue, they can issue a safety letter, that immediately stops the use of the specific vaccine in whole Germany. Typically happens when they get evidence of some contamination during manufacturing process or similar events.
This did not happen with the AZ Covid vaccine!
What happened with the vaccine was that the head of PEI issued a press statement, saying that he “would advise to stop the use of AZ” mainly based on the concern that “people loose trust in this vaccine”. Interestingly, the PEI itself admits that for certain hormone based contraceptives the risk of thrombosis is still by order of magnitude higher, but the PEI says in its press statement “yes, but for those contraceptives the risk is stated in the patient information while for the AZ vaccine this risk is not yet stated in it”. In brief: PEI has no concern about the vaccine but only about the paper that comes with the vaccine!
In this situation, the politics took the decision to stop vaccinating with AZ. Yes, there are people (also in Germany) asking “what should politicians do after PEI advised it?”. This question, however, also did not matter when e.g. they decided to take away vaccination slots from people at risk to vaccinate teachers against explicit advise from the responsible scientific boards…
LeSving wrote:
Is everything in the UK purely political?
Apparently not. In fact it would seem the UK is the one place in Europe at the moment where the decisions being made about vaccines are not political.
LeSving wrote:
Where do English speaking (only) people get information about non-English speaking countries?
A variety of sources, same as you. One might be the FT articles cited by @Cobalt.
LeSving wrote:
Pretending this is a political issue is more of a conspiracy theory IMO. Besides, AZ is a Swedish company, not UK, so what exactly would the political issue be?
I think we did this one. AZ was formed by the merger of the Swedish company Astra AB and the British company Zeneca, which had been the pharma/bio division of ICI and was the larger, dominant entity. The resulting company is headquartered in Cambridge and has its primary listing on the London Stock Exchange. It is for all practical purposes, and insofar as any multinational company can be said to have a nationality, British.
However, the nationality is not really the political issue (although it does make for good rhetoric from Brussels – it allows them to blame an outsider). The political issue is that AZ produces a cheap and effective vaccine but the EU, because of how it went about procurement, is in second place in the queue behind the launch customer, doesn’t have access to significant quantities of it, and as a result is about to be enveloped by a third wave of Covid-19. It is, of course, necessary to blame someone for this.
Regarding vaccine scepticism, obviously this is (historically) most widespread in France. The suggestion that these moves are to retain public confidence is unconvincing – do they really think their people are less sceptical than they were at the end of last year?!
We might say these efforts to retain public confidence are……“quasi-ineffective”. ;-)
