Good to hear… would be nice if the BAG would deliver such tidbits of information with their statements rather than stating it will delay vaccinations to past summer as they did
I’m pretty sure nobody stated that – to the contrary, when asked the BAG confirmed manufacturer’s intention to deliver this week. Leave it to a few attention-starved politicians and their media outlets to blow anything out of proportion (i.e. 150k late doses delaying a vaccination campaign by six months..).
It has become apparent that the reason why the UK has been slow to put India on the red list is because they need some vaccine shipments from there, and the ban was implemented when it became clear these won’t be coming. A bloody hard decision… let in c. a few hundred spreaders per week, or get another million doses.
I don’t know if someone has already shared this study comparing probability of blood clots for different types of vaccines and Covid-19 itself: https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2021-04-15-risk-rare-blood-clotting-higher-covid-19-vaccines
T28 wrote:
150k late doses delaying a vaccination campaign by six months..).
I’ve heard the very same thing today again, from someone in an informed position with one of the countries larger airlines. They have been told to expect a delay of the conclusion of the vaccination campaign and revocation of most measures to at least end of August, more realistically September. Reason quoted being “unreliable delivery schedules” as well as the delay in approving Astra Zeneca, which is not expected to happen anytime soon and even if, will have a limited effect as people will not accept it. They also have been advised that the current plan does not forsee revocation of compulsory testing requirements for entry into Switzerland as currently in force as being unrelated to vaccinations past that period. This coincides with a statement made yesterday by the taskforce, that people with completed vaccinations will be exempt from quarantine after close contact for 6 months from a date 2 weeks after their 2nd shot, however the way this is understood, this exemption does not extend to quarantine after returning from a risk country as of now. So basically, the airlines are being prepared for another summer without flights in large numbers. Within Swiss staff, rumours of a mass lay off in September, when benefits are currently set to run out, are basically taken as fact.
Obviously the next question will be, what after the 6 months? The way Pfizer has communicated recently, we may well face the next vaccination campaign starting before the first one completes, seeing that the first people to be vaccined in February will run out of the 6 months by September.
You may well question or shun everything I say, but your sources may be as wrong as mine. And I guess neither is press reports.
Excellent study link posted by Emir above:
In over 480,000 people receiving a COVID-19 mRNA vaccine (Pfizer or Moderna), CVT occurred in 4 in a million.
CVT has been reported to occur in about 5 in a million people after first dose of the AZ-Oxford COVID-19 vaccine.
Compared to the mRNA vaccines, the risk of a CVT from COVID-19 is about 10 times greater.
Compared to the AZ-Oxford vaccine, the risk of a CVT from COVID-19 is about 8 times greater.
So much for slagging off AZ for causing blood clots…
I think UVDL should offer all the excess AZ stock to Boris, at cost plus 20%. He would gladly buy it, now that India is not shipping any more 
Note that for comparison to these numbers, the yearly average incidence of CVT in a random population (disregarding Covid-19 or vaccines) is about 10 to 20 per million.
This whole topic is a good example of how most humans are quite bad at estimating, comparing and evaluating risk(s), including politicians and even medical professionals!
If I weren’t already vaccinated with BioNTech, I’d get AZ immediately if given the opportunity.
MedEwok wrote:
This whole topic is a good example of how most humans are quite bad at estimating, comparing and evaluating risk(s), including politicians and even medical professionals!
Yes, unfortunately most medical professionals are actually quite bad at understanding and using statistics properly. A great source of inspiration on that and how to do it better is the work of Prof. Gerd Giegerenzer (who btw. is a funny guy to discuss with).
His hallmark example is a study he performed in the early 2010 with physicians who could correctly not explain the risk of breast cancer after they have been given the results of a screening – as the majority significant overestimated the risk because they could not interpret the influence of false positives correctly. Quite telling.
The question was (just a little bit simplified): If you test 1 mio. patients for a disease with a test that you know to generate 1% false positives and find that the test is positive in 11k cases – what is the actual risk of having the disease?
His team e.g. publishes a monthly “Non-statistic of the month” where they analyse some statistics that made it into general media and lay out what it really says (and doesn’t). Unfortunately I only know a source in German:
https://www.rwi-essen.de/unstatistik/
For those who can’t read German: His book “Calculated risk” is brilliant as well…
You don’t really need to calculate risk, however. Just knowing what a “ppm” is gets you a very long way in realising that most of the people driving public opinion are totally thick when it comes to numbers.
Peter wrote:
Compared to the mRNA vaccines, the risk of a CVT from COVID-19 is about 10 times greater.
Compared to the AZ-Oxford vaccine, the risk of a CVT from COVID-19 is about 8 times greater.
Just to be as precise as the authors of the study:
- The numbers you quote are not statistically significant as (like the authors say correctly), one needed a much larger patient population to generate statistically significant numbers. Therefore a comparison of the different vaccines is not possible based on these numbers.
- The risk of CVT in Covid cases is taken from medical records. Therefore it was performed on a sub-population of Covid patients that either had clinical symptoms that required medical treatment or were “catches” during an official testing campaign.
In the end the numbers say something quite simple: If my personal risk of having Covid with clinical symptoms is higher than about 10%, the vaccination is safer with respect to CVT. If my personal risk of Covid with clinical symptoms is lower than about 10%, CVT risk of vaccination is higher.
Peter wrote:
You don’t really need to calculate risk, however. Just knowing what a “ppm” is gets you a very long way in realising that most of the people driving public opinion are totally thick when it comes to numbers.
Funny to read that in a pilot forum where myriads of pages are filled with the question of how to best reduce risk of inflight collisions or mechanical engine failures ;-)
