alioth wrote:
Notably a high level French politician (Macron came out saying “it is quasi-ineffective in older people”, based on zero evidence). A significant minority of Germans are reported to be rejecting the AZ vaccine in the wake of the FUD being spread about. This is despite the EMA approving it for all adults. Real world evidence from Scotland about the first dose already shows it is highly effective (including in the elderly) but the damage has been done in Germany it seems. Even forum members here have been calling the AZ vaccine “vapourware”.
There is a lot in that from someone who is normally very level headed here.
I did a google to see what Macron actually said (not being following the media too much the past few days). I can find UK newspapers criticizing him for saying the AZ was “quazi-ineffective”, but I can’t find what he actually said nor the context of it. That’s probably due to my poor French skills. But I’m a little reluctant to jump two feet in and criticize him until I know what he actually said and the context. The criticism might be fair…but I just don’t know.
While trying to find what he said, I thought this section from a BBC story tells a clear picture
The issue for some European countries, acting upon the recommendation from their vaccine advisory bodies, is that they think not enough of the AZ trial participants aged over 65 caught the virus to make conclusions on the vaccine’s effectiveness. This is because only two of the 660 people in that age group were infected.
Other companies, like Pfizer, included more older people earlier on in their trials, so have more data available.
MHRA advice says that the number of older people contracting the virus in the AZ trial was “too few to draw conclusions on efficacy”.
So, the French, German and other agencies are focusing on this fact.
“Their assessment is that effectiveness is not yet demonstrated for over-65s. They have not said the vaccine is ineffective for over-65s,” says Jim Naismith, a professor of structural biology at the University of Oxford.
They are not arguing, in other words, that the vaccine is “quasi-ineffective” in older people – as President Macron claimed. But they are waiting for more information, which should be available in the coming weeks.
Our government here in Ireland has also decided not to give the AZ vaccine to those over 65. They didn’t criticize the AZ vaccine. They simply said, “well we know it’s safe for those over 65, and while we don’t know if it’s effective, it probably is. But why take the chance. We’re rolling out the vaccines to two groups, and we’re currently getting more Pfizer vaccine than AZ. So we’ll give the Pfizer one to the over 65’s and the AZ to the healthcare workers and other priority groups”.
Seems to make sense to me. I imaging many other countries are doing the same.
Now some of the healthcare workers unions weren’t too happy about it. They complained “Why are we on the front line, putting ourselves in harm’s way, but only getting the crappy AZ vaccine?”
But the reality is that it’s not our government that has given them the impression that the AZ vaccine is the crappy one. Oxford and AZ have managed to do that themselves.
Really, I ’ve never seen two organisations do such selfless, generous work on such a worldwide scale, who managed to turn it into such a PR disaster.
Pfizer and Moderna came out with 95% effective rates. Then AZ come out with 67% but also said it was 90%. Most people’s reaction was “Well which is it?” A day later we got the basic picture about 2 doses verses 1.5 doses and intuitively it felt wrong to most people, even if it is correct. Then a few days later it comes out that this 90% was a “mistake trial”. That shouldn’t have mattered, as it was a valid trial, but the fact that wasn’t put upfront, gave the impression of political type spin. And then a few days later we discover that there were no over 50’s in that 90% trial group. It started to sound like a political scandal where every day there is something new and it gets a little bit worse. Incidentally it seems that everyone using the AZ vaccine is using the 2 dose strategy, which is tantamount to not accepting that the 1.5 dose result was genuine.
The idea that the AZ vaccine was finding all infections, why the Pfizer one was only finding symptomatic ones never really hit the media until the whole story had moved on.
Really AZ, should have produce the result for the overall groups for symptomatic patients only. That would have been directly comparable to the Pfizer and Moderna results.
Now what people remember is that Pfizer and Moderna is 95% effective and AZ is 67%. Hence Pfizer is the Rolls Royce and AZ the crappy one.
But this is Oxford & AZ’s poor PR performance, not political spin, at least in Ireland. The political class are full square behind the AZ vaccine. They have to be, because they need people to take it.
Then the lack of agreed supply arguments didn’t help the PR case either.
Incidentally in the later stages of the trials, most people here were saying that they’d prefer the AZ vaccine because it was conventional vaccine technology, and they weren’t too happy about a new mRNA technology. But that changed after the poor PR.
Having said that, I’m not aware of anyone refusing the AZ vaccine. Everyone here seems happy to take what they can get.
In relation to Germany, have Germany politicians been criticizing the AZ vaccine? Or has it being the public turning against it on their own?
In relation to Le S calling it Vapour Ware, that’s confusing the issue. That was in relation to supply, not it’s effectiveness.
dublinpilot wrote:
But why take the chance.
Because people are dying. There is data, just not as much as some would like. It’s certainly good enough for the MHRA, which has long been a global gold standard. Even if it were only semi-effective, it’s still far, far better than nothing. It’s not like EU countries are going to get enough of the other vaccines to completely vaccinate their 65+ populations anytime soon.
dublinpilot wrote:
But this is Oxford & AZ’s poor PR performance, not political spin, at least in Ireland.
I can assure you that neither the researchers at Oxford nor AZ give a damn about stuff like this. They’re doing it for zero profit, for the benefit of humanity. I doubt PR has crossed their minds for a moment. If some people in Europe don’t want it then that won’t bother them – there are more people who do want it, around the world, than they can possibly supply at any time in the near future.
dublinpilot wrote:
The political class are full square behind the AZ vaccine.
Not at all. Much of the European political class has been engaged in a less-than-subtle exercise to reduce public demand for the AZ vaccine so as to make the mistakes of the European Commission (including their acutely embarrassing episode of shouting and screaming at AZ and a phenomenally ill-advised intervention on the Irish border) seem less of an issue. It’s so childish and so obvious, such juvenile playground stuff: “I’ve lost my sweets, can I have one of yours?” “No.” “Didn’t want them anyway, stupid sweets are disgusting!”
Over here the European Commission’s behaviour (and subsequent political posturing) is generally regarded as hilarious. A few of the more cerebral among us, when they’ve stopped laughing, then think about the fact that a lot of EU citizens will die because of it – sacrificed on the altar of the great political unity project. That’s quite sobering. Whichever way you cut it, the UK is going to be done vaccinating months before the EU countries and eventually European electorates are going to start looking past the spin and ask why that was.
dublinpilot wrote:
Then the lack of agreed supply arguments didn’t help the PR case either.
EU countries aren’t making use of what they have got, so what’s the problem? Again, I don’t think anyone at AZ or Oxford cares about PR.
dublinpilot wrote:
In relation to Le S calling it Vapour Ware, that’s confusing the issue. That was in relation to supply, not it’s effectiveness.
Pfizer are also way behind on promised deliveries to the EU. But no screaming and shouting, no threats, not even a whisper. Why? Because if you complain, the Americans will tell them to go to hell and they’ll have nothing at all.
Certain EU-phile parts of the British political classes previously held out hope that support for Brexit was still only about 50:50 and that if Brexit went really badly over the next few years then it might have been in some way reversible at some point, at great cost and great embarrassment. Almost overnight, the EU managed to kill that hope stone dead. I’d guess that if you polled it, support for Brexit went up to at least 70%.
It doesn’t look good for the AZ vaccine in Germany. There is a lot of talk about side effects in the press and apparently people often cancel their vaccination appointments when they fear that they might get the AZ vaccine. Politicians made it clear that people currently have no choice about the brand of vaccine they get but with so many people rejecting the AZ vaccine discussions about shifting priorities in the vaccination order have started.
What you mean, rather than “it doesn’t look good for the AZ vaccine”, is “it doesn’t look good for Germans”.
AZ has no skin in this. It makes no difference to them whether Germans accept it. But perhaps, if they are really not going to use it, then let AZ know and they can send it elsewhere?
Graham wrote:
is “it doesn’t look good for Germans”.
To the opposite! At least for these Germans that are more interested in facts than in yellow press rumors and social media CTs, it looks extremely good. As many people reject AZ vaccination the ones who want to get vaccinated with it are moving forward in the Queue …
One thing I should point out is that “quasi” in France is used a lot. Especially in aviation such as quasi parallel runways ie 2 runways side by side which are not exactly parallel but near enough. (Bad explanation but I hope you can get the drift)
Otherwise the BBC quote referred to by Dublin pilot and his summary of the way things are seen in Ireland just about reflects how they are seen in France.
@Graham there is little point in saying that we are risking our lives by not taking the AZ vaccine when it was only yesterday that France got its first batch of the AZ vaccine. And as IUI it was such a small batch that it can be delivered by doctors whilst thousands of pharmacists are on standby if and at the moment it’s a big if more arrives.
Yesterday the CEO’s of the vaccine companies appeared in front of the EU commission. The CEO of AZ was asked if we can expect the pre ordered deliveries of their vaccine by the 2nd quarter as promised. His answer was “I hope so”.
Meanwhile an AZ spokesman in Italy is telling the Govenment there that everything will arrive as promised.
Personally I was all for the AZ vaccine but now I am very sceptical that any of the under 65’s around here will see it in the near future, especially as there seems to be more and more vaccine suppliers knocking on the door for approval.
AZ reminds me of the friend that said “I’ll come round and help you move that tree trunk that fell over, save you paying someone” That was 2 years ago, the tree trunk is still there.
What does that German site say? It didn’t google translate well.
Just realised many will not realise that photo I posted in my TB20 is Bill Gates!!!
dublinpilot wrote:
In which countries is the AZ vaccine being rubbished by the politicians?
Sometimes I wonder if we live in different worlds 
There is nothing like a good conspiracy I guess. AZ has NOT been rubbished by politicians, at least nor here. The politicians couldn’t care less, why should they? The one who has “rubbished” AZ is FHI. FHI consists of scientists and medical professionals. What they have said is AZ is not to be given to people above 65, because AZ has not tested the vaccine on people above 65. The AZ vaccine is instead given to medical personnel. Not much of it though, but that’s how it is used. And there have been some whining in the media about medical personnel “been given” a second rate vaccine with stronger side effects, but that has been quiet also in the last weeks.
IMO AZ is a second rate vaccine, compared with Pfizer and others, but does it matter from a pandemic point of view? Not in the situation were in right now. No one is being forces any vaccine whatsoever, it is 100 % voluntary. How many actually takes AZ, I don’t know. The availability is like 99% other brands of vaccines, and only 1% AZ. So even if not a single person gets AZ, it doesn’t really matter at all. You could say it is more of a nuisance right now.
Regarding vaccination cards or passport or what to call it, EU decided yesterday that there will be an EU wide card. Norway will jump on that bandwagon for sure. The future does not look bright. I fear this is only the start.
Peter wrote:
Just realised many will not realise that photo I posted in my TB20 is Bill Gates!!!
Depends on how much you’re into conspiracies, I guess. I recognised it anyway. Should we be worried about you? 
