Sadly, I think that briefly stopping the AstraZeneca vaccine (In Italy it got restarted about today, I think) was a rational decision, made necessary by absolute rampant stupidity.
I’ve heard of several people I know getting unreasonably scared about blood clots, and several people had commented over the vaccine being “unsafe” before that. If they didn’t suspended it after those nonsense reports then we’d have faced months of general idiocy about it, with every single case of thrombosis in people having received the AstraZeneca vaccine becoming a news story. As a result, a lot of people would have resisted vaccination or tried to receive the “safer” vaccine. If things spiralled out of control, I fear that would have killed a lot more than a week worth of AstraZeneca suspension.
Just saying that there was no blood clots problem while continuing vaccinations would have left the no-vax crowd free to spread doubts.
Stopping the vaccinations for a week, instead, is a commitment to “safety” so insane that it almost comes across as villainous, “we don’t care if 2000 people or more dies, if there is even a 1⁄300000 chances our vaccine might hurt you we will stop it and check it out”. It leaves no doubt about where the government’s priorities lie, safety above all, to the point of sheer evilness, and it also got people get really angry about it, so I guess that the talk about the government pushing unsafe vaccines onto you should have taken a serious hit.
So yeah, it’s the decision of killing (in my country) about 2000 people to safeguard against a panic that might or might not have spread, to the goal of getting even more people to vaccinate. It gets me mad that it was necessary, and it was necessary for very stupid reasons, but it was not a stupid decision by itself.
I’m not sure how much of this reasoning was actually responsible for the decision and how much was a consideration on popularity/liability, but I’m sure that if they didn’t stopped it things could have turned out worse.
This is a good point, and suggests that the bigger issue was whatever caused anyone to publish anything saying there seemed to be an association between the vaccines and blood clots in the first place.
Sadly, I think that briefly stopping the AstraZeneca vaccine (In Italy it got restarted about today, I think) was a rational decision, made necessary by absolute rampant stupidity.
I’ve heard of several people I know getting unreasonably scared about blood clots, and several people had commented over the vaccine being “unsafe” before that. If they didn’t suspended it after those nonsense reports then we’d have faced months of general idiocy about it, with every single case of thrombosis in people having received the AstraZeneca vaccine becoming a news story. As a result, a lot of people would have resisted vaccination or tried to receive the “safer” vaccine. If things spiralled out of control, I fear that would have killed a lot more than a week worth of AstraZeneca suspension.
Just saying that there was no blood clots problem while continuing vaccinations would have left the no-vax crowd free to spread doubts.
Stopping the vaccinations for a week, instead, is a commitment to “safety” so insane that it almost comes across as villainous, “we don’t care if 2000 people or more dies, if there is even a 1⁄300000 chances our vaccine might hurt you we will stop it and check it out”. It leaves no doubt about where the government’s priorities lie, safety above all, to the point of sheer evilness, and it also got people get really angry about it, so I guess that the talk about the government pushing unsafe vaccines onto you should have taken a serious hit.
So yeah, it’s the decision of killing (in my country) about 2000 people to safeguard against a panic that might or might not have spread, to the goal of getting even more people to vaccinate. It gets me mad that it was necessary, and it was necessary for very stupid reasons, but it was not a stupid decision by itself.
I’m not sure how much of this reasoning was actually responsible for the decision and how much was a consideration on popularity/liability, but I’m sure that if they didn’t stopped it things could have turned out worse.
This is a good point, and suggests that the bigger issue was whatever caused anyone to publish anything saying there seemed to be an association between the vaccines and blood clots in the first place.