I agree that stopping Astrazeneca rollout was a very stupid thing to do, but once the damage is done, I’m not so sure about resuming Astrazeneca vaccinations without any changes to recommendations.
So far, about 70 women between 20-40yrs died due to Covid in Germany. About 85% of overall Covid deaths seem to appear in connection with comorbidities. It is probably safe to assume that comorbidities play a higher role in younger patients, but let’s stay conservative: about 10 women between 20-40yrs without comorbidities died due to Covid in Germany. There are around 10 million women in Germany between 20-40yrs. Let’s say 8 million without relevant comorbidities. We get a risk of death due to Covid of about 1 in 800000 for healthy women in that age group.
So far, about 15 women were diagnosed with cerebral vein thrombosis in connection with an Astrazeneca vaccination in Germany. Those numbers differ from the UK’s because in the UK mainly older people were vaccinated with Astrazeneca. In Germany, many younger healthcare workers got Astrazeneca. 4 women between 18-55yrs died due to thrombosis, so we can assume 2 of those deaths appeared in women between 20-40yrs.
So far, about 1.8 million Germans have been vaccinated with Astrazeneca, most of them elderly and/or people with comorbidities. So let’s assume, again conservatively, that 0.5 million of those doses went to women in healthcare between 20-40yrs. We get a 1 in 250000 risk of death due to vaccination with Astrazeneca in that age group.
All this is not considering severe illness and long Covid. But it is also not considering declining cases due to warmer temperatures and (very) slowly approaching herd immunity due to vaccinations.
I’m not sure at all whether I would recommend Astrazeneca to young, healthy women who do not have a considerably above average risk of infection. At least not without having a deeper and way more thorough look at those numbers first.
You can argue that risk is so low that bothering with vaccination for young people isn’t worth it on selfish grounds and it is somehow more ethical then to not recommend it. I would strongly disagree due to long term risks of Covid, which are much higher than any risks of vaccination.
But also, blood clots are a disease of aging. Young people are at almost no risk of those. So even if the danger were real, which it isn’t and even if there it was stupidly tiny, it would be orders of magnitude lower here.
So any argument to not recommend would have applied before anyway.
I’m not arguing vaccination vs. no vaccination for young people, I’m arguing that it might not be such a bad idea for young women with a corresponding risk profile to wait a few months (at least half of which will be spent in lockdown anyways) for Biontech or Moderna.
Should you skip Astrazeneca today in order to get Biontech tomorrow? I’d say yes. Should you skip Astrazeneca now for Biontech in September if you are a young healthy woman? Maybe.
My main problem with this is the following: I would totally recommend Astrazeneca to everyone if the choice was between a) Astrazeneca, b) no vaccine.
But this is not the case (this has never been the case!). There are better, more effective vaccines—even not taking into account this CVT mess. In a world where we can produce infinitely many vaccines in 1 second, we’d have Pfizer/Moderna jabs for everyone.
So… why are we still producing Astrazeneca? It is the least likely to have an effect on transmission—we know for instance that it is less than 10% effective against B135, which is about 20% of the cases in Europe right now (see Luxembourg data). It does protect against severe disease from ancestral and B117 (still no data on B135 severe diseases), but… so does being young and healthy.
I think that we are using Astrazeneca as an emergency measure—we don’t have enough Pfizer, and people are dying. This is fine. But then, as you correctly point out, it begs the question: why are we giving it to people with close-to-none chances of dying from Covid19?
I agree that stopping Astrazeneca rollout was a very stupid thing to do, but once the damage is done, I’m not so sure about resuming Astrazeneca vaccinations without any changes to recommendations.
So far, about 70 women between 20-40yrs died due to Covid in Germany. About 85% of overall Covid deaths seem to appear in connection with comorbidities. It is probably safe to assume that comorbidities play a higher role in younger patients, but let’s stay conservative: about 10 women between 20-40yrs without comorbidities died due to Covid in Germany. There are around 10 million women in Germany between 20-40yrs. Let’s say 8 million without relevant comorbidities. We get a risk of death due to Covid of about 1 in 800000 for healthy women in that age group.
So far, about 15 women were diagnosed with cerebral vein thrombosis in connection with an Astrazeneca vaccination in Germany. Those numbers differ from the UK’s because in the UK mainly older people were vaccinated with Astrazeneca. In Germany, many younger healthcare workers got Astrazeneca. 4 women between 18-55yrs died due to thrombosis, so we can assume 2 of those deaths appeared in women between 20-40yrs.
So far, about 1.8 million Germans have been vaccinated with Astrazeneca, most of them elderly and/or people with comorbidities. So let’s assume, again conservatively, that 0.5 million of those doses went to women in healthcare between 20-40yrs. We get a 1 in 250000 risk of death due to vaccination with Astrazeneca in that age group.
All this is not considering severe illness and long Covid. But it is also not considering declining cases due to warmer temperatures and (very) slowly approaching herd immunity due to vaccinations.
I’m not sure at all whether I would recommend Astrazeneca to young, healthy women who do not have a considerably above average risk of infection. At least not without having a deeper and way more thorough look at those numbers first.
You can argue that risk is so low that bothering with vaccination for young people isn’t worth it on selfish grounds and it is somehow more ethical then to not recommend it. I would strongly disagree due to long term risks of Covid, which are much higher than any risks of vaccination.
But also, blood clots are a disease of aging. Young people are at almost no risk of those. So even if the danger were real, which it isn’t and even if there it was stupidly tiny, it would be orders of magnitude lower here.
So any argument to not recommend would have applied before anyway.
I’m not arguing vaccination vs. no vaccination for young people, I’m arguing that it might not be such a bad idea for young women with a corresponding risk profile to wait a few months (at least half of which will be spent in lockdown anyways) for Biontech or Moderna.
Should you skip Astrazeneca today in order to get Biontech tomorrow? I’d say yes. Should you skip Astrazeneca now for Biontech in September if you are a young healthy woman? Maybe.
My main problem with this is the following: I would totally recommend Astrazeneca to everyone if the choice was between a) Astrazeneca, b) no vaccine.
But this is not the case (this has never been the case!). There are better, more effective vaccines—even not taking into account this CVT mess. In a world where we can produce infinitely many vaccines in 1 second, we’d have Pfizer/Moderna jabs for everyone.
So… why are we still producing Astrazeneca? It is the least likely to have an effect on transmission—we know for instance that it is less than 10% effective against B135, which is about 20% of the cases in Europe right now (see Luxembourg data). It does protect against severe disease from ancestral and B117 (still no data on B135 severe diseases), but… so does being young and healthy.
I think that we are using Astrazeneca as an emergency measure—we don’t have enough Pfizer, and people are dying. This is fine. But then, as you correctly point out, it begs the question: why are we giving it to people with close-to-none chances of dying from Covid19?
Do you have a link? (I can’t find one by googling.)
I had a better one, but a quick googling gave me this article: https://today.rtl.lu/news/luxembourg/a/1685866.html
(second paragraph)