That tweet on Australia might be a little misleading. The vaccination board’s official statement as far as I read is that an under 40 year old is more likley to die of an AZ vaccine than covid given the current covid prevalance and death rate in Australia, which is virtually non-existant. They released a pdf to this effect weighting the risks and their plan is to have everyone under 40 vaccinated on pfizer by the end of the year.
If I was in charge of the country I’d do the same, and if I was being the game theory I wanted to see in the world I’d get the AZ now. But living in a city that has no covid and just does a 3 day lockdown until it’s gone every time there’s community transmission (4 or so times since march 2020 pretty evenly distributed) I’m weighing up whether to wait until either another outbreak or pfizer becomes available in a couple months.
AFAIK the main effect from the PM’s policy change seems to be around relaxing indemnity rules for GPs so that they could hand out AZ if they wanted to without getting sued by people who develop the blood clot disorder. Previously this was an issue due to the current ATAGI advice recommending against it.
I thought the PM’s statement on this wasn’t too crazy—the blood clot risks are objectively still very low and the ATAGI report contemplates the then near-zero covid in Aus as you note. I assume somebody in govt realised that at current and projected vaccine rates it’ll be a long time before the country opens up / stops having to lockdown extremely hard every time covid leaks into the community—and then the recent NSW outbreak brought the issue to a head.
Vaccination supply has not been that reliable or consistent so far, and AZ is the only vax currently made locally so I think vaccination regimes that don’t involve AZ do risk a longer ‘fortress Australia’ period.
That tweet on Australia might be a little misleading. The vaccination board’s official statement as far as I read is that an under 40 year old is more likley to die of an AZ vaccine than covid given the current covid prevalance and death rate in Australia, which is virtually non-existant. They released a pdf to this effect weighting the risks and their plan is to have everyone under 40 vaccinated on pfizer by the end of the year.
Betting that there won’t be an outbreak before then is still likley the wrong risk to be taking, but it’s less dumb than just saying AZ is more dangerous than covid full stop 😄. Indeed the Prime Minister has drawn the ire of the vacination board by opening up AZ to all ages rather than just over 40ies (apparently older people have half the risk of blood clots and obviously more risk of dying from covid).
If I was in charge of the country I’d do the same, and if I was being the game theory I wanted to see in the world I’d get the AZ now. But living in a city that has no covid and just does a 3 day lockdown until it’s gone every time there’s community transmission (4 or so times since march 2020 pretty evenly distributed) I’m weighing up whether to wait until either another outbreak or pfizer becomes available in a couple months.
AFAIK the main effect from the PM’s policy change seems to be around relaxing indemnity rules for GPs so that they could hand out AZ if they wanted to without getting sued by people who develop the blood clot disorder. Previously this was an issue due to the current ATAGI advice recommending against it.
I thought the PM’s statement on this wasn’t too crazy—the blood clot risks are objectively still very low and the ATAGI report contemplates the then near-zero covid in Aus as you note. I assume somebody in govt realised that at current and projected vaccine rates it’ll be a long time before the country opens up / stops having to lockdown extremely hard every time covid leaks into the community—and then the recent NSW outbreak brought the issue to a head.
Vaccination supply has not been that reliable or consistent so far, and AZ is the only vax currently made locally so I think vaccination regimes that don’t involve AZ do risk a longer ‘fortress Australia’ period.