Jerseygirl

Yup and women don’t think twice about taking ‘the pill’.

scrubbedexpat091

Aren't most of the clots from the AZ vaccine in younger women mainly?

scrubbedexpat091

Hospitalizations in BC up 20% in a week.

397 in hospital with 120 in ICU, more patients in hospital than at any point in the pandemic.

1,168 cases today with 6 deaths.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/briti...l-14-1.5987219

bats

Mainly but the recipients are mainly younger women. I can't find any data on percentages of male / female.

abner

It's not hard to understand at all:

• There is a risk, apparently quite small but clearly correlated with the AZ vaccine (and likely the J&J one as well). And it is a profound side effect, with a current mortality rate in the 25 - 40% range when encountered.
• There are (apparently) less-risky alternative vaccines available in many jurisdictions, e.g. Pfizer/Biontech and Moderna. And these alternates appear to be more effective against Covid-19 as well.
• Astra-Zeneca has done an abysmal job of dealing with major regulators, and latterly the wider public, in promulgating the efficacy and safety results from its major clinical trials.

If one is a pro-vaxxer, why would one want to settle for the AZ vaccine when there are better alternatives? And if one is an anti-vaxxer, or a nervous-about-vaccines fence-sitter, why would any of the recent news about the AZ vaccine lead to a willingness to line up for the AZ version?

BristolUK

Not sure if you saw the discussion over on the dark side about this.

I made the point about the normal blood clotting incidence among the population being something like 15 or 16 per million whereas the rate among the vaccinated was 'only' 4 per million. I wondered that one might expect it to be a higher incidence rate given the vast majority of people vaccinated were old/at risk - targeted for exactly that reason.

But it seems the blood clot risk is particularly among younger women and not many of those will have been vaccinated yet. The ones that would be are most likely to be those in some sort of health care setting.

So the 20 million mentioned that have been vaccinated (referenced in an article we saw) will include very few younger women, some of whom may have received Pfizer anyway.

So there has been a much smaller number of AZ doses given to the at risk younger women than the 20+ million reported.

I don't know what % of all those vaccinated so far are younger women but with the focus on more obviously at general risk groups it might not even be as much as 10%. If it was then the incidence rate increases tenfold.

It's probably less than 10% and adjusting it for those that didn't get AZ anyway, the real figure might be 20 times that currently being suggested.

caretaker

It's not hard to understand at all. We've been told that it's of the utmost importance to vaccinate everyone as quickly as possible, and the Astrozeneca vaccine is the one available right now. The Phizer that we have is going to those under 55 since they're in a higher risk category from Astrozeneca than older people are. It's been on the news for weeks, so I won't bother posting any links.

vinegarboy

It'd be interesting to know what % of older people would actually rather have the Pfizer instead of the AZ that they're being lined-up for.

Teaandtoday5

I am (slightly) too young to qualify for the AZ vaccine, but if they offered I would be straight in the car.

caretaker

That statistic isn't as important to me as the survival rate of seriously ill covid patients. I would have rather had the Pfizer but gladly took the protection that was available. I was told the second shot could be announced anytime between 4 weeks to 4 months. Maybe in the long run Astrozeneca will prove to be better than we think now, maybe we'll get a booster in the fall for added protection from variants... Right now I think it's crucial to get a good vaccine for kids and continue expanding the elegibility. The drive through in Regina has been accepting 55+ for about 2 weeks, and those 48 and over can book appointments, so it's been opening up steadily.

vinegarboy

That's good to hear on the 55+ front for Regina. I'll be relocating there in June. I'll be fully vaccinated (Pfizer x2 in the U.S.), so no doubt Sask Health will be happy to add my data into their stats sheet.

Danny B

Does anyone know if after the 2nd dose, is this vaccine 'for life' or do you have to get them both again at some point in your life similar to Tetanus etc, every 10 years?

Siouxie

Nobody knows the answer to that unfortunately.. they haven't worked that out yet!

scrubbedexpat091

Wont know for a while unfortunately. Pfizer knows theirs lasts at least 6 months as of now. It's a fluid ongoing situation with the vaccines.

vinegarboy

I think that the public health authorities aren't sure about these things themselves yet, & they're waiting to see what the longer-term data reveals.

I think that a likely scenario would probably see us all being offered a cocktail booster shot sometime next year, tailored to variants (both extant & any that are yet to turn up mutationally).