Please explain that our (Experts) in the EU / in Europe....
Additonal Information:
https://orf.at/stories/3209053/
(German)
J&J delays vaccine shipment in Europe
U.S. pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson (J&J) is delaying the shipment of its CoV vaccine in Europe. It had reviewed reports of cerebral vein thrombosis and "proactively" decided to take the step, it said Tuesday - just on the day the manufacturer's first doses arrived in Austria.
"Until there is clarity about any side effects, these doses will not be delivered to the vaccination centers and will not be vaccinated," the health ministry said of the 16,800 doses that arrived in Austria. A total of 2.5 million were ordered. J&J had only begun shipping its vaccine, approved in March, to EU states on Monday.
Austria has gotten almost no J&J so far afaik - one recent shipment were 3600 units, which is nothing - afair the week before the J&J export stop.
You also have to differentiate between risk of someone dying/becoming seriously injured because of the vaccine and just the general calculation for how many less people will die if just you give out the vaccine.
Just to give you a sense of what we are talking about - the vector vaccines (of which J&J is one) lead to an about 500x higher likelyhood of one specific (rare) form of thrombosis - leading to 20 people throughout germany being suspected to have gotten that - and about two of them dying (thats out of 15 million who have gotten at least one shot - most of which were AZ (the vector vaccine where this 500x thing was noted).
As a result giving it to people entirely was put on hold for a few days, while the problem was researched, then a treatment for the problem was created, then using the vaccine again was greenlit, but only for people older than 60. Calculations in the background are concerning "potentially affected 'good' life years" - so out of ethical concernes you only give it to your 60+ years population.
Remember this is still while in aggregate saving many more lives through the vaccine - issue, the people who might die because of it, might not be the same that would have died from Covid -- so as a result you are _required_ to at least mitigate that number. (Thats the few days where giving it out entirely was paused - until a remedy was found (issue you need to be in hospital for the remedy
).)
Thats the logic that should be behind the pause, and the eventual continuation.
On J&J we are at the pause stage. US has more options, because potentially they could press forward with Pfizer and Moderna (not showing that (very, very rare statistically) issue, but at a significantly later date of most people getting vaccinated in the US.
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In states with many fewer people (like Austria), you might not stop giving it out at all, and might not even start giving it out only to the old folks (less potential good life years harmed), simply because statistically you wouldnt see even one death, or only one death from the complication. This should be (I'm guessing) the cause why austria didnt stop.
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"But you told people, that it was tested and safe!" Issue - the entire testing population, was tens of thousands of people, but likely too small for the issue to show up in statistics, remember, for germany the risk of this occuring from the AZ vaccine might end up being around 1:750000.
Statistics. They are fun.
So you only see it in wide roleout, and have to react to it in wide roleout, which the US are doing with J&J currently.
And germany did with AZ a few weeks back.
And austria didnt at all (react), because it has too small of a population for it to matter statistically (doesnt mean you'd not get a handful of cases, much lower deaths caused by it (if its causal is an entire discussion in itself - but at least some notable voices currently say - probably, yes)).
All of this is specualative - but usually about how this should normally go -- I dont know if there are PR reasons for stopping as well. (Public starts to talk about why did they stop, reaction is "they are looking after us" as it gets discussed, and people notice, that the issue is very small - statistically, therefore more people might get vaccinated overall -- I dont know.
Answer - I dont know. But those are my guesses.