It has already cost thousands of lives in Europe, and will cost thousands more there because of their vaccine anxiety, which will spread to the other vaccines and especially the Johnson and Johnson and Russian ones, which are similar to the AZ one. The 20 million unused doses sitting in the EU could have been protecting vulnerable people, instead the messages have been mixed and the scaremongering spiteful, largely from politicians. The regulators, both here and the EMA, have done their jobs well. There is a minuscule risk, and as you point out this is the same with most ‘common’ drugs. I can see the point of giving youngsters a choice - to be frank they won’t benefit from getting vaccinated, they are very unlikely to get seriously ill from COVID, they are being vaccinated to protect us old gits. I wouldn’t give any vaccine of this type to children, not because they are likely to suffer side effects, but even an infinitesimally small chance outweighs the risk to them of the disease.
The U.K. should come out of this ok, the AZ vaccine has done its job and been the workhorse to get the vast majority of the most vulnerable vaccinated incredibly quickly (but look at the US go too!) and I think most of us who have had one jab will happily get the second (I certainly will), and we will have enough of other stuff to keep going. I worry that all of this crap will adversely effect uptake in poorer countries where, because of cost and ease of storage, AZ vaccine will be key. And if everyone else doesn’t get jabbed, living in splendid isolation will be a tedious necessity and the likelihood of new, nasty, vaccine immune variants grows exponentially.
All because a basic understanding of statistics, risk, and risk ratios is clearly beyond many.
does that cover 4 people?
