TOO MANY PEOPLE DECIDED NOT HAVE THE VACCINE AT ALL BECAUSE OF A PERCEIVED, YET NON-EXISTENT, RISK
The day this controversy hit the news - and before Ireland suspended the vaccine - I had three phone calls to the pharmacy - each from people asking if the vaccine was safe for them as they were taking aspirin. This is logical thinking; If I’m taking aspirin to avoid blood clots then I have a blood-clotting problem and, if the vaccine causes clotting, it is more dangerous for me. Logical but wrong.
The deferment of 30,000 AZ vaccinations was a mistake as there was no link. The 37 clotting events (15 deep vein thrombosis and 22 pulmonary embolisms) were fully investigated, as were each of the 1117 deaths in the US. This is the process but 37 events from 17 million is a rate of 0.007 per 1000 and, as one commentator suggested, the contraceptive pill has been shown to cause clotting at a rate of 0.06 per 1000 and that, it seem, is totally acceptable.
The contraceptive pill is causally linked with blood clotting, the vaccine is not, but COVID-19 has clotting as a serious complication of the infection. Ironically in this population size, there
would be 350 events expected in a month, so it could be argued that - using these figures - the vaccine is stopping clots.
Then, on 18 March, EMA announced there was no link and European countries - including Ireland - resumed their vaccination programmes. But the damage had been done. Medical authorities in many EU countries - including Germany, France and Italy - will have converted those with vaccine hesitancy into anti-vaxxers, if only against one of the COVID-19 vaccines.
The EU has had an issue with the AZ vaccine from the start that is political - not scientific. German media - at the time it was being approved - reported that the vaccine was only 6% effective in the over-65 age group.
This was completely wrong and it seems the 6% figure came from the number of over-65 year- olds in the clinical trial of 24,000 patients. Its efficacy in this age group has since been established as equivalent to younger age groups. France was too quick to echo the German
concerns on efficacy, even when German authorities were attempting to clarify the media error.
Post-marketing surveillance of all new medicines allows for the identification of very rare side-effects. This is vital for public safety and this is happening for COVID-19 vaccines. This work must be allowed to proceed and, if there are side-effects as yet undetected, then decisions should only be made on the science.
But when politics, implicit or explicit, interfere with this surveillance process, we move to emotion informing beliefs and decisions. Too many people across the EU had their vaccination schedules delayed; too many people decided not have the vaccine at all because of perceived - yet non-existent risk – and, sadly, some people will contract COVID-19 in the third surges raging in the EU and will die. In some cases the cause will be clotting as a complication of COVID-19.
Irish Medicine Authorities must work extra hard explaining to the population that they were too hasty in adopting their ‘abundance of caution’ and that, frankly, they made a mistake and wish to apologise.
WHEN POLITICS, IMPLICIT OR EXPLICIT, INTERFERE WITH THIS SURVEILLANCE PROCESS, WE MOVE TO EMOTION INFORMING BELIEFS AND DECISIONS
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