A new pre-print from a team at the University of Oxford has found that the AstraZeneca vaccine, which is being restricted or banned around the world over links to blood clots, does not appear to cause the rare side effect at a much greater rate than the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines. However, on the basis of current reporting rates, the same complications are many times more likely to be caused by the disease itself, they say. The Independent has the story.
The risk of developing a rare brain clot from COVID-19 is about eight times greater than from the AstraZeneca–Oxford vaccine, according to a new study.
Researchers at the University of Oxford, who are not linked to the vaccine, also found that people infected with coronavirus are “manyfold times” more likely than normal to develop the rare clotting disorder, known as cerebral venous thrombosis (CVT), where blood clots in the veins that run from the brain.
“There’s no doubt that Covid is a much greater risk of this [condition] than any of the vaccines,” said Professor Paul Harrison, a co-author of the study.
The research, which has yet to be peer-reviewed, drew comparisons between more than 500,000 COVID-19 patients in the US and 34 million people in Europe who have received the AstraZeneca vaccine, as well as the background level of CVT in the general population.
For COVID-19, the incidence rate of CVT stands at 39 cases per one million people, the study showed. But for a million people vaccinated with the AstraZeneca jab, there will be just five cases of CVT over a two-week period. …
The study also suggested that four cases of CVT are likely to occur in one million people vaccinated with either the Moderna or Pfizer/BioNTech jab. However, the scientists warned that the data on this is too thin to establish any firm conclusions.
The researchers acknowledge a number of limitations in their research.
The scientists warned that all comparisons must be interpreted cautiously since data are still accruing and drawn from different sources. They added that their research was unable to determine the relative risk of developing CVT after vaccination due to uncertainty around the baseline rate for this condition.
Nor did the study address the incidence rate of thrombocytopenia in COVID-19 patients and people who had been vaccinated. This condition, where a patient presents abnormally low levels of platelets, has been detected alongside CVT in the cases of concern reported to date. …
The Oxford researchers drew their COVID-19 patient data from a US-based electronic health records network which had recently been used by the team to show the neurological and psychiatric consequences of coronavirus.
This database, which is made up of a total of 81 million US patients, provided clear detail on CVT cases that had been detected among people infected with coronavirus, the experts said – though they acknowledged there may be under-reporting of the condition in medical records.
As for the incidence rate of CVT among people vaccinated with the AstraZeneca jab, this was taken from the European Medicines Agency’s database, which covered more than 34 million individuals at the time of publication.
A further observation is that the COVID-19 patients in the study are drawn from a “federated electronic health records network recording anonymised data from healthcare organisations, primarily in the USA”. This suggests they are hospital patients, or at least those who have sought medical assistance, and so are not representative of all Covid infections but only the more serious. This contrasts to the vaccinated group, which is the healthy population as a whole, albeit with more vulnerable groups often vaccinated first. This may skew the comparison considerably, making blood clots among those infected with Covid appear much more common than they are.
How will regulators respond, having restricted one vaccine over this issue (and increasingly the Johnson & Johnson one as well), will they not have to be consistent? Will they remove the restrictions from AZ and J&J, or apply them equally to the other two, or somehow justify the discrepancy? Will be interesting to watch this play out.
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“First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists, but I was neither, so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew so I did not speak out. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me.”
Martin Niemoeller.
And “they” are socialists. The Labour Party knew exactly what it was doing when it created the NHS. From that socialists are slowly controlling every aspect of our life. Socialism is the best way to power as the Conservatives discovered. But all parties have now reached to point of socialism’s failure – the money has run out.
Maybe there is an element of tongue in cheek in this article. Maybe. Sadly, I am more inclined to the view that Dr Alexander is spot on with his assessment.
We can’t have the plebs thinking, or even reminiscing about the good old days over a cup of coffee now can we?
When the smoking ban was announced by Fishy I did ask the question here on DS, what next? And let’s not forget banning coffee can always be linked to the slave trade, plantations and all that colonial stuff. Yes, it fits the bill nicely.
Coffee harms the Planet – it has to be transported long distance. It is racist – mostly enjoyed by White privileged, supremacists.
So I would say we are well down the road a ban, along with tea… something to do with slavery.
In some way tax payers or lottery funding monies via charities (ASH), and public health departments etc perpetuate this unnecessary assault on our liberties and freedoms.
Denied monies this and other unwarranted intrusions into our lives may to some extent evaporate.
Nicotine, the wonder drug. https://www.wired.com/2007/06/nicotine/
In the beginning: it was just banning cigarette ads on TV and newspapers, but not in magazines or cinema, and bans did not apply to cigars and pipe tobacco. See, not so bad really, sensible, because – health, the ubiquitous NHS burden, because we are all serfs in service to that State Leviathan.
On a slippery slope some said. Nonsense! Just an exception because of ‘proven’ health problems caused by smoking. People must be saved from themselves whether they like it or not.
Well it turns out the slope was well greased. One ban led to another right up to plain packaging except for obscene graphics of rotting tongues, etc and tobacco products hidden under the counter like porn – and once the pogrom against smokers was well advanced, new horrors and evils needed to be rooted out and dealt with to keep the parasite classes busy.
Now they are after our entire diet; how much we eat, what we eat, and ultimately the food we are ‘allowed’ to grow.
And our cars, cookers, heating, holidays, and the F word…. Freedom.
And we let it happen.
Terrific.
And next the ginger growler wants to make misogyny illegal. But no mention of misandry!
Sexual harassment was mentioned, that could make flirting or just asking for a phone number harassment. As much as the dumb public is not outraged by all this top down control, these baser instincts will not be followed.
As some recently said how can they make misogyny a crime if they can’t define what a woman is?
I remember an issue of 2000AD back in the 1980s where Judge Dredd and some fellow Judges took down a coffee bean smuggling ring and ended up burniing the coffee, remarking that the illegal substance could put thousands of citizens on a caffeine binge. Citizens are only allowed ersatz coffee in the city and caffeine is illegal.
The world of Mega City One – ‘800 million inhabitants, each one a potential criminal’ – is another chilling warning of the direction in which we’re heading.
This is known as the slippery slope fallacy. The exact same argument could be used to support the legalisation of any drug, no matter how harmful:
Today They Came For the Cocaine Users; Tomorrow it Will be the Coffee Drinkers
Today They Came For the Heroin Users; Tomorrow it Will be the Coffee Drinkers
Today They Came For the Crystal Meth Users; Tomorrow it Will be the Coffee Drinkers
Why do you think they’re gradually criminalising tobacco?
The last nearly 4 years have shown not just that they don’t care about the health – physical, mental and moral – of the population but that they want to seriously damage it.
So if criminalising tobacco isn’t about improving health, what is it about?
It is about improving health, and saving the NHS money. You seem to think that politicians are evil inhuman monsters who spend their days dreaming up different ways to inflict more evil on us, rather than flawed human beings whose intentions are generally good, people who have families, who care about their children, just as you and I care, and we are flawed too. They don’t get everything right, we don’t get everything right either.
I don’t see much evidence of good intentions. Covid, anyone? Or was that a cock-up according to you.
Politicians want to stay in power – that’s normal. We must always be suspicious of what they do, their declared motives, and always ask “cui bono?”. That’s the whole point of DS.
The slippery slope fallacy, like 3 weeks to flatten the curve? If you justify things by “saving the NHS money” then the sky’s the limit.
Anyway, cigarettes are not a “drug” in the same sense as the ones you mention, and not even in the same sense as alcohol.
So do you support taking away the decision about whether to smoke or not from people are legally adults? What meaning does adulthood have if the state decides for you? If there was evidence that dangerous sports, sugar, you name it were dangerous to health and banning them would save the NHS money, would you support those bans too?
By the way, I didn’t ask to be part of the NHS – I am forced to by the state. That’s called communism.
Do you think the people in Cancer Research UK don’t have good intentions?
“Smoking causes at least 15 different types of cancer: lung, larynx, oesophagus, oral cavity, nasopharynx, pharynx, bladder, pancreas, kidney, liver, stomach, bowel, cervix, leukaemia, and ovarian cancers.
Incidence of some smoking-related cancers is decreasing thanks largely to decreases in smoking prevalence; these include lung cancer (decreasing in males), oesophageal cancer (decreasing in females), and bladder cancer. However, unless there is further progress in reducing smoking prevalence, these decreases are expected to slow and eventually stop.
Tobacco is the largest preventable cause of cancer and death in the UK and one of the largest preventable causes of illness and death in the world. Tobacco caused an estimated 125,000 deaths in the UK in 2019 – around a fifth (20%) of all deaths from all causes, that’s around one person every five minutes . It caused an estimated 55,000 cancer deaths in the UK in 2019 – more than a quarter (28%) of all cancer deaths. Smoking (both active smoking and environmental tobacco smoke) causes 3 in 20 (15%) cancer cases in the UK.”
https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/cancer-statistics/risk/tobacco#heading-Zero
If these stats were about the Covid vaccine, do you think there would be a good case for banning the Covid vaccine?
I know nothing about CRC and their motives but I don’t need to as I’m not forced to give them money and they do not make laws or have powers of arrest, yet.
Unlike Covid vaccines, cigarettes are not paid for by my tax money, are not mandated or approved by the state or sold as a medical treatment, and they come with a health warning.
A cure for cancer would not be in the interests of cancer charities.
Indeed – same conflict of interest as the “public health” industry
Cancer Research UK – income last year £770 million.
Still no cure?
“So do you support taking away the decision about whether to smoke or not from people are legally adults? What meaning does adulthood have if the state decides for you? If there was evidence that dangerous sports, sugar, you name it were dangerous to health and banning them would save the NHS money, would you support those bans too?”
Yes. I support taking away the decision about whether to smoke or not from people who are legally adults, in the same way that I support taking away the decision about whether or not to take heroine or crystal meth from people who are legally adults.
Do you believe that no drugs should be made illegal, no matter how harmful, to our children, to our friends, to our community?
My default position is that the state should have a compelling reason to prohibit anything. The drugs you mention may have effects on society that justify prohibition; cigarettes do not as they harm only the user.
Allow me to go to hell my own way, and mind your own bloody business – and I will reciprocate.
The drugs you mention may have effects on society that justify prohibition;
This is very much disputable. All of these drugs where perfectly legal for millennia and even widely consumed. Eg, cocaine was absolutely common-place in the eary 20th century. The attempt to eliminate them via prohibition only started after the second world war and it certainly hasn’t worked. Cocaine is still common-place. As is speed. And weed, obviously. And the greatest addiction crisis in the West was caused by legal prescription opoids and not illegal Heroin. I know people who have to go through withdrawal therapy just because they trusted the doctors who prescribed these kinds of pills to them.
I agree with all of your points. I am not completely decided one way or another on legalisation of the drugs you mention, but I think it’s far from cut and dried. As I said, my default position is that the state should have a compelling reason to prohibit anything.
Your handle – ‘godknowsimgood’ – says all we need to know. You sound like, and are not ashamed to describe yourself as, the ultimate virtue-signaller, bleating weakly about children and community. There is no logic in your ‘argument’; everything contains an element of danger. Drink enough water and you’ll die. Once done with tobacco, you’ll turn to the dangers of using ladders. Or how about skiing? Getting a car? Walking in the woods on a windy day? Do you get it yet? YOU ARE NOT THE BOSS OF ANYONE!
One wouldn’t mind if the virtue-signalling were confined to “do this, don’t do that, be a good person like me”. But it often turns into “do this, don’t do that, be a good person like me otherwise the state must punish you”.
Well said. The moral man does something, and when no one responds, he rolls up his sleeves and uses force. When morality is lost there is ritual, Ritual is the husk of true faith, the beginning of chaos. Lao-tzu.
Bullying and intimidation are the tools of those whom deem themselves morally superior.
I believe that you have no business messing with my private life, no matter how hard you want to.
If they really wanted to do that, they’d tell the wilfully obese to ‘eff off and stop eating huge volumes of shite.
Some years ago, my wife in hospital. Visiting, a massively obese lady in a nearby bed attended by two consultants. working out how to deal with the fact that the heart drugs for her weight damaged heart conflicted badly with her lung drugs, for her weight damaged lungs.
Not ONCE did they say to her – LADY IT’S YOUR WEIGHT.
I gather now that 60%+ of us are obese. Maybe tobacco is the wrong target WRT health?
That is why more people are looking into the ATKINS or carnivore diet, meat, fish, eggs, milk, cheese, nuts. lose weight, eat fat!
“Obese” is a category so wide it is essentially meaningless. It covers the healthy and fully mobile as well as bed-bound land whales.
We know that those in the official category “overweight” have the longest life expectancy, those in the official category “underweight” the shortest, so it seems likely that the lightest in the official category “obese” are as healthy as those in the official category “normal weight”.
Indeed. Most likely being fat is worse than being not-fat, on average. But it’s nobody’s bloody business except for the person in question and their loved ones. If you want universal healthcare free at point of use because “be kind” that’s great, knock yourself out, waste your money and mine, but once you start telling me how to live my life “because NHS blah blah blah” you’re just a health fascist, f off and leave me alone, I don’t want to live in the same country as you.
“It is about improving health, and saving the NHS money. “
Well then can all the diversity officers. Easy way to save money. The continuing employment of such at inflated salaries indicates clearly that the NHS is NOT “underfunded”, rather clearly over funded. How any of these DEI non-jobs helps our health beats me.
I judge politicians by what they do.
Their actions tell me that they’re very far from being well-meaning.
I suspect most are primarily motivated by the opportunities for corruption available to those who achieve a ministerial post, but some are clearly adherents of a foul, anti-human ideology.
Smokers pay truckloads of taxes and – on average – die earlier than non-smokers. Which means they’re a net win for the NHS. Even if this was otherwise, I’m paying taxes to finance this National EDI Consultant Hiring Service whose core mission is – not public health, beware! – but to fight systemic racism and put trans-updated rainbow paintings onto anything which doesn’t run away quickly enough. Pretty much any human activity has an associated health risk. And this means your pseudo-argument can be used against all human activities someone dislikes for some unrelated reason.
The Horses run quickly enough from those rainbow crossings!
I wonder if the tobacco leaf, unadulterated with goodness know what chemicals used in cigarette manufacture, are actually less harmful than is made out. And whether nicotine has beneficial properties they don’t want us to have access to.
The last 4 years have shown that many things we took for granted may not be what they seem
But some slippery slope arguments are valid and come true. You have to look at each individual slippery slope in context before you can just call it a fallacy.
As a matter of fact: This slope has been proven to be slippery. As someone pointed out: Some decades ago, this started with putting health warnings on fag packets. Then came outlawing of tobacco advertising. Then, indoor smoking bans. Then, totally context-free mutilation porn on tobacco and cigarette packages. And now, the attempt to declare tobacco an illegal drug in all but the name for people who are now 17 or younger. And this won’t be the end of it. For as long as a single smoker still exists, these people will seek to persecute him. All just because they’re paranoid and afraid of tobacco smoke themselves. Or rather more general, anything that burns. That’s unhealthy and bad for the climate!
On the other hand
https://youtu.be/h82D5ZvcALM?si=DEMe4ABN2U8jlBaT
“The taxes on tobacco are colossal: and it is quite possible that the expectant lives of the Methuselahs untroubled by sudden death in their fifties, sixties and seventies, and who survive into their nineties and hundreds, will cost the NHS much more.”
Let’s phase out old people then!
Logans run anyone?
On the subject of phasing-out old people:
https://catholicherald.co.uk/belgian-catholic-bishop-advocates-euthanasia-for-the-elderly/
We already have the NHS Pathways!
I smoked for 21 years up till 2006 when I gave it up, It’s the banning of yet another freedom of choice that p£÷ses me off!
All started with the Seatbelt.
I have an interesting perspective on the two points above. I started smoking at the age of 11 and gave up aged 35. When seat belts were mandated I was very negative but wearing one saved my life twice in car crashes!
What is to say that good guidance on seatbelts, highlighting the dangers would’ve seen most people put one on. Especially adults putting them on kids.
I predict they will come for tea before coffee. The Guardian has already proved that tea (and HP sauce) are racist, after all.
On the positive side, the government has a hammer (legislation/regulation) so everything looks like a nail – they rarely give a thought to real-world niceties such as enforcement. Many currently-illegal substances are freely available and openly used on our streets. I suspect that, come prohibition, the main changes that smokers will observe will be a change in the language on their packets, which will also be significantly cheaper.
I will have to start hoarding tea! There are some places where you can still get masses of tea very cheap, only, the bags tend to be made cheaper and break in the cup.
An excellent read, thank you. Your observations may not be quite so daft as some might feel. We already have the De caff’ options, and cases no of sugar or alcohol either, as a promotion for good health as they see it. Not to mention vegan, veggie, low fat, etc.
The recent single use plastic ban will incur costs to the drive through and takeaway businesses that sell coffee, An action to reduce plastic waste will also indirectly reduce coffee consumption as well. The recent certification requirements issued by the EU on farms to certify there produce does not come from land gained by deforestation will have an impact on cost and availability And not just coffee.
“They” came for them years ago because of the inequality it seems (extract from a Scottish Ministers response to a question on smoking):
The Scottish Government is aligned with UN 2030 so their decisions from smoking to gas boilers and sex education should be viewed in that context.
https://nationalperformance.gov.scot/sustainable-development-goals
Coffee….anti-murdery juicey juice…..I remember an old meme involving Yoda.
Coffee drinkers deprived of their 10 am hot beverage of choice might be rather a difficult crew to subdue and may manifest extreme rage and violence.
The puritanical health fascists and their political allies will ban alcohol next, long before coffee.
That’s not to say that coffee isn’t on the list…
“I recently told my doctor I smoke twenty a day, then about ten in the evenings — and I try and keep it down to five during the night. I also told him that I have had three doctors in the last fifty years. Each of them recommended I give up. But each of them has now died; the last one only a year older than me.”
unherd.com/2021/06/britain-needs-a-cigarette/
David Hockney
June 4, 2021
They banned Carlsberg Special Brew many years ago now.
Yep it was 9% abv, and it was great stuff.
So if it hadn’t been for those health fascists I’d probably be a goner by now. Sure I’m so grateful.
The more I read about the crazy uk laws the more I become determined not to live there permanently.
Yes I drink coffee, but I also smoke and drink alcohol. To me there is nothing more relaxing/satisfyine than sitting around with frineds in the evening having a ciggie and a drink in a warm climate.
I ignore this inept government. Everyone else does too. They’ll ban oxygen intake next.
First they came for the vax sceptics
Then they came for the smokers
Then they came for the cash users
Then they came for the sugar eaters
Then they came for the drinkers
Then they came for ….. you
Welcome to the future
Great article! How dare we think!
I gave up smoking (having smoked from the age of 12!) 35 years ago this August (you see I remember the date!). But I consider this an infringement on human rights totally unconservative (not that this is a Conservative government) and all part of the daily control we’re being subjected to. I always said I’d start smoking again on my 80th birthday but I’m tempted in an act of defiance to start again now.
RESIST DEFY DO NOT COMPLY!!!!
‘They are breaking our conviviality; they are breaking our wakeful meditation: and next they’ll break our concentration.’
Who is this ‘they’? How do they keep their drive up, are there no moderate or dissentient voices among them, are they all rotten at the core, how did they extinguish every flicker of human goodness and compassion in themselves, what are they hoping to get out of subjugating and controlling everyone?
And who are they?