AstraZenéca chief links Europe’s Covid surge to rejection of firm’s vacciné

11 comments
  1. The most important thing for the UK is the very high percentage of over 60s that have taken the vaccine (and are now getting boosters). The total fully vaccinated as a percentage of population is not that different from Germany and far from the levels of countries like Portugal and Spain, but the over 60 vaccination rates are well above 90% and above 95% for the over 70s, whereas in Germany it’s only 85% for over 60s.

  2. >A decision not to use AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine for elderly people in some European countries could help explain

    Wait, wasn’t it the other way around?! AstraZeneca was _only_ recommended to elderly people, because the risks were considered too high for everyone else.

  3. > However, Danny Altmann, a professor of immunology at Imperial College London, said it would be extremely difficult to attribute the differential shape of the curves for the surges of infection in the UK and other European countries to any single factor.
    “It would be slightly foolhardy to try and attribute that to the quite nuanced differences in choices of vaccine across different countries,” he said. “I don’t know where you’d start to do that scientifically.”

  4. I remember a time last year, when for a full month straight, there would be AstraZeneca attack pieces on top of the CNN front page every single day. Anyone else remember that?

  5. You mean the vaccine that is less effective than the Moderna/Pfizer vaccines used in most EU countries?

    This is, of course, ignoring the fact that AstraZeneca was so far behind schedule on their promised deliveries that the EU dragged them to court over it. We’d probably have more Covid cases if we’d relied on them more.

  6. >Corporation CEO says that his company’s products are the best

    This is considered science now.

  7. > Soriot said: “It’s really interesting when you look at the UK. There was a big peak of infections but not so many hospitalisations relative to Europe. In the UK [the Oxford/AstraZeneca] vaccine was used to vaccinate older people whereas in Europe people thought initially the vaccine doesn’t work in older people.

    Either he is ignorant or dishonest, or more likely, both.

    Most elderly in Europe got AstraZeneca because it was estimated that the blood clotting problem with AstraZeneca made the risk/benefit balance negative for some age groups. Norway was the first to stop using AstraZeneca because the percentage of vaccine-induced deaths was higher than the percentage of Covid deaths for some age groups. Most countries that resumed using AstraZeneca reserved the vaccine for the elderly because the risk of dying of Covid was higher for them.

    The high Covid deaths rates in some European countries is due to antivaxxers not due to skepticism towards AstraZeneca. Anyways, the UK, which used AstraZeneca a lot, has a high death rate, twice as high as Germany, for example.

  8. going to step into a wasps nest here, but it is just as likely that the bigger issue is that the vaccinated can still be carriers.

    But as the vaccination result in the symptoms being not much worse than a bad cold, few bother to stay home for the duration.

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