Blood clots, for example, deep vein thromboses or pulmonary embolisms, are serious and we should rightly be concerned about these. With ~ 17 M doses of the AZ vaccine delivered into people, we have reports of 15 cases of deep vein thrombosis and 22 cases of pulmonary embolism. Deep vein thrombosis occurs at rate of 0.1% (so 1 in 1000) across all age groups, increasing with age. So every day that means around 47 cases in a population of 17 million – in fact it will be more, because those vaccinated are not representative of the population, but an older segment.
If we consider that vaccination has been happening at a high rate for a little over 2 months, then we expect at least 2,800 cases of deep vein thrombosis.
We can draw some limited conclusions regarding clots, the AZ and other vaccines.
- The reporting mechanism may be very, very poor, and only a fraction of patient outcomes are reported. This is in stark contrast to a clinical trial, where ALL outcomes re reported – recall that one poor individual on the Pfizer/BioNT trial was killed by a lightening strike, and in the AZ trial there were 2 deaths in the vaccination group and 4 in the placebo group. These and other deaths were unrelated to the vaccine.
Selective reporting leads to fantasy.
- Reporting is not so poor, so the correlation is that vaccination protects against thrombosis. Without knowing the quality of reporting of adverse effects and the likelihood that a good many clinicians will consider many conditions in vaccinated patients to be unrelated to the vaccine, this intriguing possibility remains a possibility and no more.
- “Clot”, at least for UK speakers of English has a second meaning, akin to the US ‘blockhead’. It may be that the AZ vaccine activates clots in government.
At present the most likely causal relation is (3). This is because we have ample evidence independent of vaccination programmes that demonstrate an often higher concentration of clots in government and in the upper reaches of many greasy poles than one would expect were altitude to correlate in some way with ability.
Note: H/T @archer_rs who reminded me that the only vaccine that is non-profit is the AZ vaccine. The history of drugs teaches us that the profit motive leads to hiding real and serious adverse events.
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