Thread by @mark_toshner

So Germany followed suit today in what appears a bit like vaccine hysteria, but not based on PE. Instead based on 7 cases of sinus venous thrombosis in 1.6 million people. I’m going to put this in context below of 1/n

Normal annual rate is apparently anywhere 2-15 per million. link.springer.com/article/10.100…
In UK 3 have been reported (I am told) in 11 million 2/n

So in the UK in the vaccine time window we are square within expected rates having vaccinated 10x the amount they have (so our sample size is much better). In Germany they have a much smaller sample size and so at risk of random chance but let’s give benefit of doubt 3/n

Let’s say for argument sake there is a 10fold increase. This would still change almost nothing about the risk/benefit calculation of vaccinating a population (where risk of Covid-19 still easily outweighs risk of vaccine) or for that matter an individual (for same reasons) 4/n

Now some individuals may choose to not have a vaccine because of this risk and that should be their choice, made with the best of information available. However by suspending vaccine programmes for single figure side effects Europe is dooming its programmes 5/n

By definition every single statistically underpowered but emotive “cluster” of events will logically follow the same stop/start process. Achieving proper power to define if any of these are real will take them forever, confidence in vaccines will struggle to recover 6/n

and the slow pace of vaccination will ensure any small chance we had of getting cases low enough to reduce chance of viral escape will evaporate (though this is probably happening anyway regardless). 7/n

Part of our job here is to communicate risk. I have consistently said vaccines are “safe” but clarified this does not mean they are without risk. Specifically I have tweeted about the difficulty in defining rare event risks and that once we get to this level it means 8/n

Regardless if any emerge, the balance of risk vs benefit must always be in favour of a vaccine. This is where we sit now with all the vaccines. Rare effects may emerge and take a while to confirm or refute. By definition they should not affect our programmes 9/n

And by going down this route based on tiny event numbers, Europe is storing a long term problem it will come to regret (and so will we)