There MAY be a very rare connection with spontaneous combustion. It happens, sometimes. People just explode. Meanwhile, one out of 850 EU citizens has *for sure* died of Covid19. Throughout Europe, reliable polling data shows people will not use AZ because of this.
This is absolutely catastrophic, because unlike Pfizer and Moderna, AZ doesn't require an excruciatingly demanding cold chain. If people were treating this as the emergency it *really is,* everyone competent to drive could be impressed into service as a vaccinator.
This fiasco will set back the vaccination campaign so significantly that it may be impossible to achieve herd immunity. Mutations galore. Europe will be living with the pandemic for years, giving brand new strains to the entire world.
Goodbye, European economies. Goodbye! Afraid the money's run out for the EU meds agency! Welcome, new fascist governments! Because they will come to power when it becomes impossible to cushion people from the economic impact.
Europe, you did it: You handled the pandemic worse than Donald Trump.

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More from @ClaireBerlinski

19 Mar
You're missing the point. All the details of the mistakes are here: politico.eu/article/europe… But the deeper problem is Europe's "vaccine hesitancy," which is a polite way to put it.
Europe needs to get enough people vaccinated to achieve herd immunity. Failing that, the pandemic goes on until Europe achieves this the hard way--spawning God knows how many mutations in the meanwhile, a problem that legitimately concerns the whole world.
Yes, uptake has been high so far *among the elderly,* who believe themselves (correctly) to be at much greater risk. But the success of the vaccination campaign can't be measured that way. When finally the vaccine is available to everyone, will enough people take it?
Read 10 tweets
19 Mar
This is a fascinating article. The roots of this phenomenon are very deep, clearly.
jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/… Image
Image
Image
Read 4 tweets
18 Mar
No, that remark was absolutely stupid. In so many ways I can barely count. The French have fought *like lions* in battle after battle since Soissons. Charlemagne. Louis XIV.
France occupies the largest landmass in Europe. Think that's an accident? You think they surrendered their way into that position? Remember Charles Martel? Hell, remember the Battle of Hastings?

Napoléon may have been many things, but a "surrender monkey" he was not.
In fact, consult Esdaille, Napoleon's Wars, pp 252–53. It was his refusal to brook *any* concessions that did him in. Pretty much all of Europe was under France's boot at one point or another, and though the British will never admit it, they got lucky.
Read 18 tweets
18 Mar
For those of you waiting breathlessly for updates about that weird pain in Claire's knee--and I know you are legion--I have finally seen a rheumatologist. (You may recall I fired Rheumatologist 1 for tardiness. But Rheumatologist 2--hereinafter R2--was only 20 minutes late.
Clearly, the rheumatological world trembled upon hearing of R1's condign but terrifying punishment.)

Anyway, @fredcole, seems you were right. R2 says the various pains would seem to be unrelated.

He's sent me off for x-rays--many of them--to confirm this.
(These happen at a separate clinic.)

He needs to see them before he can make a formal diagnosis.

But from the physical exam and the sonogram, R2 strongly believes:
Read 12 tweets
16 Mar
NB: For every American who's reading this, smacking his head, and denouncing Europe for being whatever stereotype of Europe you like best, remember:
They haven't released the AstraZeneca in the US at all. And for the same reason. Both the US and the US are dominated by bureaucracies whose motto is "Cover your ass, at all costs, no matter the cost to human life and the affront to common sense."
And they get away with it because far too many of their citizens can't be bothered to inform themselves about any of this; they can't do math, they don't grasp statistics, they know nothing about biology or medicine, and they find the germ theory of disease pretty tricky.
Read 6 tweets
15 Mar
I've had *no* side effects. No fever, no malaise, not even a sore arm. I'm beginning to wonder whether the large number of reports to the contrary should be attributed in some part, at least, to the nocebo effect. I mean,
the doctor at the vaccine clinic really laid it on thick, describing every possible side effect in lugubrious detail: "Ees douleurs, des rougeurs, des gonflements, de la fatigue, des maux de tête, des douleurs musculaires, des frissons, de la fièvre, des nausées ... "
You put someone in a white lab coat and tell him to give that speech in a serious voice before jabbing someone in the arm, then carefully survey them for 15 minutes to be sure they don't drop dead, some significant portion will dutifully respond by developing those symptoms--
Read 5 tweets

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