I’m all for getting jabs in to arms & highly recommend everyone to get any approved vaccine but funnelling all the traffic to 1 website for 260k shots will be messy.
Building a system to vaccinate the whole country is a very complicated task but there has to be a simpler way.
Some initial thoughts re: this parallel AZ track is how about those w/out internet/smartphone/laptop access?
While trying to increase no. of ppl vaccinated is the ultimate goal, the system cannot widen the inequity gap further.
Selangor/KL is highly dense & urbanised, probably why they decided to open it up there first, but doesnt address the equally wide inequality gap there.
Migrant workers, B40s, marginalised groups, etc. These groups can jostle with the rest of the M40s & above to book their appts.
End result u will get the M40s & above vaccinated, economy will open further, community movement will increase & marginalised groups will be at even higher risk for Covid 19.
It’s like we don’t learn from past mistakes.
*typo: can’t jostle.
Lol. Sorry.
The system should be built with 1 priority; it should be as easy as possible for the marginalised & vulnerable.
Remove the unnecessary obstacles for them. An app looks good but with a community having such a big digital gap, it has served as a tool to divide the gap further.
Covid19 started off as a middle/high income population disease, but affected the lower income the most. The pandemic response from city lockdowns to economic activity openings to vaccinations have all failed to address the ones most affected.
Simply said, we’ve failed the world.
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Been answering Qs for the most part of the day, found out some misconception re: AZ vaccine or C19 vaccines in general. Would like to address these concerns/misconception.
Just to give everyone more in depth information that could help u understand more.
In general, this group mostly have no problems w receiving the vaccine. Even Haemophilia, platelet function disorders. Only consideration is if u are on treatment for these diseases, then u should consult your doctor.
2. On blood thinners.
Those on drugs like Warfarin, Aspirin, Dabigatran etc, all can take the vaccine safely. The concern is not increasing the AZ clot risk, the concern w blood thinners is after getting the shot, your arm bleeds intramuscularly.
Not going to repeat the ultra low incidence of blood clots in the AZ vaccines, think we’ve established that the benefits far outweigh the risks now.
But since tmrw is the big day, would like to offer some thoughts on other data, re: risk factors for the clots.
Most news sites will mention incidence is higher in younger age group & mostly women. However, European regulators does not mention this two groups are a risk factor, merely ‘incidence occurring higher in this 2 groups’.
Why?
1. Data is still in flux. Vaccination programs with AZ is ongoing & because of the phased nature i.e roll out in different age groups, occupation etc, means we don’t have a full set of data yet. Basically, the data is uneven.
Some info on vaccine efficacy. We tend to make the mistake of 95% efficacy (Pfizer) being 95 out of 100 is protected from the disease while 5 out of 100 will get infected/succumb to disease.
But that’s not how vaccine efficacy works. So how did we get that 95%?
Consider these numbers. The Pfizer P3 trial had 43,661 participants.
Total was split into half, each group received the placebo or the vaccine. The placebo group had 162 symptomatic infection & the vaccine group had 8.
We then can calculate the infection risk. 0.74% vs 0.04%.
To get vaccine efficacy, first we get the risk difference between the two groups.
This means the vaccine reduces infection risk by 0.7 percentage point. But this is not efficacy.
Efficacy is dividing by original infection risk x 100%. Now u get the 95%.
We shouldn’t be too fixated on vaccine efficacy. What ultimately is important (& I suspect most of us are talking about) is vaccine effectiveness (VE).
Vaccine efficacy is % of reduction of disease in a vaccinated vs unvaccinated group in a trial.
VE is the real world impact.
V.efficacy measures individual protection in a controlled environment while VE looks at how protected is a population after vaccination. There is a whole host of factors influencing it.
And not necessarily v.efficacy is directly proportional to VE.
Focusing on only efficacy will distract us from implementing a good vaccination plan to maximise effectiveness.
Factors like administration, cold chain, coverage (which impacts herd immunity) all can greatly increase effectiveness, which is what we want.
Always amusing to see men (or rather boys) trying to use declining fertility of women by showing fertility rates to justify that women should marry young.
Firstly, reproduction is not the only purpose in life or partnerships/marriage.
Secondly, they are reading the data wrong.
Fertility rates (broadly) is defined as avg number of children born by a woman in her reproductive years over her lifetime. It measure a period, not the cohort’s metric.
And number of children born means u need the man as well, so the equal & opposite cohort to see is the men.
Blaming women biology for low fertility rates or high risk pregnancies in older women is lazy & ignorant.
Fertility rates drop in older women because their male partners are older too, therefore time to conception is later.