Thread by @PentLok

A Defence/Apologia for Malaysia's AstraZeneca rollout and why this was probably the best (or least worst) way of dealing with the AZ vaccine. Thread 1/n

Firstly, important to stress this problem (unlike many others) was not caused by MYGov. AZ side effects were overblown by international media. But like it or not it is a problem it has to deal with. 2/n

https://twitter.com/yinshaoloong/status/1388733250063929353

It could proceed as planned by including AZ in the regular vaccine rollout, but this would have caused tons of problems if people showed up at vaccine centres and wasted precious time arguing about wanting Pfizer instead of AZ, not to mention potential wasted doses. 3/n

Pausing, or even removing the delivery of AZ would be the worst knee-jerk reaction possible. All reasonable calculations would tell you that the risk of COVID far outweighs risks of AZ. Even pausing AZ vaccination can lead to increased spread of COVID 4/n

Not only do pauses delay vaccine rollout (and thus reaching herd immunity slower), they also help feed on vaccine hesitancy by giving the impression that the AZ vaccine is unsafe. Just as early lockdowns are better than late lockdowns, early vax is also better than late vax 5/n

As regards to opt-out vs opt-in, optout generally works well when there is no constraint on the product/action in service, and there is no conscious action required. For example, automatic salary deductions for retirement savings should be opt-out 6/n

But opt-out causes problems when it comes to grabbing the AZ doses. People may not pay attention that they are opted-in and forget to optout, leading to wastages in slots and doses. Opt-out would also lead to negative headlines ... 7/n

"50k people opt-out of AZ vaccine" would deal even more damage to vaccine confidence. Conversely, opt-in can generate positive headlines "AZ vaccine oversubscribed", which may boost vax confidence. 8/n

I don't know if MOH themselves thought about this, but even if they didn't and simply "stumbled" into this policy, there are far worse places one can end up (hence, least-worst response). This is prolly a rare, +ve step among a series of clusterxxxks in handling the pandemic /end