Yoong Profile picture
31 May, 4 tweets, 2 min read
Govt not wasting the school holidays. Kids >12 years old can to register for vaccination tmrw onwards. Adults <40 to start mid June.
Removing barriers is important to achieve high uptake. System should always be optimised to cater to the least privileged.
A lot of talk on vaccines but this is probably the most significant shift in mindset. Easy DIY test kits available any time at pharmacies for public to self test.

Seems to me govt accepting virus will be in the community, like an endemic & possibility of small outbreaks.
Finally. So far there is no data to suggest there is harm to pregnant women or baby by taking the vaccine. Risk of Covid19 infection & complications are much higher.

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More from @yoongkhean

1 Jun
I still see ppl claiming having vaccine side effects or reactions is a sign of the vaccine ‘working’. This is false, please do not cause unnecessary worry to those who did not experience any side effects.

Let me try & explain. /continue
The immune system respond to the vaccine (or any foreign pathogen) by 2 ways.

1. Innate immunity: this is the initial response where all the white cells come out & play, trying to clear the body from the foreign particles. The physical manifestations r fever, body ache etc.
The innate immunity response is not a measure of how hard the body is working or building antibodies. And can be addicted by various factors: age, gender, co-morbids, stress, lack of sleep, hormones. List goes on.
Read 8 tweets
29 May
Had a couple of days to think about the option of choosing vaccines in the mainstream PICK, so here are my thoughts:

These tweets are not really about whether it is a right decision but more of a ‘why’ & ‘how’ about it. Whether it is the right call, I think only time can tell.
Vaccine preference, whether we want to admit, do play a part in vaccine uptake. We always assume all who want to get vaccinated wont mind which type we get, but that’s not entirely true. I wrote about it little here:

medium.com/@Yoongkhean/co…
The theory of letting folks choose their vaccines is to cover whatever hesitancy, valid or invalid, people might have & subsequently increase uptake.

But the viability of that system hinges on 3 factors:\

1. Availability
2. Accessibility
3. Equitability
Read 9 tweets
2 May
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.
1. Blood disorders e.g Thalassemia, G6PD deficiency.

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.
Read 9 tweets
1 May
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.
Read 8 tweets
1 May
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.
Read 7 tweets
15 Feb
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%. Image
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%. Image
Read 8 tweets

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