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Yesterday’s news: German agency connects AZ to risk of blood-clotting. Unscientific! They put everyone at risk! Today’s news: How brilliant UK doctor linked blood-clotting to AZ, rightly wanting to raise awareness of a risk. /1 https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/apr/13/how-uk-doctor-marie-scully-blood-clotting-link-astrazeneca-covid-jab-university-college-london-hospital
Now the thing is this: the doctor is brilliant. The work is worthwhile. And the German work is mentioned as “The German group had quite a lot of experience with this particular condition.” It’s not the scientists that messed up here. It’s the journalists. Sorry folks. /2
But besides the sheer frustration of a storyline changing so quickly, I think there’s a lesson to draw here: a lesson of how quickly Brexit established a boundary in the mind. /3
Leavers AND remainers empathised so quickly, so completely with “their” agency over ”other” agencies that the outcome could only be: our agency says no connection, so an agency that sees a connection must be unscientific. /4
Apparently nobody bothered to ask scientists working in the field. Regulators. To find out things like we read now “The German group had quite a lot of experience with this particular condition.” /5
But the thing that scares me most is that this distinction actually makes sense in a world that’s interconnected. The AZ risk is very low - so low that in most age groups vaccination with AZ has a thoroughly clear benefit. /6
And the availability of AZ is different in the UK and in Germany - which makes Germany’s more stringent limits rational. And it is then again rational for UK regulators to fear that this has some impact. So now we are in a circle of discrediting each other /7
Curiously, some people now say: it was never about the link. It was about the risk. This is from March 15 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-56397592
