Keystone Kops

 

                             Keystone Kops

The nightmare of the Virus and the government response continues to go intensely ignored. The most recent disaster is in Europe. This from a WSJ article: (from Don)

"Various European regulators and politicians spent this week claiming the Oxford/ AstraZeneca vaccine—the only one currently widely available in the EU—might be unsafe, only to rethink and now beg people to start accepting it.

This time the concern was that the jab caused blood clotting or problems with blood platelets in some patients. Some people who received the vaccine developed blood clots, but the European Medicines Agency (EMA) found the vaccine was not associated with an increase in the overall risk.

Among the 11 million or so vaccinated in the U.K., serious clots were less common than would be expected in the general population. People can develop clots for many reasons including other health conditions and medications. Covid-19 can also cause clots, so any risk-benefit calculation favors vaccination.

This is of a piece with a distinctly European safety-ism that has dogged the vaccine program since the start. Introduction of the AstraZeneca jab was held up even after the EMA approved it because bureaucrats in Germany claimed there was no evidence it works in patients older than 65.

Fewer elderly patients were included in the sample during the vaccine’s trial phase, but that’s as far as the truth to this claim went. It was quickly rebutted—real-world evidence available even then from the U.K. showed high efficacy in the older cohort—but not before French President Emmanuel Macron picked up the theme.

Such careless talk deterred vulnerable elderly Europeans from accepting the vaccine last month. It also skewed priority lists. Younger teachers and university professors in Italy received jabs ahead of the ill and elderly under a scheme developed when officials claimed the shot wouldn’t work for the old."

It goes on. Uncertainity, rumor, grandstanding, indecision, fear of responsibility. Worse than the Virus. But the Virus doesn't pretend to be your friend.