Quote Originally Posted by Elwood Blues View Post
No it is not just EU countries who have banned the Oxford Vaccine but I suspect it is still a political decision in some countries arising in apart from the row with Astra Zeneca. France in particular has been bad mouthing the vaccine for weeks. Germany too has been pretty lukewarm.Such actions tend to plant doubt in peoples minds.

Don't take my word for it

The director general of Italy’s medicines authority AIFA someone far more qualified than any of us on here said on Tuesday
in an interview with daily la Repubblica

“We got to the point of a suspension because several European countries, including Germany and France, preferred to interrupt vaccinations... to put them on hold in order to carry out checks. The choice is a political one,” Nicola Magrini told


More fool them. Being careful about side effects is one thing. Banning something which is causing problems in about 7 people per million when the alternative ( which incidentally also has a similiar side effect) is killing 1000/2000 per million in some of the countries doesn't seem to be the most sensible decision in the world.

Of course the effect needS to be investigated but not stopped. A rare side effect of Paracetamol causes a low platelet count which i9s one of the side effects being reported from the vaccine but there is a warniNG about that in the leaflet you get in a box. i suspect the result of this will be a similar warning being given with the vaccine.
I agree with some of what you say. It may be politically expedient for some countries to "pause" the use of something you have insufficient supply of in the first place. But this has to be at the expense of placing doubt in the minds of some of the people in those countries about having the vaccine in the future which must be counterproductive.

That said, this action started in places like Denmark which I wouldn't put on the list of usual suspects for that kind of thing. Also in that context Sweden must have more to lose than gain given that Astra-Zeneca is an Anglo-Swedish company. I think jumping to conclusions that all the individual countries that have paused its use don't have the interests of their citizens at heart would be equally wrong.

My point remains that there is an ever greater tendency to lump the EU and its collective actions together with the actions taken by individual countries because they have the sovereign right to do so when looking how the rest of Europe is handling these issues, which is becoming more and more adversarial due to political posturing on all sides.