Quote Originally Posted by cyril evans awaydays View Post
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.
There is no doubt in my mind that suspension of the AZ vaccine by individual EU member states is a political one. The EMA and MHRA confirm that those given the current Covid-19 jabs show no more incidence of blood clots than in the general population.
That's not, by the way, to say they cause blood clots, because there is no evidence that they do, just if you've had a jab you are as unlikely to develop a blood clot as if you hadn't had a jab.
The MHRA and EMA are rigorous in their monitoring of drug side effects and you only have to look on their websites to see just how thorough they are in their medicine appraisals.