43 comments

1. pierre wilkinsonApril 10, 2021 at 1:37 pm

   I bet she has Pfizer
   and btw are there 2.5 million doses of AZ in NSW?

2. Andreas WagnerApril 10, 2021 at 1:58 pm

   While the other half of the world enjoys Sputnik V… Why can’t we?

3. Harry LimeApril 10, 2021 at 2:36 pm

   Not just mugs Jon, us over 50 are fucking expendable.I’m 75, and they can stick that astrazeneca up their own arses one and a half times.Morrison should be held down and forced to swallow a couple of gallons of truth serum.

4. Henry RodriguesApril 10, 2021 at 3:08 pm

   Harry, Jon…..Even those stupid rusted on coalition voters might be resistant to Scummo and Berejeklian’s blandishments. As you put it so colorfully Harry, they can stick it up their bloody arses.

   My doctor will no doubt, agree with these sentiments. I know how he thinks.

5. Jon ChestersonApril 10, 2021 at 4:01 pm

   Are there 2.5 million doses of AZ in NSW?

   God (Pfizer recipient) nor the Angel Gabriel (AZ recipient) wouldn’t even know the answer to that despite their daily announcements. I seriously doubt there would be a 100,000 in various arrays and rings of orbit on their trajectories from the Federal depot in the clouds to any number of non-informed GPs, non-existent mass vaccination centres (take weeks to set up she said). The hospitals would have a supply of Pfizer in deep freeze but none for the over 50s unless you’re one of God’s mates waiting in a cruise ship departure lounge bound for the Goldcoast on tax payer’s money.

   They can track pizza deliveries to your door, but the heavenly bubbles of oxygen in suspension just defy gravity and counting. The bean-21 counter App must have gone the same way as the Covid-19 App last year, dizzily orbiting one of Dutton’s offshore surveillance cameras – They’ve got billions for that stuff and plenty of money to sue anyone who asks awkward questions or fire a lump of lead at you if you are a registered nurse, practitioner, a woman or just lucky enough to be over 50.

   But hang loose there fellah, there’s more Pfizer coming for the under 50s inbound on a USS Enterprise starship from Pluto while the AZ stuff drips slowly off a rocket from Mars.

   Truth serum is way past the expiry date and no word from the Russians either, Putin on holiday on the Crimean Algarve peninsular. But snigger snigger, God was blowing his trumpet on the promised extra 20 million and must have taken on a little wind yesterday, when he was asked about procuring some of the magic stuff from China – No trade agreements pending, snigger snigger, look it’s a complex world out there, you’ll just have to be patient, the world wasn’t created in a day (damn I think I just lied again)… Next, no no, looks like I’ve got business to attend to, but go talk to Gabriel.

6. KathrynApril 10, 2021 at 4:02 pm

   There are 7.21 MILLION people living in NSW and noone is at all surprised that the vaccination process is starting to deteriorate into absolute CHAOS. Considering that MorriSCUM is incapable of organising a free shout in a country pub, I seriously doubt this useless, self-serving and totally corrupt regime (at State and Federal levels) could organise a mass vaccination on any level! The ONLY thing MorriSCUM could organise was to make sure that HE was at the FRONT of the queue to get his injection FIRST – way ahead of essential frontline workers, ahead of doctors and nurses, ahead of vulnerable elderly people, ahead of EVERYONE because the Lying Nasty Parasites really believe they are better and more important than the rest of us. Look at the difference between the smug, arrogant, pathological LIAR, MorriSCAM, and the compassionate foresightful Angela Merkel (Chancellor of Germany) who advised that she is going to put herself well below essential workers and vulnerable citizens to make sure HER citizens get priority treatment. Can you imagine MorriSCAM doing that? Not on your life! Morrison puts HIMSELF first, second and third and everyone else can go to hell!

   The fact is that the LNP are not good at giving things away, sharing things out or anything that takes even a minimum level of intelligence, initiative or common sense! The LNP are only good at take-take-taking and, of course, massive DEFUNDMENT of everything Australians really care about, eg Medicare, our hospital system, our children’s State education, hiking up University fees until high level University degrees/courses are completely out of reach to working- and middle-class Australians, defunding Aged Care and OUR taxpayer-funded ABC into oblivion!

7. New England CockyApril 10, 2021 at 4:27 pm

   We appear to have a puppet Gladys manipulated by a marionette Scummo controlled by a foreign multinational media magnate ….. so why are we surpirsed that the Vaccine roll-out i stuffed ….. who did NOT read the fine print in the script??? But shares in vaccine producers … US politicians have been doing it for years ….

8. Michael TaylorApril 10, 2021 at 4:41 pm

   The govt tells me I’m getting AZ (because I’m the wrong side of 50).

   But because of family history and my own health issues my doctor says she wants me to have the Pfizer jab.

   I wonder if the govt will give her a choice.

9. Jon ChestersonApril 10, 2021 at 4:53 pm

   Michael, did your GP have no information from either governments on her professional autonomy, expertise or capacity to prescribe Pfizer or to arrange referral to a metropolitan centre where it could be administered?

   This is one of the key points we are struggling with in this country, thanks to these two Dantean clowns and it’s a basic human right, medical decision and informed consent – Nowhere else!

10. Michael TaylorApril 10, 2021 at 5:24 pm

    Jon, when I saw my doctor yesterday she had no notification re Morrison’s Pfizer announcement from the previous evening.

    She heard it from me. Not the government. Not the Health Dep. Not the Minister. Me.

11. Harry LimeApril 10, 2021 at 5:49 pm

    Kathryn, Kathryn…he’s the effing Prime Minister, easily the most important person in the country.Too bad he’s such a despicable jerk.

12. leefeApril 10, 2021 at 6:29 pm

    Harry:

    He doesn’t hold a hose, a needle or a sandbag; he doesn’t stock shelves, produce food, transport essentials or, in fact, do even one single useful thing. He is the LEAST important citizen of this country.

13. Harry LimeApril 10, 2021 at 6:47 pm

    Thankyou for the correction Leefe,what was I thinking?

14. wamApril 10, 2021 at 10:34 pm

    words had meanings but now the meanings are variable. AstraZ is not a vaccine like those we are aware of – those like measles, mumps, flu, and tetanus. The tetanus vaccine is made by taking the tetanus toxin and inactivating it with a chemical. The inactivated toxin is called a “toxoid.” Once injected, the toxoid elicits an immune response against the toxin, but, unlike the toxin, it doesn’t cause disease. Solution change the definition of a vaccine: mRNA vaccine is different, because rather than having the viral protein injected, a person receives genetic material – mRNA This approach mimics what the SARS-CoV-2 does in nature – but the vaccine mRNA codes only for the critical fragment of the viral protein. This gives the immune system a preview of what the real virus looks like without causing disease. This preview gives the immune system time to design powerful antibodies that can neutralize the real virus if the individual is ever infected. The ‘vaccine’ sham fits the system of lnp shams??
    ps leefeit is not what you do but what you say you do or may do later

15. Carina McNaughtonApril 11, 2021 at 12:23 am

    I had my first dose of AZ before the PMs grand announcement.I am a nurse working in the community with mostly older people. Now wish that I had held off as I could have had Pfizer. My husband has cardiac issues multiple angiomas. I told him no way have AZ. His conditions are rare and he is often asked to help out in medical student exams as a patient. He is over 50. I am very angry. Scomonothing had his Pfizer stuff everyone else. How are all those under 50 going to get their Pfizer even if it does materialise. The labour state gov has been very well organised. They asked for expressions of interest to do the nurse vaccination course last yr. The set up for 1a and 1b health workers has been amazingly well run. They just don’t have enough vaccine. They have much greater capacity to vaccinate but oh I forgot they are run by the state labour govt. sick of all the Dan bashing last yr from our useless PM.

16. MarkApril 11, 2021 at 5:29 am

    Dear oh dear. There’s another vaccine with the same problems.

    AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine has dominated headlines as reports of rare blood clots mounted, but now European drug safety regulators are investigating potential clotting risks from Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine. …

    “We are aware that thromboembolic events including those with thrombocytopenia have been reported with all COVID-19 vaccines, ” J&J’s spokeswoman said. “Our close tracking of side effects has revealed a small number of very rare events following vaccination. At present, no clear causal relationship has been established between these rare events and the Janssen COVID-19 vaccine.”

    https://www.fiercepharma.com/pharma/johnson-johnson-s-covid-19-vaccine-spotlight-at-ema-after-4-serious-cases-unusual-blood

    And sorry to rain on the tea party, but when Morrison was vaccinated with Pfizer, it was the ONLY one available at that time.. Another conspiracy theory bites the dust? But probably not, because here comes the excuses.

17. Max GrossApril 11, 2021 at 6:46 am

    Another day, another announcement, another cock-up or grift. Pure LNP.

18. leefeApril 11, 2021 at 8:25 am

    wam:

    AstraZemeca is not an mRNA vaccine.

19. Henry RodriguesApril 11, 2021 at 9:10 am

    Mark…. No excuses. Just a question, why didn’t Scummo wait in line like everyone else for the Astra Zeneca vac. its not like he’s doing anything useful for the country, is he ? He wouldn’t be missed if he disappeared for a period of time. As for the Johnson and Johnson vac, we’re not using that, so stop the ‘look over there’ BS.

    Just by the way, are you planning to take the Astra Vac if offered ? Go on, tell us, honestly.

20. MarkApril 11, 2021 at 10:41 am

    Henry you need to read more widely and occasionally “look over there” all by yourself. Stop being so one-eyed against AZ and so pro Pfizer because Pfizer has its problems also as I pointed out above. You know – reported with ALL vaccines.

    All three major U.S. vaccines produced adverse reactions in more than 60,000 people nationwide. For each manufacturer — Pfizer , Moderna and Johnson & Johnson — just one-tenth of 1% of all people have reported side effects. …

    Johnson & Johnson’s coronavirus vaccine is facing a double dose of problems. Georgia is the third state to temporarily shut down a vaccine site after eight people suffered adverse reactions to the shot.

    https://www.cbsnews.com/news/johnson-johnson-vaccine-georgia-shut-down-side-effects/

    Morrison is the PM – the Leader of the country. It was his job to be among the first cab off the rank with so many anti-vaxxer nutters on the loose.

21. Henry RodriguesApril 11, 2021 at 11:02 am

    Yes the Pm who doesn’t hold the hose, doesn’t give the jab, builds cubby houses, strolls on the beach in his daks, drinks cold beers in Hawaii. And he gets paid more than $ 500,000 for doing all of that. You’re the one who ought to go out more and see what Scummo does.

    So are you going to take the AZ vac ??

22. Jon ChestersonApril 11, 2021 at 1:10 pm

    Carina – As you can see just from this little gathering here, I think there are many more of us in this boat than the ‘very rare’ group we have been assigned by our masters. 2.5 million in one of these wider groups just in NSW that Berejiklian, Morrison and it would seem the ATAGI and TGA have assigned us too. I have seen and heard the expert advisory and regulatory agency explanation and it falls far short of the questions we are asking here. It does nothing to fill the gaps in the public health information vacuum, and the worries you and I am sure, many are carrying.

    This has become a very messy business all because we let politics and a Liberal Federal Government under the swineherd leadership of Morrison run us onto the beach. Fortunately nature endowed us with an abundance of long beaches, blue skies and sandy deserts, surrounded by the worlds biggest oceans. This whole debacle should never have been allowed to be voiced, announced and manipulated by politicians and a government clearly arrogant and clueless. They don’t even have a Public Service of any substance or clout to advise them and administer the country (spec. procure and distribute the vaccines), but now so corruptly dependent on greedy private corporate, global, mining, pharmaceutical and religious lobby groups, outrageous private contracts and the deluded, inhumane, incomprehensible ideologies of neoliberalism, which will wipe us all out if we don’t get these morons out of office sharp.

    Just maybe this public health fiasco will do that when millions cannot get a safe enough vaccine or even one at all. Just may be it will remind us of the importance of public health care that underpins healthy society and economy, for the private sector has been absolutely absent from this game. May be it will remind us of the importance of re-building our public/civil service and ensuring competent and compassionate executive leadership in our beleaguered and politically controlled country and health care system, for it is currently in the hands of sycophants who fail to protect us, the public, nurses, allied health and our services from the excess behaviours and decisions of government ministers, politicians and ambitious CEOs, directors and General Managers (I speak mostly for NSW). And yes I too am sick of the Federal Liberal party and government bagging the Victorian State Premier, Dan Andrews; and I am fed up listening to Berejiklian doing much the same all the way through this pandemic to Queensland and Victoria, any State it would seem managed and led by Labor – It is just so obvious, shallow and malicious. The way Morrison and his mates wax, wed and bed with Berejiklian is disgraceful and an insult to our intelligence, NSW is the State that let the cruise ships in, remember, somewhere between Dutton’s border force, State Government and NSW Health Executive lay that gross maladjustment and incompetence.

    For now however we need to speak up for a cluster of groups that are not that rare at all, who do not seem to have a choice or voice as well their lives and wellbeing might depend on it, and they are not just the ones over 50!

23. Michael TaylorApril 11, 2021 at 1:23 pm

    Mark, one thing that is rarely mentioned is that AZ has proven to be ineffective against the South African variant – hence AZ no longer being administered in SA – and I’ve heard reports that it is also ineffective against the Brazilian variant. Sorry, but it’s no conspiracy.

    Australia is not immune to these variants reaching our shores.

    I am not an anti-vaxxer. There are just some vaccines I’m advised against taking.

24. Jon ChestersonApril 11, 2021 at 2:01 pm

    Also Mark – ‘All three major U.S. vaccines produced adverse reactions in more than 60,000 people nationwide. For each manufacturer — Pfizer , Moderna and Johnson & Johnson — just one-tenth of 1% of all people have reported side effects.’ All vaccine, medicines and drugs have side effects, everything we breathe or that goes in our mouths.

    However reported side effects in the general population vaccinated and blood clots in the brain, abdomen or lungs, and death to those ‘however rare’, including who may have premorbid conditions that put them at higher risk are simply not comparable outcomes. You need to be more specific with your argument and evidence. Why hasn’t Pfizer, Moderna or any other been temporarily halted across the world? Can’t speak for Johnson & Johnson, may be too early and we know too little yet.

    ‘Morrison is the PM’ don’t remind us! – ‘the Leader of the country. It was his job to be among the first cab off the rank with so many anti-vaxxer nutters on the loose’. Well there’s a radical belief and opinion and terribly convenient for Morrison to say – Is that the evidence because he said so about himself? Angela Merkel shows the true spirit of leadership and Statemanship here and she has done the honourable and opposite.

    ‘Anti-vaxer nutters’ are you one of those who’d throw your argument under a bus for the sake of evidence like this? Once again you need to be more specific than throwing out empty nut shells like this.

25. Michael TaylorApril 11, 2021 at 2:22 pm

    Dear oh dear. There’s another vaccine with the same problems.

    So what? It’s irrelevant. There’s no announcement that we’re even getting J&J.

    Now please go away and find problems with the Sputnik vaccine, too (which I’m sure there would be many).

26. Michael TaylorApril 11, 2021 at 2:36 pm

    These are the side-effects from Pfizer that Mark was so worried about:

    Short-lived side effects like fatigue, headache, muscle aches and fever are more common after the second dose of both the Pfizer-BioNTech and the Moderna vaccines, which each require two shots. (The Johnson & Johnson vaccine requires only a single shot.) Patients who experience unpleasant side effects after the second dose often describe feeling as if they have a bad flu and use phrases like “it flattened me” or “I was useless for two days.” During vaccine studies, patients were advised to schedule a few days off work after the second dose just in case they needed to spend a day or two in bed.

    Data collected from v-safe, the smartphone-based tool everyone is encouraged to use to track side effects after vaccination, also show an increase in reported side effects after the second dose. For instance, about 29 percent of people reported fatigue after the first Pfizer-BioNTech shot, but that jumped to 50 percent after the second dose. Muscle pain rose from 17 percent after the first shot to 42 percent after the second. While only about 7 percent of people got chills and fever after the first dose, that increased to about 26 percent after the second dose.

    (Damn – I didn’t save the link. ☹️)

    Mark is worried about a headache but if we worry about clotting we’re conspiring theorists or anti-vaccers.

    How arrogant.

27. Terence MillsApril 11, 2021 at 3:26 pm

    For what it’s worth, I had my first AstraZenca vaccine last Wednesday with side effects as forecast : flu like fatigue, muscle aches, sore throat – lasted forty eight hours and now back to what I call normal.

    My GP surgery sets aside particular times for group vaccinations – there were probably around twenty five people scheduled for the time that I went, all over seventy I would guess.

    Second vaccination is twelve weeks.

28. skipApril 11, 2021 at 3:27 pm

    The Risks of Rushing a COVID-19 Vaccine

    Telescoping testing time lines and approvals may expose all of us to unnecessary dangers

    By William A. Haseltine on June 22, 2020

    The Risks of Rushing a COVID-19 Vaccine

    The excitement and enthusiasm for a COVID-19 vaccine by the end of 2020 is both palpable and understandable. We all hope for a rapid end to the pandemic and an effective vaccine would be a surefire solution. But there are risks that come with a fast-tracked vaccine delivered end of this year, not the least of which are the risks related to the safety of the vaccine itself.

    Telescoping testing timelines and approvals may expose all of us to unnecessary dangers related to the vaccine. While preclinical trials to evaluate the potential safety and efficacy of vaccine candidates are likely to include tens of thousands of patients, it is still unclear whether that number will be large enough and a trial will last long enough to evaluate safety for a drug that would be administered to so many. The US alone plans to vaccinate hundreds of millions of people with the first successful candidate. One serious adverse event per thousand of a vaccine given to 100 million people means harm to 100,000 otherwise healthy people.

    https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-risks-of-rushing-a-covid-19-vaccine/

29. Carina McNaughtonApril 11, 2021 at 5:40 pm

    I saw the PM trotting out how panadol had side effects such as liver failure. What an idiot! You would need to take panadol in excess for this to happen outside the dosage guidelines. AZ has caused these clots in some people after correct administration. Oh except for the Dr privately contracted who gave excessive doses. The federal got couldn’t run a chook raffle.
    Jon the state govt in Victoria vaccinating health professionals a day front line quarantine staff are sending out 2 surveys via text checking which side effects people are reporting. So they are gathering information independently. Their are thousands of is nurses who had Pfizer and AZ. We are not anti vaccination. The PM should have waited his turn. He couldn’t even turn up for parliament during the height of the pandemic . We were at work everyday caring for our fellow humans. The public sector health system is the workhorse. The private sector just takes the cream off the top. Medicare is for everyone. Well it would be if it was funded properly. I remember how Kennett in Vic gutted our health system. The day after he was elected the categories on those waiting for surgery changed. We were given new forms to complete for those in outpatients. I don’t understand how so much of the public is apathetic about voting. As any public sector worker knows and sees very quickly how govt decisions change the way services are provided. Don’t even get me started on my aged care and NDIS. The federal govt has made it into a system which enriches private providers, most of which are run by pen pushers with no knowledge or skills in aged care or disability. No wonder we don’t trust morriscum and his cronies.

30. wamApril 11, 2021 at 7:18 pm

    Thanks, leefe I was confused by descriptions like:
    ‘When it’s injected into our arm, the adenovirus slips the DNA ring into our cells’
    and
    “Instead of injecting a weakened form of a virus or bacteria into the body as with a traditional vaccine, DNA and RNA vaccines use part of the virus’ own genetic code to stimulate an immune response.”
    The conclusion I arrived at was they do not provide immunity like vaccines.

31. Jon ChestersonApril 11, 2021 at 7:43 pm

    Carina – I am quite sure we are on the same page. Health for all and access to health care for all regardless of individual means should be a nation’s number one priority for all its citizens and residents. There would be no need for private medicine and health insurance. All this does is syphon money for profit from health, illness and disability rather than being churned back and invested into a high standard of health care for everyone, and all very affordable for a nation to bear – There would be no place for politics and no need for this highly dysfunctional dual system, which is hugely wasteful, money spent on middlemen, administrative agencies and systems, duplication and redundancy, competition, massive insurance costs, profits and expensive profit driven CEOs. So yes we shouldn’t get started and yet, we should not hesitate.

    On 24 March nurses and midwives in NSW were sent an email by the Nursing and Midwifery Council of NSW headed ‘Can I express my personal opinion on vaccination?’ – Note couched ‘personal opinion’, not quite what they meant but deliberate. I read it in disgust, as I realised they were muzzling nurses and it was a disguised warning and threat. I wondered whether nurses in other States got one, but I had little doubt doctors and GPs didn’t get anything like it from their regulatory or professional bodies, and neither I warrant would psychologists, social workers and other allied health. This is how politicised and vindictive this country is when it treats nurses this way, silencing their collective professional, occupational and social voice just like the way women are treated in Parliament and many institutions up and down the country. The pandemic brings out the underlying structural social pandemic norms we’ve all been living with, tolerated and suffered and I for one have had enough of it.

    Instead on a positive note, this video poem about the NHS and why it was founded – Something we should remind ourselves and be proud of as nurses, health care professionals, people of this country in our public health service, no matter how battered and beleaguered it is by politicians, bean counters and top level executives pretending kindness and compassion grows on trees and can be taught in mandatory training. We should all be ready to defend it and our Medicare system although I see ways we could improve it by dispensing with the costly administration of upfront payments, refunds and claims and instead no charge – reinvest in clinical care and services – These are the Hands https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTgMr7eDjgk

32. Carina McNaughtonApril 11, 2021 at 7:58 pm

    Jon thank you for the link for the NHS. Yes nurses and health professionals do it all. I think we are on the same page too. It was because of a nurse when I was young in the RCH who was so kind and compassionate that I chose to be a nurse. While I cant get rid of this immoral, lying federal government I can show love and kindness to all that I meet and care for. Sometimes I can even educate students and colleagues and open their eyes to the travesty that is our federal government. The people I care for appreciate the empathy and compassion as well as our clinical skills. When I am frustrated and angry with the way the system lets people down, I can only try my best to help. I love being a part of AIM readership. AND I love being a nurse.

33. Jon ChestersonApril 11, 2021 at 8:15 pm

    Good to hear Carina and mine was probably fired vicariously in childhood too. I’m guessing RCH is the Royal Children’s Hospital not the Royal Canberra Hospital that got demolished in the nineties, which was a sad and tragic affair. I live between the anger of satirical love and poetry, the bitterness of injustice and the desire to inspire and empower others. It is in empathy and compassion we share the lives and journeys of others, their laughs and tears, and hold both side by side without being torn apart.

34. Michael TaylorApril 11, 2021 at 8:39 pm

    Just saw in The SMH that the Pfizer won’t be here until the last quarter of 2021.

    That’s rather poor.

35. Jon ChestersonApril 11, 2021 at 9:07 pm

    It’s torture for some Michael and we have an election not far out from then to ensure Australia doesn’t suffer this fate again.

36. Matters NotApril 11, 2021 at 9:40 pm

    MT – it would seem that the jury is still out re the pros and cons of various (current) vaccines including the Pfizer vaccine. From today’s update.

    The coronavirus variant discovered in South Africa can “break through” the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine to some extent, a real-world data study in Israel has found,

    … suggests the (Pfizer) vaccine is less effective against the South African variant, compared with the original coronavirus and a variant first identified in Britain that has come to comprise nearly all COVID-19 cases in Israel, the researchers said

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-04-11/south-african-variant-can-break-through-pfizer-vaccine/100061552

    Contrary to what most believe, science (in terms of outcomes) is not about truth in any absolute sense. Rather it’s about tentative conclusions which are simply the best available explanations at any particular moment in time.

    Best to keep an open mind? Because it’s a fairly safe bet that improvements will be made over time.

37. Michael TaylorApril 11, 2021 at 9:56 pm

    Yes, I read that somewhere this morning, MN.

    It’s just me, but I’ll take less effective over in effective any day.

38. Michael TaylorApril 11, 2021 at 10:45 pm

    MN, we would all be hoping that over the coming months our scientific friends are working on finding something better.

39. GLApril 12, 2021 at 7:57 am

    How unexpected this is from Mr. Announcements. See Scotty run. Run Scotty run. See Scotty dodge. Dodge Scotty dodge.

    https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/vaccine-targets-dumped-morrison-concedes-all-australians-may-not-be-vaccinated-by-end-of-the-year-20210411-p57i9m.html

40. Jon ChestersonApril 13, 2021 at 8:39 pm

    WIN OZ LOTTO OR AN ASTRAZENECA BLOOD CLOT – TAKE YOUR PICK – THE ODDS ARE NOT THE SAME

    ‘Australians have more chance of winning the lotto than suffering a blood clot due to the AstraZeneca Covid vaccine’, says TGA chief, Adjunct Professor John Skerrit – Must be suffering from the same script writer of Morrison’s announcements, who does he think he’s kidding!

    Probability of winning Oz Lotto is estimated at 1 : 45,379,620.

    The Lancet reports 30 cases of thromboembolic events had been reported by 10 March 2021, among 5 million recipients of the Oxford–AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine in the EEC, that equates to 1: 167,000. And remember this is only what has been reported so far in the brief life of vaccination.

    The EMA reported 86 cases in the EEC up to 22 March 2021 out of 25 million which equates to 1: 291,000. 18 were fatal equating to 1: 1,390,000. These figures could be a good deal higher if given only to a population over 50 years of age in Australia (compared to the general population), noting prevalence of serious heart and blood comorbidities, medications, lifestyles and vulnerability in the elderly.

    Norway has reported clotting events may be as high as 1: 25,000 of the general population. But none of these figures come close or as rare to the odds of winning the lotto, 1 in 45 million!

    No-one is suggesting the odds come close to the risk of serious illness or death from getting Covid-19, but that is not what he said unless this was the subliminal suggestion; and that risk is exponentially lower if there is practically no active community transmission such as in Australia and New Zealand.

    Evidently he is not a mathematician despite having a PhD in pharmacology and background in Agriculture and business studies, and neither is he being honest, or is he just a clot! We could expect this kind of public buffoonery from a politician but a professor and manager of The Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration? Don’t think I’ll let him calculate the dosage of my next vaccine.

    Neither do I think the elderly have much chance of winning Oz Lotto in the remainder of their life time, even if they played it. What next, a complimentary ticket with every jab?

41. Matters NotApril 13, 2021 at 9:48 pm

    Yes there are “Lies, damned lies, and statistics” but the usage of same is not confined to one side of any argument.

    And that’s another fact (as useless as that maybe).

42. Michael TaylorApril 13, 2021 at 10:01 pm

    MN, you are ignoring those people who could be at risk.

    I’m one of those.

    My mother died at 52 from a clot. I lost 3 cousins (on my mother’s side) in their 40s to clots. I nearly lost a brother at 51 to clotting. My other brother just spent a month in hospital and was within minutes of death. Yes, it was clots.

    I myself am soon heading off to Melbourne for surgery as tests reveal my aorta and arteries to the hips are all full of plaque and in danger of clotting.

    So yes, I take these risks seriously.

43. Jon ChestersonApril 14, 2021 at 12:24 am

    What Michael is saying is substantively what this argument is all about for many. There are a large cohort of Australians of all ages (but particularly older people) who are being thrown off as part of the general statistical risk analysis. For the broader population, the risk is no greater. For this special cohort the risks are substantial and these people have been thrown under a bus. In fact the entire population over 50 have been thrown under a bus and a sizeable portion with specific comorbidities and history have been run over backwards also on this fallacy of ‘extremely rare’. It is abysmal, many of us have no access to anything other than AZ, yet more than half the population who are not affected by this risk in any direct or meaningful way have been given a choice. It is absolutely fucking bizarre and insulting. To think that the TGA has determined this is utterly unbelievable, unscientific and unreasoned, not to mention a gross injustice and discount. And we have this buffoon professor claiming erroneously there is a higher probability you’d win the Lotto – This is hyperbole and spin. It’s dangerous! It demonstrates what lengths our so called ‘government’ and ‘democracy’ with corporate stacked expert committees and regulators, not just politicians and ministers will do to throw vulnerable Australians and communities under a bus, and it is not just over Covid-19 and vaccination, it has spread perversely into all aspects of Australian life. No fucking way now I will let AZ anywhere near my veins, Morrison can be the one to resign and the cronies underneath him, let him flap his own flab, he makes me angry!