In question time yesterday, Prime Minister Scott Morrison tried to recast government as the great defender of the AstraZeneca vaccine.
“Those challenges [on the vaccine rollout] have been overcome, whether it was the hesitancy around the AstraZeneca vaccine, which many shared, but this government didn’t share, I can assure you,” he said.
“As we stood up for the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, others sought to cast aspersions on it — but not our government.”
Australia has a 6 million-dose stockpile of AZ, but its reputation has been so maligned by fears of rare blood clotting side effects and shifting advice from the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI) that much of that may go to waste.
Morrison claiming the government always backed AstraZeneca seems like a bit of revision that doesn’t stack up. Instead, its representation of ATAGI’s advice and shifting messaging helped reinforce a perception that AZ was inferior.
Here’s a quick recap: in April, Morrison held a night-time press conference announcing that based on ATAGI’s advice AZ would not be the preferred vaccine for under-50s. Because he fronted the media within 15 minutes of getting the advice, the nuance wasn’t made clear.
People under 50 were never restricted from getting AZ. They could always receive it after talking to a doctor, and if the benefit outweighed the risk. Morrison only pivoted to that position at another night-time presser in late June — after the Sydney outbreak began — suggesting people under 40 could get AZ by talking to their GP. After that he repeatedly blamed ATAGI’s “overly cautious” advice for causing problems with the vaccine rollout.
But in the meantime his government’s messaging had continued to shift. In May, Health Minister Greg Hunt reminded over-50s worried about AstraZeneca that more doses of Pfizer and Moderna would be available later in the year. He was later forced to backtrack and confirm his advice hadn’t changed.
In June, ATAGI’s advice changed again, making Pfizer the preferred vaccine for anyone under 60.
Although Morrison has taken a few pot shots at ATAGI, yesterday’s question time performance was clearly a dig at Labor. The opposition’s focus on his failure to secure enough vaccine supply has led to accusations Anthony Albanese was slow to promote AZ.
As Sydney’s outbreak worsened in July, and the government tried to rehabilitate AZ, Labor MPs still talked about Australia’s vaccine scarcity problem, despite the oversupply of AZ. The party has also preselected Michelle Ananda-Rajah — a doctor who has been a very prominent voice attacking the safety and efficacy of AZ — for the Melbourne seat of Higgins.
But Labor isn’t the government, and any of its mixed messaging carries less weight. The Morrison government’s failure to stand up for AZ until it was far too late caused more harm.
Is the Scott Morrison who never trashed the AstraZeneca vaccine any relation of the Scott Morrison who made such a public spectacle of getting his Pfizer jabs earlier this year?
Exactly, which flew in the face of his big announcement in 2020 of ‘securing’ such a great deal with AZ and how wonderful it was (even though the AZ people knew nothing of this great deal). He could not lie straight in bed
The man who wasn’t entitled to Pfizer was the first in the queue.
Yes, but such rules are only for the little people; Morrison was exercising his droit du seigneur
In fact he was doing as he was told by God, just remember he does gods work and has a direct conduit to that god nutter nutter nutter nutter
My French is rusty, does “droit du seigneur” translate to ‘clumsy, lying, prick’?
I thought that it meant signing with the right hand of Dog.
Poor girl
And given that the jab he got, while not actually in the queue, appears by now to be less efficacious than if he had got the AZ jab. Swings and roundabouts. What’s the bet he’s first in line for a booster shot.
I think the whole issue of the reputation of the AZ vaccine gets missed.
There are other vaccines that don’t have the thrombosis problem (at least, as far as I know). So people would prefer to have one of those, please, if possible.
Not possible? Why?
Because when he had the chance, Morrison turned down Pfizer, decided not to hedge his bets and went big on AZ.
That is the reason AZ’s rep took a hit, because now people were having to take a risk, that they otherwise mightn’t have had to take.
Science clearly has done the stats on AZ related deaths, they are one in a million and that’s the results we are seeing happen in real life. If we weren’t jabbing millions, if we were only jabbing thousands, the one-in-a-million thing probably wouldn’t even result in a single death. Unfortunately, we ARE jabbing millions, and so, people have died and more will die, one for every million or thereabouts.
On the ABC program the Drum yesterday, i think it was Pat Turner saying, unambiguously, that if you take the AZ shot, you will be fine. That’s just not true. You will PROBABLY be fine. But overselling the thing is just setting yourself up for a massive hit to your credibility, cos as sure as anything, someone will die from a thrombosis the next week and everyone will be going “BUT YOU SAID -”
The take home message from all of this is that people should take the AZ vax if that’s what’s on offer, take the one-in-a-million risk, and just hope they don’t pull the short straw – and remember that the reason they have to take this unnecessary risk in the first place is because Scott Morrison is a rotten decision-maker.
If anyone died from TTC complications of the AZ vaccine, you wouldn’t know it. Since the pandemic began to bite, and AZ was ‘forgiven’ its shortcomings, there has been no media report of any death – or indeed, complication – arising from the AZ vaccine. The media are doing their duty, you could say.
Meanwhile, I have friends in their 60s, some with health complications, living in NSW hotspots, who have sworn off AZ because of the risk of TTC, and will now only wait for Pfizer or Moderna. I fear it will be a long, risky wait for them.
apart from thqt first 5 deaths havent heard a word. perhaps it has miraculously stopped killing people?????? I and my wife had our AZ with zero issues . . .
“There are other vaccines that don’t have the thrombosis problem (at least, as far as I know). So people would prefer to have one of those, please, if possible.”
That’s not accurate, and even if it was, it’s not an adequate rationale fro not taking an AZ jab. The risk of blood clots from any of the vaccines is, for the great majority of adults, negligible. The difference in the risk between Pfizer and AZ is even less – and yes, there is a risk (tiny but even so) from Pfizer. The risk of blood clots from a covid infection is many times the risk from any of the vaccines, and that is in addition to all the other risks from the infection such as respiratory failure and long term organ damage. Recent research:
The paper, published in The BMJ, said that per 10 million people jabbed with AstraZeneca, there were an estimated seven additional cases of Cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST), while there were 20 in people with Covid-19.
For blood clotting in a vein (venous thromboembolism) they estimated some 66 excess events per 10 million people vaccinated with AstraZeneca, compared with around 12,614 excess events in those with Covid.
There were an estimated 143 extra cases of ischaemic stroke per 10 million people with Pfizer, compared with 1,699 cases in those with Covid-19.
There were no associations with blood clots in an artery (arterial thromboembolism) for either vaccine, but there were some 5,000 excess events per 10 million people infected with Covid, they said.
SSR, i think you’ve missed the point of what i have written.
I’m trying to identify what I think is the actual real issue that people are having with AZ.
Whether or not it’s an adequate rationale for not getting the AZ jab is neither here nor there, is it? It exists, that’s the point.
And comparing clot stats between AZ and Covid itself is another thing altogether – it’s the clot stats between AZ and Pfizer that are the crux of the problem – people want the one they perceive to be the safer shot.
Pfizer may well have clotting issues too, but in terms of reporting, i can’t remember seeing it mentioned, whereas AZ’s clotting issues have received plenty of media coverage – hence the existence of the AZ hesitancy in the first place.
I’ve had my two AZ jabs, so I’m not the audience that needs convincing – my comment was about what i reckon is the reason why the AZ hesitant want Pfizer and not so much AZ.
Hey, if they offered me a choice, I’d have gone Pfizer too! Why wouldn’t anyone?
If I missed your point in your first post it’s because you did not state it. You did not present your statement as the (mistaken) belief of some fraction of the Australian public. You wrote
I think the whole issue of the reputation of the AZ vaccine gets missed.
There are other vaccines that don’t have the thrombosis problem (at least, as far as I know). So people would prefer to have one of those, please, if possible.
You should not be surprised that your words were taken as presenting your position.
On my readings it has tended to be the minuscule risk of side effects from Pfizer that have been underplayed, specifically myocarditis and pericarditis (spelling?)
And there was a death in NZ from the Pfizer jab last week, reportedly. Who can say, genuine reporting and evidence based medicine tends to get a back seat here. Both jabs have some minuscule risk, and at least with the AZ thrombosis risks there are symptoms which are easily noticed which, if quickly managed, lead to death being a very unlikely outcome. The clots are entirely treatable. Given that, anyone who lives within cooee of a good hospital that isn’t overrun with Covid patients should be getting the AZ jab with minimal concerns.
Hey Dog,
More people are dying of COVID than the vaccine. Give me a percentage but I suspect it is a lot more than a few percent.
This will increase with the Gladiscomo let it rip plan.
More people win Lotto per year than die of COVID vaccination complications.
Read the ATAGI information sheets on the web site. I had family concerns and could not get the right answer from a GP and two Hospitals I visited. The information sheets had the exact info I was looking for.
Afterthought
A local female refuses to be immunized because it changes the DNA of the person receiving the injection. I’m thinking of going down to the local lockup and telling all the defendants to get multiple injections as DNA identification would no longer is accurate.
How good is that?
Sorry I just slipped into SCOMO MODE.
He was such a supporter of AZ he took the Pfizer!
Does anyone still think “Scott Trump” knows the difference between a “lie” and the “truth”?
It’s hard to tell whether he knows the difference, but it is quite obvious he does not care about it. You might have heard of the philosopher Harry Frankfurt who wrote a short book in 2009 on the distinction between lies and bullhsit. It was reviewed in Philosophy Now:
Frankfurt makes an important distinction between lying and bullhsitting. Both the liar and the bullhsitter try to get away with something. But ‘lying’ is perceived to be a conscious act of deception, whereas ‘bullhsitting’ is unconnected to a concern for truth. Frankfurt regards this ‘indifference to how things really are’, as the essence of bullhsit. Furthermore, a lie is necessarily false, but bullhsit is not – bullhsit may happen to be correct or incorrect. The crux of the matter is that bullhsitters hide their lack of commitment to truth. Since bullhsitters ignore truth instead of acknowledging and subverting it, bullhsit is a greater enemy of truth than lies.
To put it another way, in order to deliberately avoid truth a liar must actually recognise it and avoid it. A bullhsitter has no such constraint and readily invents and says anything that seems advantageous for the moment.
The Conversation had an article about it in 2019, ‘Why leaders who bullshit are more dangerous than those who lie’
[sorry about the spelling but the modbot must not be roused.]
It’s hard to tell whether he knows the difference, but it is quite obvious he does not care about it. You might have heard of the philosopher Harry Frankfurt who wrote a short book in 2009 on the distinction between lies and bullhsit. It was reviewed in Philosophy Now:
Frankfurt makes an important distinction between lying and bullhsitting. Both the liar and the bullhsitter try to get away with something. But ‘lying’ is perceived to be a conscious act of deception, whereas ‘bullhsitting’ is unconnected to a concern for truth. Frankfurt regards this ‘indifference to how things really are’, as the essence of bullhsit. Furthermore, a lie is necessarily false, but bullhsit is not – bullhsit may happen to be correct or incorrect. The crux of the matter is that bullhsitters hide their lack of commitment to truth. Since bullhsitters ignore truth instead of acknowledging and subverting it, bullhsit is a greater enemy of truth than lies.
To put it another way, in order to deliberately avoid truth a liar must actually recognise it and avoid it. A bullhsitter has no such constraint and readily invents and says anything that seems advantageous for the moment.
The Conversation had an article about it in 2019, ‘Why leaders who bullhsit are more dangerous than those who lie’
[sorry about the spelling but the modbot must not be roused.]
And bullshit works well…ask any advertizing agency…& unfortunately the infamous OzzieAussieOstrich bullshit detector is part of the bullshit…
Oh damn i spelt bullhsitting the other way…
The Modreator won’t notice.
Thanks for reminding me of the Conversation article, which I remember reading. Apropos of your first sentence, I think there’s no doubt Morrison does both, lie and bulltish, with equal gusto but without being aware of the difference. It’s all just verbiage in the pursuit of self-interest and preservation; he believes it himself the moment it leaves his mouth, and that’s all that matters.
I’m not sure he is even aware of if it’s true or not. All that registers is ‘Does this serve my purpose right now?’
“he believes it himself the moment it leaves his mouth, and that’s all that matters.”
That links to another point made by Frankfurt when he argues for a distinction between correctness and sincerity. The former is totally alien to Morrison, but as you say it is probable that, in his own terms, Morrison is sincere.
Morrison, et al., in their ill-prepared, ill-advised, public execution of AZ on evening television are to blame for this debacle. Sadly, ATAGI must share some responsibility. They failed to provide a context that would have allowed thinking people to acknowledge the risk but get the shot nonetheless. We drive. We risk a 4.4 per 100,000 chance of death from found so. A 156 per 100,000 chance of injury. I got AZ.
I don’t blame ATAGI when I think the problem is the simplistic way its advice was reported.