@novaveritas
I edited my post. You might like what I added to it.
I'm actually conflicted about AstraZeneca now. If the blood clots are caused by the vaccine and young people are getting them more than old people, I'm not entirely convinced that it is safer for people in Australia to get this particular vaccine. I haven't done the math yet, because I don't have the time. (Working 6 days a week now.) I live in a country with basically no COVID-19. I work with people who are seriously ill. I'd hate to see one of them die from blood clots because they took a vaccine against a virus that is extremely unlikely to affect them... but (at the same time) selfishly I want the country to open back up and Australia invested heavily in the only fucking vaccine that (maybe) has serious side-effects.
I'm nearly 40 myself. My friend got the blood clots one week after receiving his first jab. He was perfectly healthy. Not sure if he's going to die now... Honestly, I'm a little apprehensive about getting the second jab. I'd
much rather have any of the other mainstream vaccines.
This is unlikely to go down well here but who gives a fuck.
the trade off is risk being infected (% chance of infection in 1 year) X risk of serious outcome from covid infection
vs risk of vaccine divided by vaccine effectiveness (power of vaccine to prevent illness)
Young people might not get clots from the vaccine at a greater rate than old people but they have less risk of coming off badly in a fight with the covid, therefore the individual risk benefit calculation looks bad.
That is why I have said it is always a personal choice whether to take it or not perhaps based on doing your own numbers. A choice that should not be coerced or forced.
I personally think taking any vaccine should be 10x or ideally 100x safer than doing nothing, 90-99% chance taking it is the right choice, because unlike treatments for pre-existing illness the vaccine is given to healthy individuals. So my personal safety number for covid is <1 in 1.6 million for deaths due to vaccine before taking the vaccine is 10 times better than doing nothing, ie 90% chance that taking the vaccine is the right choice. FWIW my annual all causes risk of death is currently one in 880 with the corona being <1/200th of that risk......actuarial tables are such fun.
If I ran a drug to market for sick people that killed one person for every one it saved then I would be in front of the regulator, unless the disease was super lethal and otherwise un-treatable ( maybe perhaps some cancers). If I ran a drug to market that killed one in 1000 but saved the other 999 sick people then it would still be questioned. If I ran a drug to market that was dosed into healthy people but killed 1 person for every 99 people saved it would be withdrawn.
I don't have the exact numbers for clotting in front of me and Oxford-AZ ChAdOx-nCov19 but it is almost certainly more frequent than 1 in 100,000, 1 in 25k looks likely. Ballpark numbers are good enough.
30-40 year olds Covid IFR is
maximum upper bound 0.02% and perhaps 10x that for hospitalization so one in 500 for hospitalization and one in 5000 for dead maximum. multiply that by risk of infection say 5% (0% in Australia) in the next year so one in 10,000 chance of being hospitalized and one in 100,000 chance of being dead of the covid. or zero and zero in Australia.
That math all stacks up with real world numbers. cold numbers.
so one in 5k x infection rate (5%) = 1 in 100k for dead from the covid vs 1 in 100k to 250k dead from the AZ vaccine. Flick a coin heads or tails.
if every

0 year old was vaccinated with Oxford-AZ then the math is at least one person will die from the vaccine for every person who is saved in that age group, and the people who die will not necessarily be those who covid would take. sub 18s is much much worse the vaccine would be much more lethal than the rona. An ethical trolley problem on a countrywide scale.
Nod sagely when people virtue signal about the necessity of younger people being vaccinated against the corona, and are desperate to get it, knowing they can't have done the math. The fearful boomers are fucking over the rest of the population again.
In Australia without circulating coronavirus there is no calculation involving taking the Oxford-AZ vaccine that makes sense. Whilst Coronavirus will make it back into Australia but it is likely to be by then a strain that Astra Zeneca is not very effective against. Not that AZ was very effective against the original strain in the trials, there is simply no way that AZ is more effective in the real world than in controlled clinical trials (50-60% effective). The Australian government did have another vaccine that they threw money at, unfortunately the vaccine used a HIV protein and caused false HIV positive test results....that wasn't predictable.
If the clotting is caused by spike protein then pretty much all the other vaccines are not in the clear either. Leaving aside the persistant signal neurological side effects these vaccines are showing. We are in the middle of the biggest Phase 3 trial ever seen, P1 and P2 was short circuited, hopefully everyone gets lucky.
It looks like roughly 1 in 10 with immune thrombocytopenia from the vaccine died so your friend has a >90% chance of full recovery.
The false Hobsons choice between vaccination vs no vaccination and lockdown, get vaccinated and lockdowns will be released is dishonest and manipulative, the UK has most of the most vulnerable fully vaccinated but lockdown is still in place.
Don't expect the government to keep its side of the bargain and give back the freedoms it has stolen, they won't without a fight.