I think EU countries might be calculating something like this:
A) go on with AZ --> people keep talking about killer vaccines and how you should never trust the government and that no sane person should vaccinate and “blood clots today, what tomorrow?”
B) halt AZ, then say “we checked carefully, everything’s fine, we care, we don’t want to kill anyone with our vaccine” and start again --> people will trust the vaccines just-a-little-more
And in the long term the general trust in the vaccines is much more important than few weeks delay.
I think you assume that scenario A is also better for the vaccine trust—maybe, I don’t know, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the European governments were seeing this the other way.
Some people I know basically said they would not want to be vaccinated with AZ before the Paul Ehrlich Institute recommended a pause. I have no reason to assume that these people are particularly unrepresentative of the population. It is possible that the break, consideration, restart, communication (including cost-benefit considerations) works better.
I think EU countries might be calculating something like this: A) go on with AZ --> people keep talking about killer vaccines and how you should never trust the government and that no sane person should vaccinate and “blood clots today, what tomorrow?” B) halt AZ, then say “we checked carefully, everything’s fine, we care, we don’t want to kill anyone with our vaccine” and start again --> people will trust the vaccines just-a-little-more
And in the long term the general trust in the vaccines is much more important than few weeks delay.
I think you assume that scenario A is also better for the vaccine trust—maybe, I don’t know, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the European governments were seeing this the other way.
Also, obviously the best solution is “hey people, let’s just stop talking about the goddamned blood clots”, but The Virtue of Silence (https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/2brqzQWfmNx5Agdrx/the-virtue-of-silence) is not popular enough : )
Some people I know basically said they would not want to be vaccinated with AZ before the Paul Ehrlich Institute recommended a pause. I have no reason to assume that these people are particularly unrepresentative of the population. It is possible that the break, consideration, restart, communication (including cost-benefit considerations) works better.