ACT expands vaccine rollout to cover 40 to 49-year-olds

https://www1.racgp.org.au/newsgp/clinical/evidence-indicates-astrazeneca-and-pfizer-covid-va

You’re being sold by the Pfizer marketing spin where Astra Zeneca has cooled a bad wrap.

The real world data is showing that they’re both as effective as each other. Astra Zeneca is even showing good coverage against the variants which is helpful too.

Astra Zeneca “copped a bad rap”. Ah autocorrect.

It is confusing for us non-experts to know who and what to believe, so I favor the World Health Organisation as a reliable source, rather than media reports of non-peer reviewed articles pertaining to a UK sample.
According to WHO: “The AstraZeneca/Oxford product is a viral vectored vaccine called ChAdOx1-S [recombinant]. ChAdOx1-S has been found to have 63.09% efficacy”
https://www.who.int/news/item/15-02-2021-who-lists-two-additional-covid-19-vaccines-for-emergency-use-and-covax-roll-out

If one has health issues, any vaccine (asap) is better than no vaccine but if you decide to get a vaccine it is best to get one which has the highest efficacy – that being the US Moderna, which has +90% efficacy, or Pfizer which also is >90%. Moderna is not yet available in Australia, but is coming and subject to TGA approval, while Pfizer is unavailable to >50 age groups. So the choice for the >50s is get lower 63% efficacy AstraZeneca now, or wait for higher +90% efficacy Moderna later. Personally, I would rather wait – which is called vaccine hesitancy, and be happy with what I consent to be injected with.

Acton,
Except the WHO aren’t saying that the vaccines are better/worse than each other. Quoting the results of the clinical trials from last year is becoming less valid because those results are now being tested in the real world where differences from the trial data are seen.

Ummm, no. You need to trade off the risk of getting covid and dying. Stop being so selfish, do your bit for the community and get vaccinated now!

Don’t know how you could make it any easier. Either log on to the portal if you meet the very basic criteria (been to ACT government run health service with your current Medicare card) or call the governments phone number. There can be a long wait, but they offer a call back service which works, then answer a few questions and 2 minutes later you have a booking.

What more could you want?

JC it sounds like it would be easy enough but in my experience it just doesn’t work ? The online system wouldn’t recognise my Medicare card (possibly because I very rarely use the public health system), the call back took 6 hours and I still don’t know if the booking over the phone worked because the promised text with details never arrived! My later Facebook messenger conversation with ACT Health couldn’t find and answer so I’m back to calling the system again and waiting for the call back service to see if my first booking worked and what happened to the text. There must be an easier way!

Both have the same level of effectiveness so AstraZenica is not inferior.

The main difference aside from the blood clot issue which is so minuscule it’s not worth worrying about is the 3 month wait between injections for AstraZenica and 3 weeks for Pfizer. During that wait period you are not fully protected, but partial is better than none.

There is not much difference between their effectiveness as the real world evidence has shown. Pfizer’s marketing team is just better.

https://www1.racgp.org.au/newsgp/clinical/evidence-indicates-astrazeneca-and-pfizer-covid-va

Clearly you had an appointment so why not go to where your appointment was scheduled. Bit rich to rock up to a different facility and expect to be seen and then call it a shamozzle.

Have you tried driving from Garran to Bruce lately, JC? It’s a nightmare.