"Finally, the odds of dying in a shark attack are 1 in 3.7 million."
These shark attack statistics are always totally wrong. They divide the number of people on Earth by the number of deaths by shark attack. You need zero intelligence to figure out the flaw in that so why do they persist? They should only count people who regularly expose themselves to the possibilty. Eg., abalone divers working without cages, boogie boarders surfing at river mouths, spearfishers, surfers generally, people swimming outside netted areas etc.
The canal estates in SE Qld are alive with bull sharks. No casual swiming over to your neighbours there. Those residents would be pretty stupid to take comfort in those ludicrous statistics quoted.
Haha, yeah, I always laugh when someone rolls out the 'ol shark attack death probability to convince people of how safe sharks are. It's actually evolved since the first "version" came out, which really was as stupid as you mentioned, IE. Straight-up divided the total deaths against total population. That computed to 1 in 11.5 million, I think.
They must've then realised people were not as stupid as they thought they were (or as stupid as themselves?) because they later revised the calculations to "only include people going to the beach", hence the bigger probability number 1 in 3.7 million.
A lot of good points here
The truth is you can't mitigate the risk of getting blood clots when taking the AZ, the same way it's difficult to mitigate risks when you're driving, or even just walking down the road without being run over, struck by lightning, bitten by a dog, tripping over.
Thanks bro, glad someone understood what I was trying to say. Maybe because I'm a goldfish people don't understand what I say... All they see is blublublublub!
Of course, the mitigation has to be done in the context of each individual's medical condition. Like myself, I've got G6PD, so I can't take aspirin, but I can take ibuprofen (eg. Nurofen, etc). That's also a blood thinner but has a shorter interval of efficacy. That's what I'll be researching towards now.
Anyone who doesn't have adverse reactions to aspirin should really consider taking it when going with AZ.
I know it all sounds a bit MacGyver, a bit like taking your own medical decisions on your own. For lack of a better option I think this is the best we can do.
you certainly can mitigate a great many risks.
for example, you can mitigate driving risk by driving less and defensive driving. you can mitigate the risk of covid by taking vaccine as soon as possible, especially in the middle of an outbreak. waiting months for pfizer means months of additional covid exposure risk which is far far greater than the infinitesimal risk of AZ TTS.
Only a handful of people die globally every year from shark attack. The chances of dying from a shark attack is far far less than 1 in 3.7 million.
https://www.aims.gov.au/docs/projectnet/sharks-02.htmlEach year worldwide there are ~ 10 deaths attributable to shark attacks compared with ~ 150 deaths worldwide caused by falling coconuts.
Every shark attack receives media coverage and that's why we perceive the danger to be much higher than it really is.
Yes, you can definitely mitigate your own risk. But you can't mitigate the other stupid drivers (ever gotten into an accident where it was 110% the other drivers fault?), and by extension people who refuse to get vaccinated claiming AZ MAY (in the highly unlikely event) kill them.
There's almost nothing that can reduce the risk even further of blood clots, unfortunately it's the side effect of rapid development of a vaccine.
I don't think aspirin would help with the blood clots as DVT is usually from stagnant blood flow resulting in clots, AZ is actually triggering a strong immune response that results in a blood clot which aspirin may not help IMHO
Aspirin is far more dangerous than the AZ vaccine. I don't think people realise just how tiny the risk of clots is.
https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/artic...taking-aspirin
Sorry bro, your "I don't think" doesn't really instil any confidence in me.
That's a big mistake comparing the dangers of aspirin to the AZ Vax. If someone has been taking aspirin all his life, how can you put him in the same stats bucket as people who "might die from taking aspirin"? Aspirin has been available over the counter for decades, you can't compare it to a brand new vaccine that the people who are concerned about it have never taken before.
[QUOTE=GoldfishMan;2239508]Sorry bro, your "I don't think" doesn't really instil any confidence in me.
I just would of thought that if it reduced the chances from a blood clot cause by the immune response by the vaccine then would be telling young people to take it along side the vaccine??
I didn't make the comparison, the article was written by Professor Nathan Grills at the University of Melbourne.
PROFESSOR NATHAN GRILLS
Public Health Physician and NHMRC Post Doctoral Fellow, Nossal Institute for Global Health, University of Melbourne; Senior Research Advisor, Australia India Institute
This was part of that text:-I didn't make the comparison, the article was written by Professor Nathan Grills at the University of Melbourne.
"Around 11 per cent of older Australians take daily aspirin to help prevent stroke and heart attack, but statistically, aspirin is two hundred times more dangerous than AstraZeneca – resulting in around one death per 10,000 people"
The underlined text is a link to a Reuters web page in which the text appears:-
"For 50-year-old men, taking a full-sized, 325 mg aspirin every day to prevent heart disease and stroke carries a risk of 10.4 deaths per 100,000 men per year over and above their overall death risk."
So, it seems he divides the Reuters figures by 10 which results in a "statistic".
The text on that Reuters link contains the following nonsense amongst other gems:-
"WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Taking an aspirin every day may help prevent heart disease and stroke but, for a middle-aged man, it is nearly as risky as driving a car or working as a firefighter, researchers said on Tuesday."
"Firefighters have a risk of 10.6 deaths per 100,000 people per year, compared to 3.9 for all occupations and 0.4 for office workers."
Which, by the way, was published in 2007.
Nice to see a credentialled academic do some real research from contemporary medical journals.
Damn, how do we mitigate risks of being a firefighter? Maybe don't become one /s
"10.4 in 100,000 is approximately the same as 1 in 10,000" It looks to me like a deliberate ploy to accentuate the relative harm. The reference to this stat in the Reuters article had no further link and no citation. The inclusion of "firefighter" in the opening paragraph and the "firefighter" stat later in the article was clearly used to link the claim.
I notice you didn't include that text from my post in your response, I wonder why? Perhaps it looks too silly! Selective commentary under the umbrella of qualifications and a job in a respected Uni is all too common these days. Don't fall for it.
"why is comparing one risk to another 'nonsense'?" Because it trivialises the perceived risk without addressing the real concern people may have. You might as well compare anything to anything, it reveals nothing about the actual risk. Most people know this so don't risk your credibility by supporting it.
"so what if a source article was published in 2007?" Because after 14 years there is likely to be plethora of studies able to support the claim (or not). Grabbing this one is just lazy.
I got a call from my medical centre today telling me I was booked in for wednesday week for my second AZ dose "but we have an opening for tomorrow if you can make it in."
I paused, and waited for them to inform me that "however, if you have it tomorrow instead of next week your resulting immunity will be 25% less."
No such information was offered. It's a medical center, how about you giving me vital medical advice instead of relying on me being better informed than you are?
It's fucked up right?? All they have to do is get all the facts and put them into one "fact sheet".
I'm pulling my hair out trying to fix a Medicare problem trying to call their "hotline". It's a dead end I have to get over before I can book my Vax. They just tell me "we're too busy, call back later". Not even putting me on hold, the line just goes dead. FFS...