Originally Posted by
Lead Balloon
The NSW CHO takes a different view to the QLD CHO as to the age group which may appropriately be given the AZ vaccine. Why is that?
It's a risk assesment scenario, if I said you had to jump into the back of a moving car, you would say that's dangerous and probably not do it, but if you were being chased by a rabid dog you wouldn't hesitate to jump on in.
In this case however NSW is being chased by a dog while QLD isn't. So they come up with different risk assessments.
As in all things in life there is always an element of risk, in this instance it is about managing the risk to provide the safest outcome. If there was zero covid in the world the risk of having a complication from a vaccine for covid would always make it less safe than not having it at all, but as covid is well and truly around for the next little while the risk of not being vaccinated is greater than being vaccinated and so the safest option is to take the vaccine.
Somewhere between the 2 options is where Australia (up until recently) sat, it didn't have Covid and so any vaccine is a greater risk, but it also had a high chance of Covid arriving. And so the medical people tried to balance the risk by limiting the AZ shots while they waited for Pfizer. Unfortunately Covid arrived before Pfizer and so they changed the advise on AZ to meet the greater threat.