William Brangham:
Judy, a group of nations, including Germany, France, Italy and Spain, stopped using vaccines after reports of blood clots and other problems among a small number of people who apparently received the vaccine.
AstraZeneca says there is no evidence of a link and says that these are isolated cases, only 35 out of more than 17 million vaccinations so far. The company argues that these are the same numbers that you would find in the general population.
For a context of all this, I am accompanied by Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo. She is a doctor, epidemiologist, professor and professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco.
Dr. Bibbins-Domingo, great to have you on “NewsHour”.
Before we talk about some of these alleged side effects, I think we should emphasize that this is not an injection – the AstraZeneca vaccine is not being administered in the United States, so no one here is taking these injections yet. They are waiting for FDA approval.
But European nations and elsewhere are using this shot, and those concerns have arisen. Can you tell us what came up that is so worrying?