3 June

This from the TGA today, our main regulator for medicines. Stay with me, I know it might seem dry... "With the ongoing risk of COVID outbreaks in Australia and the potential for severe long-term effects or fatal consequences of infection, the benefits for the AstraZeneca vaccine continue to outweigh the risks." The thing is, the TGA has done no risk assessment of outbreaks in Australia, which is what they're using to weigh up the risks of that vaccine. There are quite precise actual numbers on vaccine risk, but if you're going to balance those against outbreak risk, you need numbers for that too. They don't have them. They haven't even done an assessment, it's pure assertion. This matters because the entire vaccination strategy depends on these risk assessment. Politics has poisoned our expertise.