Every week I host a two-hour radio program about health issues on national commerical radio. The commonest talkback calls I am receiving at the moment and also the commonest email enquiries are all around the clotting risk of the AstraZeneca vaccine. The level of paranoia is alarming.

Some callers have had blood clots and think this puts them at extra risk of experiencing the extemely rare cases of clotting associated with the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine. Others are on blood thiners and so think AstraZeneca is not for them. Many over-50s think the government’s advice in April restricting Moderna and Pfizer to younger Australians means they are missing out on the “gold standard”. All of this is contributing to an unwillingness to get vaccinated with AstraZeneca. And all of it is wrong.

While it’s good news that the government has secured more supplies of Pfizer, it’s in everyone’s interests to get the nation vaccinated as quickly as possible. If you can get vaccinated with AstraZeneca now, you should.

First, let me say it is a medical fact and not just an opinion that vaccination was the greatest advance of the 20th century. Vaccinations have stopped millions of children dying from very nasty infectious diseases. Also, with conditions such as polio, vaccines have stopped lifelong disability. For reasons not based on any science whatsoever but from occasional anecdotes, there has been a small but very noisy anti-vaxxing community continuing to spread gross misinformation based on no science whatsoever.

There has been a relatively small number of cases of clotting associated with the AstraZeneca vaccine throughout the world. This involves a very rare and specific antibody response where antibodies are produced to a particular platelet receptor known as platelet factor 4. If you are one of the very rare, unfortunate people to develop this condition, your platelet count drops markedly (a condition known as thrombocytopenia) and the platelets get extremely sticky, leading to clotting. To date, the estimated occurrence of this is somewhere between one in 100,000 to 250,000 people.

Tragically, the amount of media time this is consuming is ridiculous. There had been an occasional death before this condition was well recognised, but now people are being detected early, treated and generally recovering well.

To put this in perspective, the real harm is from developing COVID-19. To repeat the often-stated statistics, 20 per cent of people who develop COVID-19 will develop the more severe form of the condition which may lead to serious lung problems, often requiring a ventilator, and 30 per cent of these people with severe COVID will develop severe clotting abnormalities. Between one to three out of these 20 will possibly die especially if they are older or have serious co-morbid conditions.

Recent reports have also suggested a third of the patients who developed the more severe version of COVID-19 will develop long COVID, characterised by fatigue, shortness of breath and cognitive problems. One study from Oxford University published in Lancet Psychiatry demonstrated that a third of COVID-19 survivors were diagnosed with significant neurologic or mental health disorders within six months of recovering from the acute condition.

Another study recently published in the journal Nature from the Washington School of Medicine in St Louis showed that even with mild cases of COVID, within six months of recovering the risk of death from other conditions increased by 60 per cent. Another study published in the World Journal of Men’s Health examined the potential for COVID-19 to be associated with erectile dysfunction and infertility.