The J&J and AstraZeneca vaccines are both based on adenovirus vectors. This platform has a little more history, having been used in a recent ebola vaccine, but the number of doses administered has been relatively tiny. I'd say both vector-based and mRNA very new, pioneering tech.
An analysis of the relative risks is obviously the objectively correct answer from a rational perspective, but most people aren't making decisions based on that kind of statistical reasoning (though we'd doubtless have better outcomes if they did). There's a serious risk that problems like this can spark a backlash against all COVID vaccines if not handled conservatively--there are plenty of people just waiting to have their anti-vaccine confirmation biases triggered. How to handle these events is as much a question of social behavior and public relations as it is of science.
One could argue (and many have, persuasively, I think) that Europe making a big show of being highly conservative about the blood clot non-issue with the AZ vaccine caused people to dramatically overestimate the risk of getting any kind of COVID vaccine. e.g., I recall an anecdote about a person in the US, who was going to get a different vaccine in any case, who decided to not get a vaccine because a family member from Europe assured them that blood clots were a serious risk that they should definitely be worried about.
> there are plenty of people just waiting to have their anti-vaccine confirmation biases triggered
You’re probably right, but if we keep trying to front-run people’s reactions to events over and over again, I’m not sure we’re going to get great results in the long run. I get the impression that anticipating how people will respond to news is engendering more extreme responses to future events.
Interesting project. Outside of interface choices, are there any differences between this and some of the existing offerings like DoYouNeedVisa[1] or VisaMapper[2] (which is crowdsourced and includes the very important information of whether visa are available at the border)?
The first one of those has some rather questionable information, so I wouldn't plan your trip based on what it says. For example, it claims Australians can get a visa on arrival in East Timor, which isn't true.
I've not come across visamapper.com, but it looks good.
