The official story right now is that it has been superseded by “updated” vaccines.

In its statement, AZ said:

“As multiple, variant Covid-19 vaccines have since been developed there is a surplus of available updated vaccines […] According to independent estimates, over 6.5 million lives were saved in the first year of use alone and over 3bn doses were supplied globally.”

The “lives saved” estimate is an interesting one, repeated all over the place despite making almost no sense (but that’s a fact-check for another time).

More interesting is that neither AZ’s official statement nor the write up in the Guardian mentions the ongoing civil action seeking damages in excess of £100 million for those who suffered the “rare side effects” of the vaccine.

In fact, just last week the Telegraph reported that, in court documents, AstraZeneca admitted their vaccine caused thrombotic thrombocytopenia in some people (allegedly 2-3 out of 100,000).

The general buzz has been this is a score for the so-called “anti-vaxxers”. Social media is awash with “I told you so”  in various forms. British celebrity medic Dr Ranj has been chased off X/Twitter after he went on TV defending the shot (there was even an allegation he accepted money from AZ, so far unproven).

You can’t blame people for sticking the boot in. It’s cathartic, and fun.

But none of this is really new information. AZ has been known to cause blood clots for years, not just in “anti-vaxxer” circles but “officially” too.

In the spring of 2021 the AZ shot was dropped by over twenty national governments due to concerns about blood clots. A British coroner found the AZ shot had likely killed TV presenter Liz Shaw in August 2021.

The World Health Organization itself admitted the AZ shot caused blood clots in 2021 as well.

AstraZeneca has always been the most “controversial” of the Covid “vaccines” as far as the mainstream was concerned. The one it was most acceptable to criticise. As we wrote in the “Vaccine Wars” section in only our 4th edition of This Week in the New Normal:

The AZ brand of experimental Covid therapy has been the acceptable punching bag of the vaccine roll out. From as early as last December, the AZ shot was being described as an “also ran” compared to the products made by pfizer and Moderna […] It should also be noted that the AZ shot is not an mRNA vaccine, unlike the Pfizer and Moderna jabs. So there might be an interest in bad-mouthing it, if your end goal is to study the impact of mRNA technology on humans.

So, the story could become that viral vector vaccines are “outdated” and need to be replaced with mRNA counterparts, or something along those lines.

It’s also potentially a set-up for a “new and improved” Covid booster of some kind. Two weeks ago the WHO Technical Advisory Group released new “guidance” recommending all Covid vaccines “update [their] antigen composition”, which is an interesting piece of timing all things considered.

Hell, maybe they’ll release a new medicine for people who took the AZ shot – one that “reduces your risk of blood clots”.

It’s certainly peculiar that despite an ongoing court case, an admission their product hurt people and the pulling of said product, AZ’s stock price actually went up.

That could conceivably be some kind of pay-off for being the vaccine lizard tail, it’s at least a sign that AstraZeneca’s “fall” is more controlled than it appears right now.

A story to keep an eye on.