BBC: The German medicines regulator found 31 cases of a type of rare blood clot among the nearly 2.7 million people who had received the vaccine in Germany.

German vaccine committee (Stiko): After several consultations, Stiko, with the help of external experts, decided by a majority to recommend the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine only for persons aged 60 years and older on the basis of available data on the occurrence of rare but very severe thromboembolic side effects.

Chancellor Angela Merkel: We have to be able to trust the vaccines... This also includes the subsequent ongoing testing of their effectiveness and safety, and the permanent weighing of risks and benefits.

Interestingly, the German vaccine committee doesn't trust either the word of AstraZeneca or the EMA, which had recently green-lighted Astra Zeneca.

Like a lot of Covid stuff, we're left to read between the lines. Given AZ's constant use of the 'benefits outweigh the risks' line mixed with German experts persistent distrust of regulators' advice, the conclusion would seem to be that AZ does cause blood-clots though they are rare.

This gets back to the ethical questions we raised before: How many deaths of young healthy people are acceptable in the pursuit of total immunization?

To answer that, we still need to know how effective AZ is against new variants. We heard that it wasn't effective against the Brazil and SA variants then the news dropped off.

If it's not effective against variants and kills young healthy people then it's hard to justify using it.