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According to
What is known so far about the post vaccination deaths in Norway
Medical director Steinar Madsen stated,
Q: Were these problems unexpected?
A: No. A mass vaccination campaign by definition involves a very large number of people — and as a general principle, some adverse events, which could include serious side effects and deaths, should be expected.
Is this normal?
Are "some serious side effects and deaths expected" from a mass vaccination campaign of a new vaccine?
Even if you just read a bit further in the article, there is a quote:
“The Norwegian Medicines Agency has communicated, prior to the vaccination, that when vaccinating the oldest and sickest, it is expected that deaths will occur in a time-related context with vaccination. This does not mean that there is a causal link between vaccination and death. We have also, in connection with the reported deaths, conveyed that it is possible that common and known side effects of the vaccines may have been a contributing factor to a serious course or fatal outcome.”
Some frail elderly people were vaccinated. These are the type of people that die all the time, they are frail and elderly. For just a thought experiment, imagine you vaccinate 10000 people that have a 1% likelihood to die this week. You'd expect 100 of them to die within a week of being vaccinated. It would be false to attribute causality to the vaccine in this circumstance, but it would still show up in the numbers discussed.
As said in the article, so far we have no idea if the vaccine is causal in any of these deaths. Perhaps in a very frail person it could (we know in healthy people there are some mild side effects; sometimes mild effects are serious for the frail) so we shouldn't vaccinate those people, but no matter what it's important to realize that tens of thousands of people die every day around the world; if we vaccinate everyone we should expect thousands of deaths to occur post-vaccine even with no vaccine-related increase.
Yes, they're normal. No, these problems were not unexpected. In the big trial of one of the first two vaccines, 6 people died. Four who received placebo and two received the vaccine. But none of the six died from something that the vaccine is believed likely to have caused or prevented.
