I think it's some kind of social or fear based contagion.

I mean, there's no rational basis to this.

This is a perfectly safe vaccine, and this is what Natasha Loader is talking about.

France, Germany and Italy are among several countries to suspend the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine over safety fears.

In the last 10 days, these European countries have all restricted the use of AstraZeneca's vaccine.

Many have completely suspended it, and all have acted on concerns about blood clotting, despite there being no evidence to link this vaccine and blood clotting.

And this is the latest message from the use medicines regulator.

This vaccine is safe and effective in preventing Covid 19, and its benefits continue to be far greater than its risks.

But these are the first issues that AstraZeneca has faced far from it.

First of all, there was the initial information that the company released.

One headline read, Why Oxfords?

Positive covid Vaccine results are puzzling scientists Here's another.

After admitting mistake, AstraZeneca faces difficult questions about its vaccine, the article goes on to say, experts said the company's spotty disclosures have eroded confidence.

In other words, it wasn't clear enough about its data.

Also back in January, Emmanuel Macron said, The real problem on AstraZeneca is that it doesn't work the way we were expecting it to today.

Everything points to thinking it's cozy, ineffective on people older than 65.

Mr Macron was wrong, though.

There was a shortage of data for the over 65 but everything suggested the vaccine would be effective.

But by this point, a perception was developing.

Is the BBC's Europe correspondent Jean McKenzie reporting the Belgians medical advisers told me that people here have nicknamed it the AL the vaccine after the supermarket because they see it as the budget option.

And this evidence isn't just anecdotal.

This recent poll found 20% of people in France have confidence in the AstraZeneca vaccine.

For Pfizer, it's 52%.

And while confidence in AstraZeneca falls in Europe, infections of covid rise.

This is my colleague Nick Peak in Prague, in Paris and once again in Bergamo in northern Italy, Covid patients gasp for air.

The nightmare prospect of a third wave in Europe is now real.

There's also the speed of Europe's vaccine rollout.

It's far slower than the UK and the US, as you can see, so infection rates, hospitalizations, vaccination speed.

The AstraZeneca job could help address all of these.

But there are at least four reasons why things have become complicated.

PR process politics at first patients, Norwegian patients.

The clusters of patients that we are talking about are not the more common cloths like the brain thrombosis.

These are very rare in severe cases, with critical outcome in a very young population where this is not common lysine and Norway's decision has influenced other countries.

As this expert explains, once one of them starts doing it, then they get a collective anxiety.

They don't want to be standing out.

They don't want to be the only ones going on delivering it.

And if Norway's decision is the first factor, the second is politics.

AstraZeneca finds itself in the middle of broader political tensions between the UK and the EU.

This was the use warning this week.

We want to see reciprocity and proportionality in exports, and we are ready to use whatever tools we need to deliver on that and this is all about AstraZeneca and whether doses produced in the UK are being fairly distributed to the EU.

And the threat to restrict vaccine exports was greeted this way by one UK Cabinet minister who told Politico, It's got to the stage where this has become naked jingoism from the EU against Britain.

They hate Brexit.

They hate that are vaccine rollout has gone so well now the EU would dismiss that, but the performance of every vaccine rollout is political.

And because AstraZeneca is one of the main vaccines in Europe and the U.

K, it's become politicized, there is another explanation for this vaccine situation.

It's a third factor process.

Tom Nuttall is the economists Berlin correspondent.

He tweets.

You don't need to conjure Baroque theories to explain why European regulators, steeped in precautionary principles ill suited to a pandemic, are following their usual bureaucratic logic.

Keep Tom's comments in mind as we listen to Emmanuel Macron.

We are led here by a simple guide informed by science and the relevant authorities also doing so within the framework of a European strategy.

That word framework is crucial.

The issue with AstraZeneca is whether those frameworks have led to a decision out of step with the urgency of the moment.

And if those frameworks have stopped countries addressing 1/4 factor PR because once questions exist about a vaccine they can spread rapidly.

This is a senior US epidemiologist.

This is part of the challenge.

We have a vaccine confidence.

If I tell you that Vaccine A or drug A is involved with something and it gets, for example, on the Internet, suddenly you'll have a number of people saying, Look at I took that same drug or I took that same vaccine.

And now look what happened to me.

Because regulators, politicians and AstraZeneca aren't just taking decisions about science, they're taking decisions about information.

And, as AstraZeneca acknowledges, the pressure that brings is enormous.

This has been for me, probably the toughest thing I've ever worked on in terms of the goldfish bowl environment that you're in, where every single thing is scrutinized, politicized, turned around, misrepresented.

That was probably inevitable.

Faced with a vast global problem, AstraZeneca was built as a key part of the solution.

It still is now, though, this vaccine is becoming a real time lesson in how our systems and our politics are struggling to cope with this pandemic and without doubt and suspicion are easily created and very hard to arrays.

It's a lesson being learned the hard way.