Can be read here, here, or here (I added multiple sources so folks can “pick their poison” when reading the article.)
With so many J&J vaccines given (nearly 7M doses), I hope the findings result in these cases being anomalies and not connected to the vaccine.
The rate is very very low, but with other viable options out there, why take the chance? The pause is a reasonable reaction, but I wonder how they are going to study this to make everyone comfortable with the choice. I guess they can just give it to the men.
Makes sense. If it came down to testing my wife or me, I’d choose me any day! 
Hopefully it’s just out of abundance of caution and after some research they’ll give the all clear. Unfortunately the internet hysteria is already rolling full steam
Yes, unfortunately we have already jumped the shark on that front, going forward hysteria is going to be the norm because hysteria sells!!! I do miss the old days of sex selling everything, now we must be outraged because it sells faster…
How so?
Marketers have figured out that outraged people buy more stuff, therefore all of our social media has tended towards making people get worked up, because that causes more people to buy stuff more quickly, which reinforces the loop that for the social media companies to make more money their algorithms need to encourage outrage. It is awful, and I think a great contributor to the unhappy feelings that are permeating our society, especially the more connected folks.
Ok, I understand. So our society in general. I thought for a second it was a reference to my post which was posted as information only. What we choose to do with information is a personal responsibility. I would say; however, that even though there are less than 1 per million of these blood clot cases, we still need to make sure that 1 out of 1,000,000 isn’t related to the vaccine. Wouldn’t you agree? I would hate for my family members to be that millionth number IF there is substance to the claim. Definitely didn’t post this article to insight hysteria…hysteria, like buying into conspiracy theories and the like, is a personal responsibility. The information is just the information.
I do think this type of information can have no other effect than to cause even more vaccine hesitancy, though. There is a certain portion of the population that will jump on this info as “more proof” that vaccines are bad. Perhaps the CDC/FDA might have wanted to hold onto the information before putting it out there…but I understand they are also weighing the potential risks of not putting the info out there -vs- sitting on it until 100% substantiated (or found not to be true.)
Nope not a reference to your post at all. Sadly with the state of science education in our country, few are qualified to actually reasonably interpret the results, and social media personalities are not the best choice in any case. And yes, I think it is prudent to pause, review the data and make recommendations, which my guess is it will be something like women under 50 should stay away from this vaccine (Risk vs Reward). With the population of people vaccinated with this vaccine approx. 7 million, the study shouldn’t take too much time, and there are good alternatives, so no reason to push this any faster.
I agree with you, and with the vaccine hesitant population already estimated to be 30% of our country, this hiccup is not an insignificant factor.
I think that 1 in 1 million is on par with a lot of rare, serious side effects for vaccines. I think the issue is that the people less affected by COVID-19 (younger) are also the ones who (seem) to be more likely to have this reaction, so in the end it may not pencil out to give this vaccine to a subset of people.
Unfortunately our population does not seem well-versed in statistics and evaluating risk, so it. may be that a two-day pause causes permanent damage to the J&J rollout.
At least the J&J rollout in the US. My guess is every dose will be purchased by another country who doesn’t have the access to the other vaccines. I know Canada would be very happy to have them assuming the rate is as low as it looks to be, and I am guessing there are lots of takers in Europe as well.
They’ll get all the astrozenika or however you spell it.
The vaccine ecosystem is very fragile. Unfortunately, J&J are about to discover what AstraZeneca did … it’s easy to be voted off the vaccine island.
The majority of Canadians are uncomfortable with AstraZeneca, and officials are voicing their concerns with uptake.
The impression I got from the segments on tonight’s news is that the concern is that if you don’t put it “out there”, the news just gets leaked anyway. But when it leaks then the government appears guilty of a cover up. So … even though the professional folks may not like hearing about this first from the news media rather than more private official channels, we don’t live in a world where you can stage the release of information.
The other impression I got is that this pause is not really about simply preventing deaths from blood clots. Instead it is about researching the issue and educating the medical community. The particular trouble with the 7 reported blood cases was that if a physician treats this clot the “normal” way blood clots are treated, the clotting gets worse. 
The medical community, possibly after reflection, can hopefully be coaxed to agree that making the clotting worse should not be a treatment goal. 
One is those “damned of you do, damned of you don’t” situations.
The information was already out there, disclosed a few days ago by someone in the European Medical Agency in a Science Magazine article. There was no way FDA or CDC could have “sat” on it.
Also, the data from the vaccine adverse event reporting system is public and theoretically searchable. They don’t have to publicize it themselves, but you can bet it’s not information they can hide. Some reporter somewhere checks in on this every few days for sure…
Personally, I think they made the right call. The problem is that if you try to hide things, you give conspiracy theorists a ton of fodder. Now I am seeing a lot of people saying the FDA is being too cautious – which means that if they then say it’s safe for some subset of people, more people will be willing to believe it.
And yes, I think it’s important for physicians and people who were vaccinated to be aware that this side effect may mean you shouldn’t take heparin and should be tested for antibodies.
It’s just a pity that unlike most other vaccines, most people are paying attention to all the twists and turns in its rollout. In the past the FDA and CDC usually could work out these issues in relative obscurity and your only notice about rare side effects would be in the vaccine pamphlet you don’t read.
My own impression is that it’s a vocal minority who are uncomfortable with AZ. Nobody among our friends and colleagues who’s been offered AZ has declined it. But the media is hysterical about it.
J&J’s six blood clot-related adverse events, with one death, out of almost 7 million vaccinations in the US is close to the UK’s experience with both Pfizer (as of March 11, 49 blood-clotting events with one death out of 12 million vaccinations) and AstraZeneca (48 events with three deaths out of 11 million vaccinations). At the time the UK’s vaccine safety body said those numbers were not out of line with what occurs naturally in the population.
The AZ vaccine was the sole focus of media and EU/Canada government attention, even while Pfizer’s outcomes were so similar. But the whole mess was highly politicized: the EU was bitter because the UK wouldn’t ship it doses, and it’s plausible there was some element of payback for Brexit.
These numbers do not personally worry me. The risk is minuscule, and normal. But the general public doesn’t normally hear about these kinds of adverse events. For perspective, in my province your risk of dying from a colonoscopy is a staggering 1 in 14,000. Yet we don’t “pause” or “review” colonoscopies.
It’s really comparing apples to oranges here, though, right? Surgeries always have inherent risks not only with the anesthesia but with the surgical procedure itself and complications that may occur with some of the more sensitive operations. Anytime you’re cut open, there are inherent risks of infection afterward, etc.,
Here, we’re just talking about meds and possible contraindications causing deaths. Your comparison with the deaths from Pfizer are more of the apples to apples comparison. I do agree it’s funny how we heard about this rare clotting issue with J&J but haven’t heard anything related to the Pfizer/AZ deaths and the FDA/CDC aren’t stopping any of their runs so that they can investigate those deaths.