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US agencies call for pause in Johnson & Johnson vaccine

bbc.co.uk

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Re: US agencies call for pause in Johnson & Johnson vaccine

#301

Post by base698 »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #291
laplacesdemon48 wrote: post #103

Both the AstraZeneca and J&J vaccines use an adenovirus to deliver DNA instead of mRNA wrapped in lipid (like Moderna & Pfizer). Everywhere I read about the J&J vaccine, I see something like "the DNA vaccine doesn't alter your DNA". Can somebody please clear this up? As far as I understand, the mRNA just stays in the cytoplasm of the cell and gets used up by the ribosome to create spike proteins. The adenovirus vecto…

Whenever you catch a cold or flu those are generally DNA viruses (unless it's a coronavirus cold). Those don't alter your DNA.

Eh, yeah they do. We have tons of base pair sequences in our DNA that we suspect came from viruses.

https://newsroom.uw.edu/news/genes-%E2%80%98fossil%E2%80%99-...

Re: US agencies call for pause in Johnson & Johnson vaccine

#302

Post by Pyramus »

carnivalWilson wrote: post #246
laplacesdemon48 wrote: post #103

Both the AstraZeneca and J&J vaccines use an adenovirus to deliver DNA instead of mRNA wrapped in lipid (like Moderna & Pfizer). Everywhere I read about the J&J vaccine, I see something like "the DNA vaccine doesn't alter your DNA". Can somebody please clear this up? As far as I understand, the mRNA just stays in the cytoplasm of the cell and gets used up by the ribosome to create spike proteins. The adenovirus vecto…

I'm a bioengineer. Everyone that gives an answer mostly ignores epigenetics and the fact that RNA can permanently alter the _shape_ (or conformation) of how your DNA is tightly wound up. For example, RNA can direct methylation of DNA and alter histones, which can lead to transgenerational epigenetic effects on gene expression and phenotype [1]. The fact is, molecular cell biology is incredibly complex and the models…

Follow-up question: Do these effects (which are very unlikely) differ between vaccine and the virus itself? Or maybe: Is the epigenetic risk higher/different?

Re: US agencies call for pause in Johnson & Johnson vaccine

#303

Post by peytn »

jdminhbg wrote: post #284
myrandomcomment wrote: post #230

Okay so I want to make something very clear here. The rule is to put it very very simply, is you can ship any drug that is approved but you have to list the side effects. This drug was approved under an emergency order and this side effect was not listed. This will get paused long enough for the side effects to be updated and then used again. The arguments about “well the birth control pill has a higher risk” are usi…

This is a vaccine for a disease that has killed over half a million people in the US over the past year, not a new breast implant. The rules are not some holy writ handed down from above, they are our way of trying to properly manage risk. When the situation changes, the rules can also change.

The rules do not exist to manage risk. They exist to strike a balance between ethics and risk in emergency situations. If you’d like to change them going forward, feel free to advocate. I think it’s best we stick with our current rules this round.

Re: US agencies call for pause in Johnson & Johnson vaccine

#304

Post by joelfolksy »

hn8788 wrote: post #91

So this past year the government has been willing to let unemployment, suicides and drug overdoses jump due to isolation and loneliness caused by lockdowns, child abuse to skyrocket and mental health to plumment due to schools being kept closed, all because we needed to stop covid at any cost. Now one person dies out of almost 7 million who received the vaccine, and we need to stop administering the J&J vaccine "out…

Suicides decreased in 2020, btw: https://www.axios.com/suicide-decreased-in-2020-pandemmic-me....

Re: US agencies call for pause in Johnson & Johnson vaccine

#305

Post by RIMR »

InTheArena wrote: post #255

I see a lot of arguments that are basically "people are too stupid to understand risk". That, in turn, comes from the fact that the FDA/CDC/NIH has not covered itself in Glory the last many years. Covid just uncovered the rot, while Trump danced around it, and poured gasoline on the fire. The best thing to get people to understand risk is to actually follow the process in the EUA. Pause, evaluate the outcomes, change…

"Killing people to teach them about risk" seems like a bad decision, especially if the endgame is to save lives.

Re: US agencies call for pause in Johnson & Johnson vaccine

#306

Post by ceejayoz »

endisneigh wrote: post #257
ceejayoz wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, because there are other vaccines that don't give you blood clots at all. Not enough to go around. Pfizer's goal is 2B doses (1B people) this year. Moderna's is even smaller. 8B people in the world.

Sure, but J&J isn't being permanently discontinued. Why are you against simply pausing vaccinations to investigate this? If the USA was this prudent with COVID in its beginning we wouldn't even be having this conversation. Your argument would be reasonable if it was being permanently suspended.

It doesn't have to be permanently discontinued for the public to lose trust in it and refuse to take it.

Re: US agencies call for pause in Johnson & Johnson vaccine

#307

Post by tobessebot »

Ericson2314 wrote: post #244

Well this seems stupid. The thing I'm trying to understand is whether Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca are meaningfully different. All the media just assumes they are (until proven equivalent), but is the genetic code publicly known so we can compare? The Pfizer and Moderna ones are extremely similar. Now, I imagine the adenovirus ones have an order of magnitude more genetic material, but is the code publicly know t…

J&J uses a very rare human adenovirus, AZ uses a more common chimpanzee adenovirus. J&J also has the so-called 2PP modification on the Spike protein compared with the AZ vaccine. Good writeup here: https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/genetic-code-of-covid-19-v...

Re: US agencies call for pause in Johnson & Johnson vaccine

#308

Post by robrenaud »

hedora wrote: post #269
bilbo0s wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now you have the logistical challenges of shipping 2 vaccines to some small town. One for the men, another for the women. Additionally, that town needs the not insubstantial refrigeration capabilities anyway. So what’s the point if you’re a public health admin? Just get the moderna or Pfizer and save yourself and your staff a lot of headache. The logistical benefits of J&J mean that it’s only logistically beneficial…

Better to write the town off to the pandemic. I mean, we’re in the middle of a fourth surge, so realistically, double digit percentages of the town are likely to get covid if we delay even a few weeks, but 10% of 0.5% the population dying from covid and increased spreading of the new variants are reasonable prices to pay to avoid 1 in a million side effects. We can make a statue for the people that die in the followi…

The informed old people are vaccinated already. The IFR is way down from around .5 percent.

Still agree that covid is a way bigger threat than the J&J vaccine though.

Re: US agencies call for pause in Johnson & Johnson vaccine

#309

Post by UncleOxidant »

John Campbell suggested on his video the other day that perhaps this is happening because some injectors are not aspirating. What that means is that when an intramuscular injection is given you want to ensure that it goes into the muscle and not into a vein. So the proper way to do this is for the person doing the injection to first pull out the syringe (after it's been stuck into the arm) a bit to make sure there's no blood coming out. Then if not, the vaccine is pushed in. If blood is seen then a new site has to be chosen. Apparently Denmark has included aspiration in their directions for usage of the AZ vaccine.

Re: US agencies call for pause in Johnson & Johnson vaccine

#310

Post by hedora »

captainredbeard wrote: post #224
hn8788 wrote: post #91

So this past year the government has been willing to let unemployment, suicides and drug overdoses jump due to isolation and loneliness caused by lockdowns, child abuse to skyrocket and mental health to plumment due to schools being kept closed, all because we needed to stop covid at any cost. Now one person dies out of almost 7 million who received the vaccine, and we need to stop administering the J&J vaccine "out…

Government over-reactions to COVID19 have been disastrous. There would have been an economic hit for sure but things would have returned to near normal by August 2020 if they had respected freedom (or if people had disobeyed in mass).

Yeah. The US is apparently already at ~50% antibodies, not counting vaccination. So, there’s a floor on the upside of the vaccine: It did no more than halve deaths. We’re in the middle of a surge, and it looks like most of the remaining 50% will end up catching covid before being vaccinated, so the percentage saved by vaccination will continue to drop.

The ideal strategy without hindsight was conventional wisdom: Protect the vulnerable and stiff upper lip for the rest. That would have more than halved casualties.

With the benefit of hindsight, a 3 month shutdown while hospitals got their acts together (combined with protecting the vulnerable) would have roughly quartered the remaining deaths, but at far lower cost than the full shutdown.

This was predicted by some of the old-guard epidemiologists, which is why they were against the shutdown in the first place.

The cancel culture folks lumped them in with MAGA anti-vaxxers (I blame both sides) and got them censored by the big platforms. Here we are, with 100,000’s unnecessarily dead, trillions squandered, and many careers, businesses and educations ruined.

I suspect roughly zero people have learned a lesson from this. Hopefully I’m overly cynical.

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