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US agencies call for pause in Johnson & Johnson vaccine

bbc.co.uk

341–350 of 1001 posts

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

#341
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).

> returned to near normal by August 2020

The problem is the virus, not the government reaction to it. Personally, I tend to think governments under-reacted in most Western countries. I'm not sure how things would have returned to "normal" if the virus was raging out of control. A good precentage of people would see the deaths and still avoid going out to shop or whatever. I'm assuming you mean by "normal" that people would return to some normal pattern of economic activity - and even if 10 or 20% of people changed their behavior that would still impact the economy.

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

#342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point he’s trying to make is that if you’re in a low risk group (let’s say under 30 for example) maybe it’s a better idea to just skip the vaccine.

Wait, that doesn't sound quite right: the benefit of taking the vaccine goes not only to you, it's also to the people you would have otherwise infected by spreading the virus yourself.

We have been told we have to wear masks and socially distance with or without vaccine, so you can ABSOLUTELY still spread it even if fully vaccinated. Please follow the health guidelines and do not spread disinformation.

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

#343
post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And we know adenoviruses interfere with the coagulation cascade through FX binding, so it’s well worth taking a pause and taking a closer look into what’s going on. With two well-tolerated and safe mRNA vaccines in the market, we can afford — to a degree! — to put Ad-based vaccines through additional scrutiny, especially since they’re likely to be the primary vaccine type on a global level.

Sorry, what’s the effect adenoviruses have on FX? I’m a male with a mild hypercoag disorder and history of DVT. Am scheduled to get the JJ vax today and will be skipping and seeking out mRNA instead.

Not a doctor, so talk to your hematologist! Ads bind to blood factors (Ad5s to FX, HAdVs to FIX, etc), which facilitates organ uptake and interferes with the coagulation cascade and triggers complement activation. Thrombotic thrombocytopenia is a known complication from gene therapy studies, so it’s not surprising, but concerning, that rare but serious coagulatory disorders are appearing in the widespread use of a zoonotic adenovirus. I’m certain quite a few other folks on here are better-informed than me, so hopefully we’ll get some more discussions going on this topic.

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

#344
post #207
post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I only know my corner of the globe well. In this area, vaccine appointments are pretty easy to get and everyone 16+ is eligible. It certainly looks like any delay caused by this would be minimal. Maybe other parts of the country are different.

What part of the country are you in? And what counts as "pretty easy to get"? In California, the most populous state, people under 50 are not generally even eligible to try to get an appointment for another two days. I don't know how it is in other states, but I don't think this is unusual. That the vaccination rate is supply-limited is manifest in the fact that less than a third of the U.S. population has been vacci…

South Carolina -- availability varies, but most parts of the state have at least some appointments and they seem to be becoming more readily available.

> there are large numbers of vaccine denialists who are choosing to forego the vaccine altogether. That leaves some localized surpluses.

The people that do not want the vaccine are a part of why. There are different reasons for this, with some just wanting others to get a chance first. But noone is going to force people to take it.

Its also really unfair to characterize this as "rural areas" with "large numbers of vaccine denialists". We have urban areas with vaccines available and rural areas with full appointment books.

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

#345
post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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: Pro…

You can't really protect the vulnerable, especially when the vaccines wasn't developed. Any source for the 50% antibody claim?

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

#346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is what's been frustrating for me with world health organizations. I get the need to make sure medicine is safe and effective, and we absolutely should follow those to a T when it comes to new medicines on the market in non-emergency situations. However, that's not the case here. vaccines are well studied in general and J&J is one of the more "normally developed" vaccines on the market. After generally ensuring…

> Personally, I lay the blame primarily on anti-vaxxers. They've made us far too cautious around vaccinations. It has screwed up our risk management rules. I've no doubt that this pull back will result in anti-vaxxers publishing BS about the safety of J&J vaccinations to try and scare people away from it.

This has nothing to do with "anti-vaxxers". Vaccines usually take years to develop precisely because we give them to everyone, and rare, long-tail risks matter. This was the case well before the MMR autism scare defined "anti-vax" as it has come to be known today.

In this case, we bypassed that standard development process. It was the right choice, in my opinion, but it's not the right attitude to start claiming that our standard level of risk mitigation for vaccines is excessively cautious because "anti-vaxxers" exist. That's simply reactionary.

If anything, we've tossed out all of our usual standards of evidence in 2020, and did a bunch of stuff willy nilly, with no supporting evidence or rational consideration of trade-offs. We tore off all the safety belts. We don't need lower bars for evidence, we need less reactionary hysteria.

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

#347
post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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: Pro…

And then we had excess deaths in NY State because Governor Cuomo FORCED nursing homes to take in infected patients! And then he gave immunity to the whole industry from liability if they didn’t take precautions.

And he became the darling of the media and even won an Emmy.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/03/cuomos-nursing-home-...

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

#348

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…

That's interesting to know. When I got my Pfizer jab, the lady said "oops, I did it wrong" and blood came out. She didn't jab me again though and I just assumed it was good to go. Should she have done it again at a different site? I was told elsewhere that it doesn't make the vaccine any less effective, but I'm curious what others on here think now...

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

#349
post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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: Pro…

> 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.

Where was this "full shutdown" you speak of? Not anywhere in the US. In Wuhan, and some other Asian countries, sure.

Didn't we kind of have the 3 month shutdown-lite you're referring to? Mid-March through about June for most places were at varying levels of shutdown in the US. But recall things started opening up in June of 2020. And cases started rising again into July.

> The US is apparently already at ~50% antibodies, not counting vaccination.

Citation? That seems like about 3X the most optimistic numbers I've heard from credible sources.

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

#350
post #57

We’ve completely transformed human civilization in a desperate attempt to slow down the spread of this virus that kills 1 in 200 people, and now we don’t want to use one of the miracle cures because of a literal one in a million chance of issues. People are absolute garbage at thinking about scale.

First, it’s closer to 4 in 200 [1] Second, there’s evidence that even if people don’t die, there can be long term neurological effects [2]. Third, even if we accept your number, 1 in 200 would still be 1.5 million Americans dead, not even considering the rest of the world. I am personally not comfortable doing nothing to stop that number. I agree that being super worried about a 1 in a million blood clot might be sho…

This is absolute and total BS. 2% death rate? Who comes up with this total garbage?

You have 100M infected in US as the estimate. A 2% death rate is 2M deaths from COVID alone. I've not seen anything like that as credible death rates - it's at least half if not a quarter of this rate - more like 0.5% or less. Do the same thing in countries with 70% infected rates - if fatality was really 2%+ death counts would be insane.

You really start to understand how people start to doubt the crap COVID "experts" put out when basic math shows it is garbage.

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