US agencies call for pause in Johnson & Johnson vaccine • Hacker News Board

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

#481

Post by myrandomcomment » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 5:04 PM UTC

santiagobasulto wrote: post #327

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…

But is it really a side effect? If 6 people vaccinated are hit by a car, is that included as a side effect? Are those side effects lists just a catch it all sort of exception where they throw anything there just in case? Honest question.

The answer is yes, "as determined by the experts" that made the recommendation after looking at the data on this and also the data from what has happened in the UK/EU with the AZ vaccine which uses a very similar method. Are the experts correct here - no one knows at this exact second. It will take time and future studies to see if they made the correct call. One point that people are missing in the reported data is that this type of blood clot is not the usual kind where the normal treatment that I doctor would follow would fix it. The pause here is about getting the information out to the doctors and the public that says "Hey Public, if you get J&J and feel this way X,Y,Z with in X weeks of getting it go to the doctor. Hey Doctor, if someone comes in in X time of getting the J&J and feels this way X,Y,Z be aware that it could not be the NORMAL thing you think and look for XXX and treat it this different way to make sure you have a good outcome."

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

#482

Post by doikor » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 5:04 PM UTC

FunnyLookinHat wrote: post #459

doikor wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem isn't 7 out of 7 million odds. It is that it is an unknown side effect that did not come up in the original studies. We have approved vaccines with worse side effects before. The difference is that we knew what those side effects were and weighed the risk vs reward and made the call to use it.

Yeah and we only just started to roll this vaccine out - so it's fair to say that the risk will likely grow beyond that. You're right that 7 / 7,000,000 are good odds, and most people would likely take them - but it would be unwise to not give people an educated choice between vaccines if there are known risks.

Lets say these side effects only happen in certain populations.

If that is the case we could then target this vaccine to the rest and have it be much safer while giving out the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines to this group.

End result is everyone still getting their vaccine fast but less side effects (and possibly deaths due to worst case side effects). This is why we need more data or the time to study the data in this case most likely

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

#483

Post by CamelCaseName » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 5:04 PM UTC

jonplackett wrote: post #424

jaegerpicker wrote: post #406

7 people out of 7 million dose's. That's why they stopped. My wife and I got the J&J shot on Saturday so I'm directly at risk and I'd take it everytime even if the risk was 10 times what it currently is. I've already seen a bunch of anit-vaxers referring to this in new articles this morning. So let's see, 1 in a million chance that the vaccine will make you sick (only 1 person has died so far, which is terrible but i…

I just made this website to show you how really, really small the risks are for the AstraZeneca vaccine which also has this ‘issue’. It compares the risks of dying from a blood clot after the AZ vaccine (about 1 in a million) to the risks we happily take every single day. http://whatoneinamillionmeans.com If you're not willing to take 1 in a million chances, it's gonna be pretty hard for you to get out of bed today

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

#484

Post by nickthemagicman » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 5:05 PM UTC

jaegerpicker wrote: post #406

7 people out of 7 million dose's. That's why they stopped. My wife and I got the J&J shot on Saturday so I'm directly at risk and I'd take it everytime even if the risk was 10 times what it currently is. I've already seen a bunch of anit-vaxers referring to this in new articles this morning. So let's see, 1 in a million chance that the vaccine will make you sick (only 1 person has died so far, which is terrible but i…

Whether it's .0000000001 or .001 chance of dying it's a non-zero chance of dying.

So where does one draw the line?

What level of shutting something down is justifiable in the name of safety?

Who is allowed to make that subjective decision?

It's a slippery slope.

It's arguable that we should wear masks FOREVER because they reduce death rates for every respiratory disease.

This feeling. Of why are shutting down because of these few lives.

Is exactly how people have felt about shutting down the whole economy over the small-ish fatality rate of Coronvirus.

There's just different levels of risk tolerance.

Who is the more moral person?

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

#485

Post by bluGill » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 5:05 PM UTC

bilbo0s wrote: post #254

xiphias2 wrote: post #213

Why didn't they stop the vaccinations in women under age of 60/65? I'm a 40 year old man, if I were a woman I wouldn't take J&J or AstraZeneca, but as I'm a man, I think it's worth to take the risk of the side effects of the vaccination.

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…

The towns small enough to only need one shipment are easy, just thaw some mRNA in the nearest big city and someone drives it out the morning of the vaccine clinic.

The big enough cities to need many shipments can handle these logistic.

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

#486

Post by Verdex » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 5:06 PM UTC

jaegerpicker wrote: post #406

7 people out of 7 million dose's. That's why they stopped. My wife and I got the J&J shot on Saturday so I'm directly at risk and I'd take it everytime even if the risk was 10 times what it currently is. I've already seen a bunch of anit-vaxers referring to this in new articles this morning. So let's see, 1 in a million chance that the vaccine will make you sick (only 1 person has died so far, which is terrible but i…

> I've already seen a bunch of anit-vaxers referring to this in new articles this morning.

So, take pause and examine the situation. Are these people actually anti-vaxxers, ie they oppose all vaccination due to weird paranoia about autism due to a discredited "study". OR are they against this one vaccine because of political affiliation.

I'm really concerned that if we call out the people who are afraid of this one vaccine as anti-vaxxers that we'll only succeed in introducing them to the wider world of being afraid of all vaccines.

Find a different term so that we don't introduce these two groups of people to one another and give them a reason to join forces.

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

#487

Post by toast0 » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 5:06 PM UTC

josephcsible wrote: post #453

FabHK wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I have my numbers approximately right, getting the J&J vaccine is a bit safer than taking a plane trip, while getting COVID is about as safe as taking a trip in the space shuttle.

Your chance of dying from COVID is heavily dependent on your age and any preexisting conditions, so any comparison that uses a single probability for everyone is totally wrong for a very large number of people.

> Your chance of dying from COVID is heavily dependent on your age and any preexisting conditions, so any comparison that uses a single probability for everyone is totally wrong for a very large number of people.

It also depends on the rate of community spread (and what's spreading) in the communities you're in.

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

#488

Post by CivBase » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 5:06 PM UTC

> The US has by far the most confirmed cases of Covid-19 - more than 31 million - with more than 562,000 deaths, another world high.

The BBC is usually pretty good about sticking to relevant information (at least compared to US media), so I was a bit disappointed to see this blurb - especially since it's only the fourth sentence in the article. What does it add? It has nothing to do with the subject (ie the safety of the J&J vaccine) and isn't even particularly useful data in almost any other context aside from half-baked political jabs between nations.

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

#489

Post by hinkley » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 5:07 PM UTC

javagram wrote: post #428

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #403

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 Serious question, how many of those people would have died in the past 12 months if they didn't get COVID? The number is most likely not 500,000, but it also probably isn't 0. Is it most likely something insignificant like 5,000?

> Serious question, how many of those people would have died in the past 12 months if they didn't get COVID? The number is most likely not 500,000, but it also probably isn't 0. This can be answered using “excess mortality” data. Studies have shown during that time period, about 600,000 more people died than would have been expected compared to deaths in the previous year. The official covid death count is likely an…

There are also people not experiencing death by misadventure because people are doing fewer outdoor activities and most especially not hanging out with or showing off for the bad influences in their lives.

Also offset by excess deaths over the next few years due to long term effects of a sedentary lifestyle, stress, and all the overcompensating we are likely to see next year with people trying to “make up for lost time”.

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

#490

Post by hamadj » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 5:07 PM UTC

jaegerpicker wrote: post #406

7 people out of 7 million dose's. That's why they stopped. My wife and I got the J&J shot on Saturday so I'm directly at risk and I'd take it everytime even if the risk was 10 times what it currently is. I've already seen a bunch of anit-vaxers referring to this in new articles this morning. So let's see, 1 in a million chance that the vaccine will make you sick (only 1 person has died so far, which is terrible but i…

I think it is a disservice to outright label people as anti-vaxers simply for questioning the risk-calculus of vaccines. The (1/7 million) is the current, unconditional and empirically observed adverse effect of the vaccine - this is a somewhat noisy measure of the true prevalence of this issue. It is okay to be cautious and there are legitimate concerns, and quite frankly, I trust the FDA have good reason to pause this if Moderna/Pfizer are readily available anywy. In countries where there are not alternative vaccines available, the risk calculations change, and as such, you might be better off taking J&J or AZ. In any case, to your earlier point of why they stopped it: they didn't stop it because (7/7 million), they stopped it because it was not observed in the trials and now they have to recalculate the risks for various age-groups and inform people, accordingly. If these events were observed in the trials and the prevalence was the same (in trial, and out of trial) then it would not be a cause for concern.

Edit: got the wrong agency, it was FDA, not CDC