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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

#641

Post by ryankemper »

ironmagma wrote: post #623
thelean12 wrote: post #564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think it is a disservice to outright label people as anti-vaxers simply for questioning the risk-calculus of vaccines. It's the same idea though, and should still be called out. It's people who have unqualified medical opinions, and who are then often spreading that opinion to others as if it's useful. Let the agencies figure it out, pay attention to the latest recommendations from them, and go with that. Anythin…

Careful to not play the appeal to authority. Anyone can understand anything, regardless of their so-called qualifications. Are they likely to? No, and that’s why someone’s qualifications are purely a heuristic, not a prerequisite.

It's extra frustrating because organizations like the CDC get held to lower standards than anyone else. They can make a pronouncement recommending the use of face masks for SARS-CoV-2 community transmission when the body of the research confirms that (a) such intervention has never been tried in an RCT and indeed the whole "my mask protects you" hypothesis is intentionally unfalsifiable, (b) the research literature documents numerous negative impacts whereas the positive impact on transmission is completely unproven at best, and yet their evidence-less pronouncement is considered evidence in its own right and such a pronouncement is used as a citation in Wikipedia articles, etc.

(Just using masking as an example, if any onlookers strongly believe that masking is efficacious for the stated purpose just imagine I gave a different example, although I don't see how anyone could reach that conclusion about masking specifically based on the research literature out there which is neutral at best)

Or as another example, the CDC loves to try to encourage people to take the flu vaccine, and yet I was shocked to discover that it takes 71 flu shots to prevent a single flu case, 29 flu shots to prevent one ILI (this is a better number than the flu case number since really we care about ILI in general, but even so 29 is an abysmal number), AND that regardless of the mediocre reduction in cases/ILI, it makes essentially no difference in hospitalizations.

Citation on the flu vaccine stuff: https://www.cochrane.org/CD001269/ARI_vaccines-prevent-influ...

--

I didn't realize until this year how much of "public health" involves (a) actively and intentionally lying to the public (for example, if you read about the AIDS crisis you learn about the "noble lies" told about who was vulnerable as well as the not-even-noble lies like when Fauci told people you could get AIDS from close contact with someone with AIDS when the scientific evidence showed that to be false), and (b) is really a giant marketing campaign for various big pharma interests (I say that as someone who is an unashamed free-market capitalist, not that the US is actually a true free market when it comes to the pharma/medical industry)

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

#642

Post by atleta »

heywherelogingo wrote: post #582
hamadj wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Agreed, I've had all other vaccines, but this batch is rushed, experimental, and not necessary for me - labelling people such as myself "anti-vaxers" is just dishonest, bitter, childish, name calling. Very few people in my area of London have bothered with the so-called lockdown (too much was open to be called a lockdown), masks, etc - I expect I've had all variants, and apparently my immune system is on top of it, i…

Well, you may not be (or see yourself) an anti-vaxxer, and your right that it's not necessarily wise to label everyone as such who have concerns with these vaccines, but it also doesn't mean that your excuses make sense.

The batch is not "rushed" more than it's needed: there IS an emergency. It's also not experimental. The experiments have all been done (up to phase 3). It's perfectly normal to only see 1 in a million (or even 1:100 000) side effects after starting the vaccination of the general public. Simply because the phase 3 will never contain millions of people. I've checked, and the 30-40k studies we had with these seem to be indeed large. I.e. safe.

What you think about your immune system is kind of irrelevant for a few reasons, but talking up their immune system seems to be a general self-convincing strategy for a lot of people. First of all, it's not apparent that you have contracted the virus. Unless you have an antibody test showing that you are seropositive, you simply don't know, but the chances aren't very high. What you can be sure about is that you have not contracted "all" variants. If you live in the UK then you had the chance to meet the UK variant (B117, IIRC) and the base variant (D6.... whatever). Very likely not both. And the immunity for the base variant seems to work pretty well for the UK variant, so it doesn't even matter if you met both.

But even if you know you are already immune, the natural immunity doesn't last that long. The vaccines give you higher antibody levels (at least the mRNA ones do, again IIRC) and better immunity especially due to the second dose. (Which you can't really simulate with a second infection within a few weeks.)

And at last: you can't generalize from your own experience. Looking at the numbers, which we do have a lot of, people who haven't met the virus and don't have immunity should by all means get the vaccine. Because the virus is a lot more dangerous (several orders of magnitude more dangerous) than even the J&J or the AZ vaccine. Though the exact risk profile will depend on individual factors, of course, but since you've talked about all vaccines...

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

#643

Post by amluto »

robbiep wrote: post #417
UncleOxidant wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I understand it the concern isn't effectiveness so much as potential for side effects. An intramuscular injection is meant to stay pretty much in a small area of muscle tissue. If it goes into the vein the vaccine then travels into tissues all over the body.

That’s not really true, we give lots of drugs IM because the muscle is highly vascular so it generally shoots out all over the body really quickly. Ie want to take down a patient with Ice (crystal meth) induced psychosis? IM. Also, it’s hard to miss most of the time. If you want something to sit around for a long time, you go for less vascular areas. (Ie insulin for diabetics, subcut abdominal fat) IM is preferred be…

IV injection of adenovirus gene therapy vectors is well known to cause thrombocytopenia.

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

#644

Post by Pyramus »

AndrewBissell wrote: post #595
kodah wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a virus that has 98% survival rate You know, for all the continual fear mongering about coronavirus last year, the constant reminders of who was most at risk, the hyper importance put on masks and cleanliness, etc it is shocking to see things put this way now.

The actual survival rate is far higher than 98%, that's just the number you get if you use confirmed cases as the denominator.

Not far higher, the population-based average is roughly 99.0%, but varies depending on gender and age [1].

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2918-0/figures/2

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

#645

Post by thelean12 »

ironmagma wrote: post #623
thelean12 wrote: post #564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think it is a disservice to outright label people as anti-vaxers simply for questioning the risk-calculus of vaccines. It's the same idea though, and should still be called out. It's people who have unqualified medical opinions, and who are then often spreading that opinion to others as if it's useful. Let the agencies figure it out, pay attention to the latest recommendations from them, and go with that. Anythin…

Careful to not play the appeal to authority. Anyone can understand anything, regardless of their so-called qualifications. Are they likely to? No, and that’s why someone’s qualifications are purely a heuristic, not a prerequisite.

I'm not insisting that a claim is true just because an authority says it is. You can't just bring up "appeal to authority" and call it a day.

I'm insisting that the average unqualified individual should not think they have a better chance of being correct over the authorities in question.

There's no other rational option for unqualified individuals than to listen to medical authorities unless you have a medical degree yourself and have read and analyzed the research yourself.

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

#646

Post by JoshuaDavid »

thelean12 wrote: post #564
hamadj wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

> I think it is a disservice to outright label people as anti-vaxers simply for questioning the risk-calculus of vaccines. It's the same idea though, and should still be called out. It's people who have unqualified medical opinions, and who are then often spreading that opinion to others as if it's useful. Let the agencies figure it out, pay attention to the latest recommendations from them, and go with that. Anythin…

I agree that, unless you have specific concrete reasons to think a public health agency is distorting the facts or making decisions based on politics and ass-covering instead of optimizing for health, you should trust that agency. However, once you have concrete reasons to think that the public health agency is acting on politics and not science, you should not continue to blindly trust them.

There are other sources of information besides the public health agency of your particular country, for example public health agencies in other countries, or directly looking at the stats and research papers. In this case, looking at the stats makes it blatantly obvious that your risk from the J&J vaccine is much, much lower than your risk from getting COVID, so if your choice is "J&J" or "no vaccine for another month or two", you should probably pick J&J.

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

#647

Post by hef19898 »

devwastaken wrote: post #422
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 believe their concern is more of long term effects and not short term. A vaccine isn't meant to cause blood clotting, unless we know the specific mechanism of how that's happening it could be much more dangerous.

No doctor or expert. But I did follow the AZ story. I understood, that Covid can cause blood cloths. A vaccine triggers an immune reaction, in that case Covid, so a particularly strong immune reaction, maybe together with a preposition of developing blood clots, can be a reason. Not sure if we know already what causes these side effects with AZ an JJ.

From a risk perspective, I wouldn't restrict either vaccine. But since we can easily use Moderna and BiontechPfizer instead for the most at risk groups it doesn't really change things, does it?

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

#648

Post by 8note »

FunnyLookinHat wrote: post #559
lghh wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but it would be unwise to not give people an educated choice between vaccines if there are known risks They are not giving people an educated choice, they are taking that choice away until they deem it okay to give it back. Education is knowing that 7/7,000,000 had a blood clot + the other tests that were done leading up to its release. We know that now. We're educated.

Sorry you are correct - I should have been more specific in my wording. We should give people an educated choice. With unknown side effects we are not doing that. Thank you for pointing that out.

We should be very specific though: If you take this vaccine, there's a 1 in 10 billion chance that a meteor strikes the pharmacy while you're in it.

Make sure you cover every possible thing, no matter how unlikely.

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

#649

Post by loveistheanswer »

heywherelogingo wrote: post #582
hamadj wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Agreed, I've had all other vaccines, but this batch is rushed, experimental, and not necessary for me - labelling people such as myself "anti-vaxers" is just dishonest, bitter, childish, name calling. Very few people in my area of London have bothered with the so-called lockdown (too much was open to be called a lockdown), masks, etc - I expect I've had all variants, and apparently my immune system is on top of it, i…

If you've already had the virus, and had only mild symptoms from it, what additional level of protection does the vaccine confer?

Do you still really need to get the vaccine in that case?

The CDC says yes, but their reasoning is purely based on FUD: "experts do not yet know how long you are protected from getting sick again".

According to the available data, there has been only 71 confirmed cases of reinfection out of over 137,000,000 cases.[1]

Meanwhile, states in the US are reporting hundreds of "breakthrough cases" of fully vaccinated people.

So, the data we have indicates naturally gained immunity is stronger than vaccinated immunity.

It's funny how many people treat nuanced, data driven discussion like this as heresy to be shamed and censored.

[1]https://bnonews.com/index.php/2020/08/covid-19-reinfection-t...

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

#650

Post by thelean12 »

heywherelogingo wrote: post #582
hamadj wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Agreed, I've had all other vaccines, but this batch is rushed, experimental, and not necessary for me - labelling people such as myself "anti-vaxers" is just dishonest, bitter, childish, name calling. Very few people in my area of London have bothered with the so-called lockdown (too much was open to be called a lockdown), masks, etc - I expect I've had all variants, and apparently my immune system is on top of it, i…

You may not be full on anti-vax, but you're very clearly anti-science.

> I expect I've had all variants

No evidence of this.

> and apparently my immune system is on top of it

No evidence of this.

> in which case there's nothing to pass on

Even if the above were true, we don't know how long you'd have immunity.

> and the people in my area clearly don't care if I did.

They would if they caught it and had severe symptoms.

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