Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

US agencies call for pause in Johnson & Johnson vaccine

bbc.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

821–830 of 1001 posts

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

#821

Post by blub »

js2 wrote: post #702

The risk of dying from a blood clot after receiving the J&J vaccine is six in 6,800,000 (6.8M). The world population is 7,900,000,000 (7.9B). If everyone on the planet got the J&J vaccine tomorrow, and if it is the cause of the clots, then 6,971 people would die from the vaccine. Yesterday, Covid19 killed 8,803 people (according to worldometers). We don't want anyone to die from vaccination, and we don't fully unders…

"Now, your risk of dying either from vaccination or Covid19 depends on various demographic factors not accounted for in my math above. But, nonetheless, the risk of dying from the J&J vaccine is really, really, really tiny."

Unless this is a repeat of AstraZeneca, where many were lamenting the interruption of vaccination and calculating the risk for the entire population of people injected with AZ. Meanwhile, in some countries, the risk of dying from the vaccine for young women was higher than the risk of dying from the virus.

After the concerns about AZ turned out to be justified and AZ being banned for certain age groups you'd think that people would get a clue about unconditional vaccine cheerleading.

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

#822

Post by choward »

mzs wrote: post #711
josephcsible wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like it'd be easy to fix: the government just needs to say "as soon as you're fully vaccinated, you don't need to social distance or wear a mask in public anymore". Since that isn't their position, there's basically zero incentive for young, healthy people to risk the vaccine side effects.

That runs contrary to good public health policy for C19 where even the fully vaccinated should follow many precautions such as masking in public and limiting number of households in close contact.

That's the problem.

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

#823

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

cactus2093 wrote: post #793
savanu wrote: post #755

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The different efficacy rates of the vaccines do not directly imply anything about spreading covid. A vaccinated person can have no symptoms of covid and still be spreading (This may or may not be true). Folks are still studying how effective the vaccines are at preventing spread.

> A vaccinated person can have no symptoms of covid and still be spreading Aren't the efficacy numbers from the phase 3 trials based on giving periodic PCR tests to everyone that was participating in the trials? And not just based on people self-reporting symptoms? It would be very surprising if there were a new kind of asymptomatic carrier that emerged only for people having taken certain vaccines in which they woul…

> Aren't the efficacy numbers from the phase 3 trials based on giving periodic PCR tests to everyone that was participating in the trials?

For most trials, no. You have to look at each individual study, but most commonly, they only test after people show specific symptoms.

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

#824

Post by effie »

cogman10 wrote: post #439
timr wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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. Anti-vax hysteria has been around for longer than MMR and autism. > rare long-tail risks matter I agree, but at the same time I also think that it's an o…

Read the post by timr above. The studies are very limited and can't reliably detect problems that occur with small part of population. This can be hundreds of thousands of people.

The worst case for vaccination isn't that you get the illness. It is that you are one of the unlucky ones that gets some severe reaction and gets killed.

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

#825

Post by ryankemper »

meepmorp wrote: post #653
ryankemper wrote: post #631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear this line being trotted out all over - especially from the "experts" - and I find it nothing short of enraging. There is a difference between saying "an mRNA platform in general might not be safe" and the actual claim real people make which is "this specific vaccine has not existed for more than a year and is being hastily rolled out on the world population via implicit or explicit coercion". The mRNA platform…

It's not an mRNA vaccine; it uses an adenovirus vector, like the Oxford/AZ virus. The mRNA vaccines both seem to be fine, by comparison.

Thanks for the important clarification; I didn't read closely enough.

My argument was definitely tailored for the mRNA discussion, although the purpose was more to illustrate the broader principle, but, not knowing a whole lot about adenovirus vector vaccines specifically, is it even the case that adenovirus-vector vaccines have been widely used in the general population?

I couldn't find great info with a cursory search (indeed the top result is the CDC which consistently fails to cite anything they ever claim, ugh), but I wonder if the general argument still applies for these types of vaccines as well.

Anyway, thanks so much for catching and pointing out my error there.

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

#826

Post by pvarangot »

cyberlurker wrote: post #783
wincy wrote: post #768

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went to the emergency room for earth shattering headaches (no history of headaches like this) after getting the J&J vaccine last week. I mentioned I’d got the vaccine and asked if it was possible the two were linked. The doctor did everything but actually roll his eyes and thought that the headache being caused by the vaccine was ridiculous. I bet if I went today he wouldn’t be so dismissive.

Would he somehow check for blood clots? What could that doctor have done?

Give you blood thinners like aspirin?

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

#827

Post by amelius »

tacitusarc wrote: post #734
js2 wrote: post #702

The risk of dying from a blood clot after receiving the J&J vaccine is six in 6,800,000 (6.8M). The world population is 7,900,000,000 (7.9B). If everyone on the planet got the J&J vaccine tomorrow, and if it is the cause of the clots, then 6,971 people would die from the vaccine. Yesterday, Covid19 killed 8,803 people (according to worldometers). We don't want anyone to die from vaccination, and we don't fully unders…

6 obvious deaths that we're aware of. The risk of the vaccines is in their novelty and morbidity. An abundance of caution is required in this instance. It would be very bad to discover that there's a vanishingly small chance of blood clots within the first 3 months but a significant chance when paired with other events over the following decade.

Some experts have said that it's probably an immune reaction to the adenovirus which is used as the delivery mechanism in the vaccine. Wouldn't the side effects therefore be limited to the first weeks after the injection only?

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

#828

Post by slibhb »

js2 wrote: post #702

The risk of dying from a blood clot after receiving the J&J vaccine is six in 6,800,000 (6.8M). The world population is 7,900,000,000 (7.9B). If everyone on the planet got the J&J vaccine tomorrow, and if it is the cause of the clots, then 6,971 people would die from the vaccine. Yesterday, Covid19 killed 8,803 people (according to worldometers). We don't want anyone to die from vaccination, and we don't fully unders…

If there is solid evidence that a vaccine will kill people, it should not be used. It's intolerable that people die taking a prophylactic.

It's much, much worse to kill someone with a vaccine than to allow that person to perhaps die of a virus.

Thankfully, in this case, sanity prevailed.

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

#829

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

morpheuskafka wrote: post #762
dheera wrote: post #736

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is everyone worried about blood clots, and not that the J&J vaccine has a crap-tastic efficiency of 66.3%? Would you want the chef at your local takeout to be vaccinated to 66.3% efficiency? or 94%? Why was this vaccine even approved, instead of just having J&J produce the same vaccine Pfizer and Moderna are making, which would be in the best interest of the world? Is this some utterly idiotic capitalism bullshit…

> And then hand that formula to the rest of the world including Brazil, India, China, and other recent new COVID hotspots so that the virus doesn't boomerang back to the US in an evolved form? Such a vaccine would also have two doses and require intense refrigeration which are the primary issues blocking it... additionally many of those jurisdictions might not accept a US vaccine. China, maybe, since they admitted th…

> China, maybe, since they admitted their own vaccines aren't working super well.

Despite what the press has reported, that's not really what happened. In a conference talk on vaccines, the head of China CDC made a general statement about what to do about "low vaccine efficacy." That's been blown up in the Western media into an "admission" that all Chinese vaccines supposedly have low efficacy.

It doesn't even make sense to talk about the efficacy of "Chinese vaccines." Chinese vaccines run the gamut, from inactivated whole virus to protein subunit to adenovirus vectors. There's even a Chinese partner to Biontech, which is going to manufacture the latter's mRNA vaccine.

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

#830

Post by newaccount7 »

yumraj wrote: post #814
newaccount7 wrote: post #798

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I created a new account for this to avoid linking personal information... I had blood clots in my lungs last week a few days after getting the J&J vaccine. I'm an otherwise totally healthy man in my 30s, no preconditions. The hospital reported it to the vaccine reporting agency, which I assume is reviewing all this information. I'm not sure if they considered my case when making this decision. My clots were differ…

what were your symptoms that led you to go to the hospital to get checked for clots? What is someone getting a vaccine as such is supposed to look for?

I got a little out of breath doing simple tasks like walking briskly or picking up my kids, and I had a pain in my back (actually lung) that gradually got worse over a few days.

Eventually the pain was severe enough that I went to the ER.

Looking back, the shortness of breath was a key indicator. It wasn't that I was struggling to breathe or anything, but I felt like I couldn't take a big deep breath easily and that's not normal.

The pain would also get worse at night when I tried to lie down to go to sleep. I thought I had pulled a muscle in my back at first, but it was quite painful.

Post reply on HN