Great…I was actually happy I managed to get the J&J vaccine because it’s one and done, and supposedly protects very well against hospitalization from Covid, even though it’s not rated quite as effective as the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.
But now there’s an apparent issue with clotting, and not just any clotting, something very scary-sounding called cerebral venous thrombosis.
Still, it’s just 6 people so far out of 6.8 million vaccinated in the US with the J&J vaccine. So literally less than a one in a million chance of getting the clotting. But for the next 3 weeks or so, I’m going to be freaked out by any headaches or seemingly blurry vision. Great.
The chances of getting a blood clot are so teeny tiny, honestly, it’s not worth thinking about. Millions of women have, for many years, taken birth control pills which carry a much greater risk.
I had the AZ vaccine and haven’t given it a second thought.
Yeah, I know, and thanks for saying it. I’m also 56 year old guy and all of the 6 were younger women, so I’m not even in the perceived risk group. I’m just a little bit of a hypochondriac. I guess I go from coughing and wondering if I caught Covid for the past year to getting a slight headache and wondering if it’s a clot for the next 3 weeks.
Sounds like the same concern as the AstraZenaca vaccine. I had it and kept alert for possible symptoms for three weeks, but I’m okay. I think you just accept that every vaccine has a risk and move one.
My wife got the AZ jab and was worried by the same reports. I told her she’s more likely to win a lottery payout, so if she’s thinking this is her week for long odds, she can buy a ticket and make it a twofer.
Thankfully, she did not murder me in my sleep for my unrestrained wit.
I worried that the clotting issue would be the same as AZ’s since they use the same mechanism, and it seems to be true. There’s a family history of clotting disorders (having blood work to investigate the possibility that I have it too is on my post-pandemic to-do list), so I forwent an opportunity this weekend to get the J&J vaccine 2.5 weeks sooner than my current appointment.
Dang. I was hoping I could find a way to get the J&J vaccine since as a confirmed non-early-adopter I have vague irrational concerns about mRNA technology.
So now J&J and AZ have real concerns in both manufacturing and dangerous side-effects, and neither is available in the US. That’s not the situation I was hoping for. I may have to overcome my worries now.
Well, if it makes you feel any better, the J&J and AZ vaccines use fairly new technology, too. It wasn’t brand new – the Ebola vaccine used a similar recombinant DNA technology. But it wasn’t even possible until CRSPR, iirc, and it doesn’t have a long track record.
Traditional vaccines use a weakened or killed version of the virus, or purified bits of the virus packaged with an adjuvant. Taking DNA or RNA to code for the antigen and inserting it into you with an unrelated harmless virus (J&J, AZ) or by packaging it in a lipid bubble (Moderna, Pfizer) are both pretty new.
Maybe you should look for Sinovac? That’s just killed coronavirus. Of course, it almost certainly gives even less protection than the disease. The nifty new-technology ones seem to confer better immunity.
You know, this is getting tossed around a lot (done so myself) and I’ve come to realize that it’s a little shady. Firstly, not all birth control pills raise your chance of clots and the ones that do don’t seem to make them in your brain.
The difference between ‘several years’ and ‘6 months’ is enough to allay my (as I said, mostly irrational) fears somewhat.
I’ve been saying, “The mRNA vaccines are by all accounts better and safer, but I’d still prefer not to take the very first ones approved for humans”. This news suggests I was right the new ones are safer.
And I’ve rationalized it by saying, “While all due diligence and testing was done, the protocols were developed for traditional vaccines. The human body is complex enough, and medical science has been wrong often enough, that caution is reasonable with something entirely new.”
But that was easy to say when I was not able to have any vaccine, and when I thought J&J and AZ were just on the horizon. Now I need to re-evaluate.
My understanding is that J&J and AZ are both viral vector vaccines, whereas Pfizer and Moderna are mRNA. I don’t know how novel the J&J and AZ vaccines are, but in general viral vector is the traditional technology and it’s mRNA that is brand new for human use.
It’s a matter of costs vs benefits: the risks of having some sort of adverse reaction to a vaccine are non-zero but that’s generally better than a much higher risk of having complications from a quickly spreading and evolving viral infection.
Naw. While the very first vaccine was an accidental “viral vector” (cowpox being similar enough to smallpox to create a useful immune response) combining an unrelated virus with an important bit of DNA from the target virus is pretty new. I don’t think it had been used for any human vaccines other than Ebola until now, although there was a lot of research on the technique, and it likely would have been used for something else soon even without covid.
